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Archive for February, 2007

Moving and being responsible

February 26th, 2007 at 03:11 pm

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!

What to do with $10K?

February 21st, 2007 at 11:32 pm

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??

Giving this blog thing a whirl...

February 20th, 2007 at 09:54 pm

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!