Wow, I can’t believe it’s been two months since I last wrote here. Well I sort of can, the last couple months of school were horribly busy, not leaving me time for hardly anything! But now that’s over with and summer is here.

We’ve had some big changes financially here. First of all DH has been in Italy for the past 3 months. While it’s been hard to have him out of the country, it’s been very good for us financially. They get paid per diem, a set amount each day that they can spend on hotel or food or whatever they want. It’s amounted to nearly an extra 1500 a month for us! On top of that we got our tax return and some extra family separation pay so we’ve been able to fully fund our 2009 Roth contributions! I’m so excited that we’ve been able to do this and there is no way I thought it would be possible to do this early in the year. Now, I know that we can’t actually make that contribution yet, but it’s sitting in our savings account accruing interest until January when we make the deposit.

Funding our Roth IRAs has been my number one savings goal. When I graduate from pharmacy school I don’t know that we’ll be able to continue contributing to them because our income will probably be too high. I’m trying to make sure we take full advantage now, while we can.
Everyone is all excited about the economic stimulus money. I’m excited to think we’ll be getting some extra money, but I think we’ll only be getting $460, not the $1200 that was being thrown around. Although I guess I can’t really complain. We only ended up pay $460 in taxes, so to get that back, means we won’t have paid anything last year. In other tax news, last month DH entered a combat zone, albeit one that hasn’t had any fighting for several years. Since he did that though, his income for the month of May should be tax free. That will probably add up to another $500 this month, and save us down the road too.

Having my #1 savings goal met, I’ve been thinking about what to do with the rest of our ‘profits’. I basically consider whatever we haven’t spent by the end of the month our profit. I know a lot of people have to work backwards and take the savings out first, but thankfully DH and I have pretty low expenses and lately the government’s been throwing money at us. But anyway. Six months ago I realized that it wasn’t financially sound to pay of DH’s car early. We were earning higher interest in our savings account than we were paying in interest on his car. However, since the rates of the accounts have dropped so dramatically, and we’ve met our Roth goal, I think I’m going to start diverting some of our profit towards his car.

On top of all of this I’m starting my internship today. It actually will start on Monday, but since I didn’t know anything about the store, they’re having me come in today to get my feet wet. I’m mostly working for the experience, having never actually worked in a pharmacy it will be interesting to see the things I’ve been learning about put to work. However, I’m not going to refuse a pay check! Actually the company I’m working for has the lowest starting wage for interns, but as a customer I like their store the best. So it should work out. I’m still working on a transfer to Maine. DH comes home the beginning of June and I plan to spend the summer up there with him. It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other! So I’m heading up there regardless if I have a job or not, although, it would be nice to have some sort of job up there. Having this week off of school and not working has been torture!

Well I think that’s all of the major financial happenings that have been going on! Hopefully I’ll be able to post more now that school is out.

Today I transferred nearly all of our money out of our bank's saving account to my ING account. A year and a half ago, we did the opposite when our bank's saving acocunt was at a higher rate then ING's, but with the recent economy the rate has been steadily declining. So back to ING we go!

I haven't used ING for a while, but I know that you can set up different accounts. Currently I have a spreadsheet that I use to track different sub-accounts (Roth contributions, EF, down payment, etc). So questions for the people who have ING...do you have multiple accounts? Do you like it?

So I was really bored today and MTV was having a "The Hills" marathon. For those of you who have never heard of the show, it's a reality show who follows Lauren, a girl who works for Teen Vogue in LA and her friends.

For the first couple of episodes I saw today they were having a pop-up-video of sorts where they selected certain items the the girls were wearing to show how much they cost. Several of the shirts and shorts were $300, headbands and bracelets were up in the $100s. The least expensive thing I saw was a pair of sunglasses for $11. Then at the end of the show they would total up the price of everything shown. One of the shows the total was $69K (they did show a $60K car), and for the other two they were about $8,000 and $9,000.

Many teenagers watch this show, what sort of ideas are they getting that to be cool and trendy like the people on the show they need to spend $300 on a shirt?!?! To the shows credit there was about once or twice per episode they had an advertisement saying "get this same look for cheaper at ______(insert Target, Kohls, etc)" But still, way too much money!!

Needless to say, I am NOT living the Hills lifestyle, nor will I probably ever be!

Last night DH and I had our semi-regular meeting to discuss our money. For a while we've been hoarding cash since there were so many unknowns in our life: we didn't know if I would get into pharmacy school, where DH would be stationed, if one or both of us would have to move, and how all of that would influence our monthly expenses.

Well now we have a better idea about most of those and decided that even if expenses would be higher than expensive we could handle it. Since we aren't going to buy a house for 4+ years, we took $5,500 from our downpayment fund and used it to pay off my car.

Now we just have to pay off DH's car. It shouldn't take too long, but I'll crunch those numbers later.

Since we got married and have joint accounts I've had my old US Bank accounts that have just been sitting there empty. I knew that in August the monthly fee would be charged to my credit card so I wanted to close it before that charge was posted. Well I procrastinated and checked it last week and the fee was sitting there. So I called them up and asked to close the account. They didn't do anything drastic, just said, "We'll reverse the fee and close the account for you."

So then I called the main bank to close my checking and savings accounts. Again, no problems there. I told them that we live in a part of the country where there aren't any branches and they said OK and shut the accounts.

I thought for sure I'd have to jump through a bunch of hoops and talk to several different people to get the accounts closed. Thankfully that wasn't the case.

Now some people may cringe that we have joint accounts and I shut my personal account. First both DH and I are responsible with our money. Second, DH is in the Navy. Therefore there will be months on end where he will be away and won't be able to deal with our finances. So from the beginning I have been the one to manage our household financially. Having a joint account is the best and easiest way for us to do this. Besides, I like dealing with money better than he does. When he's out of the Navy and we both are working we may set up another system, but right now this is working really well for us.

I'm stressed. There are so many things up in the air and I'm getting my monthly desire to do something drastic with our finances. Orientation for pharmacy school is on Friday...and next Tuesday. We won't find out this week if we will even be stationed here or have to move. I'm hoping and praying that will we stay in Florida, and I'm working with that assumption, but it's possible that I'll have to withdraw from pharmacy school and move to Washington or Hawaii.

Assuming we stay here I'll be taking out $16,000 in loans this year. Since we don't know how much money I will actually need for school and how much DH's salary can cover, I'm taking all they'll give me. I'm assuming that subsequent years I'll be able to take out less. I haven't gotten word about scholarships yet, and I'm hoping I get some, but I don't want to count on those either. Looking over the loan stuff I've pretty much decided that I'm going to pay the interest on the unsubsidized loans while I'm still in school. We should be able to handle it, and it will decrease the amount I'll have to pay back.

We have been saving for a down payment on a house and for retirement and our EF is fully funded. So I feel like we have a lot of cash available to us right now. Since things are so up in the air, I like knowing that. However, about once a month I get the urge to drain our down payment account and use it to pay off the cars. It would completely pay off my car (5.99%) and pay of about half of DH's car (3.59%). I calculated that if I paid off my car it would save about $300 in interest payments. $300 isn't anything to shake a stick at, but I'm not sure it is enough to motivate me to do something that drastic either. Especially since at the end of the year that 7-10,000 could be used to pay off student loans, put towards retirement, or keep for its intended purpose of a down payment.

We have a plan to pay off the cars, and our goal is to have them paid off by December 2008. Until we know more about school and possibly a house (although that is pretty unlikely) I think I'll just continue the way things have been going.

Does anyone else ever feel this way? For most of the past year a significant portion of my time has been spent tracking spending, setting up a budget, determining the best plan to save money and pay off our debts, and learning the best ways to do this. The past couple of months we’ve set up a plan which is really simple to stick to and allows us to allot money towards our goals, specifically paying off our cars, retirement and a down payment. With that plan I feel like the only thing I’m doing is waiting until the end of the month so I can transfer the money to the appropriate spot. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of the basic stuff so now I’m just waiting for enough paydays to pass that we’ve got everything paid off and our savings accounts are grown.

Part of me feels like I must be missing something since it’s all just automatic and I don’t have to actively do anything. I am still tracking our spending, but it isn’t taking as much time, nor providing us with as much information as it once was. We are saving for a down payment and retirement, and are planning to pay off our cars early. Am I missing something? Is there something I should be doing? Or are we just to the point where our finances are taking care of themselves? Sort of an odd thought that everything is figured out we just have to wait it out.

This hasn't been a great month as far as spending goes particularly in the entertainment/leisure and household areas of the budget.

First we spent $80 and bought roller blades. We have used them 3-4 times, about once a week, and we plan on also using them in the future, but they were pretty much an impulse buy. They are great exercise though!

The new Harry Potter book was another unexpected expense. Well sort of. We knew we were going to buy the book (DH would have gone crazy otherwise), but we were planning on getting it from Barnes and Noble and using our gift card. We had saved the gift card for this purpose. Well apparently this book was in much higher demand than DH expected and we weren't able to reserve a copy from them. So we had to go to another bookstore and pay for the book out of pocket.

There have been a number of other little things that we've spent money on like another book, a trip to the movies, and a visit to a museum. We're about $100 over budget right now, but we are also currently under budget in other areas.


By far the biggest expense has been our dining set. We have been wanting a new dining room table for a while and come the end of August it would have become a need. His parents and sister are visiting and our current table only seats 4. We've been saving $100 a month for the past couple of months in preparation for the purchase. Well we went looking this weekend and the first ones we were looking at were going to be about $1400 for the table and 6 chairs. We finally went to Ashley Furniture and were able to get a table that we liked better for just over 1000. It's nice that we already have about $300 saved up from it, but the other 700 is going to come out of next months "profit" so that means less money to go toward our cars.

Despite these set backs we should still have a profit this month and next month so that means that extra money will be going into our Roths and down payment funds and toward our cars. It just may not be as much as it could have been.

DH and I have been attending church online. Now, before you start thinking I'm a cult member let me tell you a little bit about how we got involved. We were stationed in Corpus Christi, TX and started going to Real Life Fellowship and immediately fell in love with it. When we moved to Florida we were sad that we would be losing this great church and that we would have to find a new one. About the same time that we moved, Real Life started up an online "campus". It can be found at: www.reallifeconnect.org

They tape one of the Corpus Christi services and play it online Saturday at 7pm Central and Sunday 11 am Central for the world to see. There also is a chat room feature where you can talk with other people who are watching the service and also with Chris, the online pastor.

I think this church would be great for anyone, but I see it fulfilling a very special role in the military. First of all, I know for the past 2 years while training DH has hardly lived in one spot for longer than 8 months. Repeatedly finding new churches is hard and frankly we haven't always done it. With this online church you can still be connecting with the same people no matter where you are living.

My favorite reason though is that families can still attend church together while deployed. I know that having that shared experiences even while he's gone would be special and nice. We already have at least one member who is stationed in Bahrain.

The two services are Saturday at 7 pm Central and Sunday 11am Central. Check it out yourself at Real Life Online www.reallifeconnect.org or pass it on to someone who might be interested. DH and I usually attend the Sunday service if you want to say hi!

A while back DH and I had a money date and determined how we were going to divide up our surplus each month. Since that time we have added some new goals so we needed to fix our plan accordingly. So here is our new plan:

Between the 1st and the 5th of each month we will drain the checking account down to our 'buffer level'. That money will then be divided up accordingly depending on if the month is an even month or an odd month.

Even months:
*$100 will go to our dining room table fund
*Half of the remaining amount will go to our down payment fund
*The other half will go to our retirement sub-account (for our ’08 Roths)
*The interest earned on the savings account will also be put in the retirement account
*We will pay the minimum on our car loans

Odd months:
*$100 will go to our dining room table fund
*$100 will go to our retirement fund
*The interest from the savings account will go to our retirement fund
*The rest will be applied to our car loans…mine specifically since it has the higher interest rate.

I like this new plan because it means that each month we are putting away money for our Roth IRAs and saving up for the dining room table.

Today is DH and my 1 year anniversary. It has been a fun and wonderful year. Our best man gave us our wedding gift a couple of weeks ago and he said that the money must be sent on something frivolous. We decided to spend it on a weekend away. Friday we drove up and had lunch in Savannah, GA at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House. If you ever have the chance to go there, do it! It serves up traditional southern food family style. The tables seat 10 people and you meet people from all over the country. We had a very nice meal with a young couple from Michigan, an older couple from Pennsylvania and a family that had just moved nearby.

After lunch and wandering around Savannah some, we headed up to Beaufort, South Carolina. We spent the evening wandering around the shops in the downtown area. We also went and saw Ratatouille which DH has been dying to see. Saturday we went to Hunting Island and hung out on the beach. Then we had dinner in the historic district again. Every chance we got we walked through the waterfront area because the area was just so beautiful. There was so much water and lush greenery.

We really had a good time this weekend and it was a good way to celebrate our first year of marriage.

DH and I rarely go out to movies. We have the 1 movie at a time deal from Blockbuster Online and for about $10 a month we can see pretty much as many movies as we want. A goal of mine is to see the top 100 movies and all of the acadamy award winners so that's what's in our Blockbuster que. After we watch the one that's been sent to us, we go to the store and get a new release to watch. It makes for a nice blend of new and old movies.

Last weekend we went and saw Knocked Up in the theater. I was blown away by how expensive it was. Now, I'm sure for those of you who go to movies more freqeuently or recently woun't be shocked by this price, it was $14 and I was surprized. We almost made the mistake of going to a show half an hour later and having to pay $18 dollars. Thankfully, I caught it in time and minimized the damage. I did find out that before noon on Friday, Sat, and Sun the tickets are only $5 each. So from now on that's when we'll be going!

When Spiderman 3 came out we went and saw it at the local drive in. It cost $4 a person (so $8), and I thought that was a stretch, but do-able to see a first-run movie.

DH and I already sat down and each listed 3 movies that we each want to see this summer in the theater, to plan and budget accordingly. However to not completely break our entertainment budget we'll probably be seeing them weekend mornings or evenings at the drive in.

DH and I sat down this afternoon and discussed our finances. I feel pretty good about the decisions we made and I am really looking forward to starting on them. Here’s what we came up with:

1. We need to be better about sticking to our budget. We have had a ‘budget’ since we got married 10 months ago, but it never really got past the tracking our expenses mode. Meaning I use Money to see where our money goes and put that in the budget, but we rarely denied ourselves if it meant going over budget in a particular category. Part of that comes from the fact that we put everything on our CC which we pay off each month. So it was spending virtual money. To make up for this we have enacted the white board system from our college days. Basically we have a white board with our most variable expenses (entertainment, groceries, dining out, etc) and the amount budgeted for them. Then after a purchase in one of these categories it is subtracted from the total budgeted. This is along the lines of an envelope system, but it allows us to still use our CC and earn cash back from those purchases.

2. We are going to open Roth IRAs for both of us and max out the contributions for 2007. We are planning on opening a Vanguard Target Retirement account since it automatically becomes more conservative as we get older and we wouldn’t have to think about it.

3. We are going to maintain at least 10,000 in our savings account as an EF. This is the minimum needed to earn the higher rate of interest, and about 3 months expenses. DH is in the military, so he’s got pretty good job security. [Since this earns pretty good interest it is also going to be the holding for our other goal of saving for a down payment, so there will more likely always be more than this available to us if needed…plus our Roth if things got REALLY bad.]

4. Once a month I am going to drain our checking account down to a safe comfort level for us. This is so that we won’t bounce the few checks we write, but also so we can earn higher interest on that money. On odd months we are going to transfer that money to help pay off our cars and on even months it is going to go into our savings/EF/down payment account. If we stick to our budget, this amount could be about 1200 a month.

5. We are using the $10,000 I got from my dad’s life insurance to cover unexpected education and travel expenses. Looking back over the last 5 months expenses, tuition and other associated educational costs were by far the biggest budget busters. We weren’t really able to plan for these expenses and they were quite significant since I was considered an out of state resident. So, having this money to cover these expenses in the future will be budget a life saver.

This may seem weird to some of you, but the fact that my husband gets paid on the 15th and 30th really messes with the budget. Our budgeting software (Money) tracks the money from the 1st to the 30th…as one would imagine. However, because of this it looks like we have a negative balance for most of the month. Then on the last day of the month we get paid and interest is credited and *whoosh* we have a positive balance (ideally…there were times when that didn’t happen).

It just makes keeping track of where we are and where we should be more difficult. It also creates a different sentiment. When I look at our budget I see, “oh, we’re only $900 in the hole this month” instead of “yay, we are saving an additional $200 this month.” Not a good feeling or motivator. You wouldn’t think that one day would make a difference, but it does. I also want my budget to match our actual accounts, so pretending he got paid on the first would probably be an even bigger hassle.

We put most everything we can on credit cards, and pay it off each month, so we don’t have to worry if we actually have the money in our checking account at the time or not, especially since we have bills due throughout the month.

Anyhow, I’ll make due. It really just involves an added step of subtraction, but it’s still a hassle.
Thanks for letting me rant.

I've heard raves about having a Grocery Binder and I've been meaning to give it a try. The thought of getting it started a month before we left was unappealing, but now we're moved and the binder has begun.

First off I am amazed at how different the prices can be from one store to the next, sometimes a dollar or more!! Seeing that for the first time really enforced the fact that I needed this. We also just subscribed to the paper here so I'm looking forward to getting coupons from that. Those things combined along with planning meals should hopefully dramatically cut our grocery bill!

Right now I'm tracking the store, price and size (to determine price per unit). I've already learned to also keep track of the brand (to use coupons!), but is there anything else I should keep track of???

My husband and I are moving...tomorrow. A couple of weeks ago we went apartment hunting and we made the responsible decision!!

There were a couple of apartments that we liked, but two quickly jumped to the top of the list. One was a luxury apartment that had a loft, had new appliances, walls we could paint, good location, friendly staff, and just all around NICE! I instantly fell in love with it. The downside was that it cost $1195. My husband's housing allowance is $1100, but when he gets promoted in June, it'll go up to $1275 (Housing allowances...just another perk of the Navy). So it would have been possible to live there, but it would have been a stretch.

The other place was much larger (1400 sq. ft vs 1000) and much cheaper ($839). I wasn't crazy about the closets, the kitchen is smaller than we wanted, and for some reason the counters in the bathroom are REALLY low. But after looking at the apartment again, we realized that we could work around all those things so we got that one!

As it is now we’ll be able to use that $250 excess housing allowance to pay for utilities and groceries. It was tempting to move into the nicer place, but spending all that money would have caused more issues than the low counters and small closets would have. Now we can save for our next move…into our own house!

Alright, since you all are more savvy than I am about where to put money I have a question for you. My father passed away a couple of months ago and he had a $10K life insurance policy that I am the beneficiary of. So now I'm stuck with trying to figure out what to do with the money and several options come to mind:

1. Put it toward our only debt (car loans of $11,750 @ 5.99% and $8,790 @3.59%)

2. Save it for school. I'll be starting pharmacy school soon and it can run anywhere from $12K to $250+K a year (4 years).

3. Start a retirement fund. Right now we have a decent amount of savings, but nothing in stocks and no "retirement account." We've been thinking about starting to invest in something other than savings accounts, but we haven't quite pulled the trigger yet.

4. Spend it all! (Hey, that IS an option, but probably not the one I'll choose.)

My MIL said that I should use it for school since that will ultimately help me with retirement. We've also thought about dividing it up among the three options.

What do you guys think is best? Is there something that I haven't thought of??

Hello!

I'm new to this site, but I'm really interested in personal finance and frugal living stuff.

My husband and I are doing alright financially, but there's always room for improvement!

The good:
-No student loans thanks to the Navy, scholarships, and nice parents
-No credit card debit.
-After being in the red for the first 5 months of marriage we are now in the black!
-Emergency Fund(s) with about 4 months worth of expenses.

The bad:
-Two car payments
-Future college payment/loans (I'll be starting pharmacy school soon)
-No retirement accounts

The ugly:
-Thankfully I can't think of anything to put here!!

Anyway, that's a little bit about me. I look forward to learning from you!