March Mini Goal Met

Well, I gave myself a mini goal to meet in March. I wanted to increase my 403b contributions from $800 to $1000. By doing this, my entire raise would be saved for retirement.

And I did it!!!!

I delivered the paper to the district office this week.

Both The Husband and I want to retire comfortably. Actually, it's one of our biggest fears that we won't have enough money to retire on. To that end, we are working on maxing out his 401k and upping my contributions.

Assuming The Husband receives his "usual" raise of 3-4%, once we adjust his contributions accordingly, he should be very near to maxed out. Also, his company increases his 401k contributions by 1% on every year on his workiversary. At that point, his 401k should be maxed out. He is currently contribution 14%. If he gets a 3% raise, we will up his contributions by 2% right away with his work upping his contribution by 1% again in August. He would be contributing 17% of his pretax income to retirement.

I won't be contributing as much; but slowly we will continue to raise my contributions as I receive any raises.

We are really trying to avoid "lifestyle inflation"... well, at least until our retirement plans are maxed out.

The benefits of doing this are twofold. Obviously, the tax deferment and forced retirement savings are one goal. The second benefit is realizing we can live on less, but know that there is more if we need it. It's reassuring to know that we can always stop retirement contributions if needed and have an extra $1500+ of take home pay each month. But it's even more reassuring knowing we don't need to do that and we can continue to contribute!

I was very happy to meet my mini goal. Funnily enough, I think this blog had a lot to do with it. Even though nobody reads this but me, the accountability of putting it out there helped me to follow through!

More Money Than Expected

Well, I finally got my “bonus” check.

And it was more than I expected! That never happens! I estimated my bonus check, which has a onetime 2.5% raise, a $500 classroom supplies reimbursement, and retro pay for our raise that went into effect in January but started in July, to be $2000; and in all honesty, I thought I was estimating a little high. When I finally got the deposit into my checking account, the amount was $3003!!! I am so excited!

I had the money included in my March budget as I knew it was coming. I allocated $50 to savings, $200 to miscellaneous bills, $545 to finish paying our plumbing bill, and the remaining $1205 towards credit card debt. I was able to pay all that and have some extra money left over.

Ideally, I would have been able to send the entire extra thousand dollars to our credit card, but my budget had different ideas. The Boy has decided to play football next year. Registration was yesterday and I did not account for it in my March budget. I tried to think of all our unusual expenses for March here, but I missed that one. And it was expensive! $365 for the season. Ouch. On the plus side, we were able to pay for it with this check without going further into debt or robbing Peter to pay Paul. With the “extra” $1000 I received with this check, we paid $365 to football and the remainder went towards the credit card. This extra money really saved my hide as well as my March budget went. Football was a costly expense to forget. The extra money made it so I didn't have to charge the registration or pull it from different categories in my budget!

Originally, we were expecting to only be able to send $1205 towards the credit card, but we ended up sending a payment of $1835. That’s 50% more than our original plan and that is awesome.

I know it’s only $600 more, but it feels great to send more money than planned, because usually Murphy happens and we aren’t able to send as much as we planned. It’s always hard to remember that baby steps are what actually get you out of debt, not big one-two punches. And I’m in this for the long haul.

I know it’s a stretch, but I’m hoping with this extra money, and our planned payments over the next month, that we might be able to get under the $10000 mark for credit card debt. It’s a long shot, but it motivates me to think that might even be a possibility. I also have a little money, $25, in the jar at home that is allocated towards our credit card and I’m hoping to grow that amount too by the closing date of the credit card. Most of my envelopes carry over, but I’m hoping we will have some grocery money left over in the next couple weeks that can add to the pot. The Husband also told me he has almost 2 ½ hours of overtime coming on his next paycheck. Any amount over his normal pay will also go towards our credit card and our goal to get that number under $10000.

As a teacher, “found money” is very rare. We don’t get bonuses, no overtime, and raises are rare; so when I have the chance to get “extra” money, it’s exciting. It’s fun to budget it and figure out where it can help us the most.

I’m so excited that we are down 2 debts, those two debts totaled $2600. That would have been a great chunk to take out of our credit card debt, but then they would still be hanging over my head. I’m so glad to knock some debts off of our list and start seeing some progress with our debt payoff. It was only today, with my retro check, that we were able to fully payback our plumbing bill.  This money is such a blessing! It’s helping us to get closer and closer to our goal or becoming debt free.

We are working the baby steps. We have an emergency fund that grows ever so slowly each month. We have listed our debts and are starting to knock them out one at a time; 2 down, 4 to go. And we are saving for retirement. We aren’t working on some other long term goals yet, but we’ll get there. I’m so happy that we made progress on 5 of our 6 debts this month. Only one debt went backwards and that won’t happen again. On my next debt update, we will have four remaining debts and they will have all gone down!!!

March Debt Update

It was a decent month for debt payoff. Unfortunately, our credit card bill rose over the course of the month, but our overall debt decreased. That should be the last time we see a rise in our credit card as now it is the debt we our focusing all our energy on. I know we should stop charging on it altogether, but we haven’t. We are doing a better job of allocating some money into all of our budget categories, at the expense of paying down debt, so we shouldn’t have to charge so much in the future.

We were able to clear our first two debts, so that is something.

We did drop a “decade” in our debt. We went from owing over $30000 to dropping into the $20000s, it’s not much, but it’s something, and it’s a start. Obviously, it will be awhile before we do that again, so I’m going to bask in the success while I can.

As of my last update in February, we owed of $30529.97. 

Here are our debts:

            $13274.99        Credit Card at 14.99% - current minimum payment is $286

            $1400               The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1400               The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $12400.25        Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $28475.24.

We paid off $2054.73, or 6.7% of our debt total; that’s even including what we added to our credit card and stupid tax, aka, interest.

We wiped out our first two debts from the last update post, increased the amount of credit card debt we had, but made a little progress on the remaining three debts. Overall, our debt decreased. That is a trend we plan to continue.

I’m super happy we were able to pay back my friend and our plumbing bill from the kitchen remodel. By wiping those out, we have two fewer debts to pay and worry about. Also, every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, we put $50 into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly.

We should see a decrease on our credit card debt by our next debt update. By the time of our next update, I’m hoping to throw nearly $3000 at debt, and more if we have any surplus leftover in our grocery envelopes. Currently, any gas envelope surplus is going to our car repair envelope.  The remaining envelopes; school, kids’ activities, clothes, essentials, and haircare carry over each month. I haven’t decided until how much, but at least a couple of hundred dollars, (HA! Like that will ever happen!).

When planning our April budget, I did try to fund our different budget categories, which has been the problem in the past. I didn’t fund those categories, but the kids still need clothes, hair needs to be cut, and toilet paper needs to be bought. Although by funding these we pay off debt more slowly, it also keeps us from accruing more debt because we have, at least some of, the money we need to buy essentials. Between the months of March and April, we allocated over $1200 to different budget categories, not including food or gas. In all honesty, it’s probably not enough, but at least it’s a start. As we pay off more and more debt, we will be able to fully fund all our envelopes.

I do feel like 6% is a great number, and much better than the increase we had from November to February. If we were able to have 6% gains every month, that would be awesome. But, being realistic here, some months are better than other. The goal right now, is to not increase our debt totals and to keep them going down. My goal is to lower our debt total every month, whether by baby steps or leaps and bounds. 

Mixed Emotions

This was a weird month for debt payoff. Overall, our total debt went down, but the balance on our credit card increased. BLEH!

I’m holding off another week to actually write a debt payoff post with actual numbers because I’m waiting for final numbers on the credit card.

We did payoff a couple of debts, though, and that makes me happy. We completely paid off the debt to our friend who booked the hotels for our trip to Universal Studios in December. (Side note, she took forever to tell me the exact amount. I had to keep bugging her for it.) Also, by the time I write my next debt payoff post, we will have completely paid off our debt to our plumber as well. So far, we have saved $1550 to go towards that bill; we have $550 left to go.

We have also paid back a small amount to each of The Kids. With every paycheck, both mine and The Husband’s, I deposit $50 into savings. I deposit into our savings account with the first paycheck of the month and the once each into The Kids’ accounts with the subsequent paychecks.

Again, I’m happy to have cleared some debts, but unhappy that we still have so much debt. I’m also really bummed that our credit card increased as much as it did. Going forward, once we send the check to pay our plumbing debt, all extra money will start going to pay off our credit card. I’m so happy that we now have 2 fewer debtors to worry about (or will on March 20 when my retro check gets deposited and I can send the last bill) and that we can start to focus all our attention towards our credit card debt.

I’m excited/nervous to see the actual numbers. I’m guessing our credit card increased by around $1000 total, after interest, but I have to wait and see. And I know I will have paid back about $3000 to various other debts, so I’m very impatient to see what my net gain was as far as debt payment goes. It won’t be enough, it never is and never will be until we have achieved a zero balance on our credit card!

Debt sucks! And the worst thing about it is, once you get yourself in debt, it makes it so hard to get out of debt. It’s hard to live life, pay your bills, and pay off debt. But we will get there. It won’t be fast, it won’t be easy, but it will get done.

March Mini Goal

I’m not one for goal setting, per se. I usually set some major financial goals, like get out of debt or save $10000, but I don’t break those down into smaller goals. I just hope that eventually, I will meet those goals.

This month, however, I have a mini-goal I want to meet. This year our union negotiated a small raise. (I do mean small; it doesn’t even keep up with inflation.) I want to adjust my retirement to send my entire raise towards retirement. The raise increased my net paycheck by less than $200, but I want to bump my 403b contribution up by $200. I will then be contributing $1000, pre-tax to my retirement. That is $1000 above and beyond what is taken out of my check by CalSTRS. Even with contributing $1000 a month, I am still miles away from being maxed out in my retirement contributions. Eventually, I’d like to say that I will get there, but I don’t know.

I told The Husband that that is my goal for March; to go down to the District Office, pick up the paper work, fill out said paper work, and then turn it in to our payroll department so that the deductions will start coming out of my check.

I have already had two months’ worth of paychecks with the new amount and I don’t want to get too used to it. Lifestyle inflation is real and I don’t want to become a victim to it. I want to take that money and put it away so that I can retire comfortably. The best thing about investing all this money for our future, is that we ever have a financial hardship, we could always stop contributing if needed. Obviously, the hope is that will never happen, but the reality is that it could.

As long as we can continue to do so, I want to keep upping my 403b contribution amount. The Husband’s 401K should be maxed out in August of this year. At that point, any raises he receives will start to change my 403b contributions. Even upping my contributions to $1000 a month, I am a long way from being maxed out. I am, however, making good progress.

Anyway, that's my goal; to actually switch my contributions by the end of this month, so I have 2 weeks. 2 busy weeks between soccer, baseball, dance, work, selling our house (and looking at new houses), and life, but hopefully I do it!

Here's to goals.

Thankful

For Christmas, The Husband bought me a Steph Curry tee shirt and he attached a post-it note to the tag telling me I also got tickets to one, or more, games of my choosing. Fast forward a couple of months and we have a friend who is a Warriors season ticket holder and he had a game he couldn't go to and knew we wanted to buy a game. He offered to sell them to us and we said yes.

Now, this is a friend since high school who we don't get to see very often any more. Same reasons as everybody else; lives are busy, kids, sports, work, etc. In order to pick up and pay for the tickets we arranged to go to their house for lunch and to catch up. He smoked meat and made potato salad and we brought pasta salad. It was a really nice visit.

At the end of the lunch, I asked them if a check was okay or if they would rather have cash... and they would't let us pay for it. They gave us a pair of tickets for free. It was so kind and really, overly generous, but we appreciate it so much! The season tickets also come with parking so we got that too. He also gave us a tee shirt that was shot out of the tee shirt cannons at the game.

We have debt, we are trying to sell our house, we have kids; it was such a blessing that they gave us the tickets for free! I was feeling very guilty about buying the seats because we couldn't exactly afford them, but I'm not going to lie or sugarcoat it, I really wanted to go. Now, I can attend the game without feeling guilty about spending the money or thinking about what I should have spent the money on.

Thank you, sweet friends, for making this brunette's day!

Tidbits

In my unusual expenses for March, I talked about needing to buy baseball stuff for The Boy and I’m happy to report, I didn’t have to buy nearly as much as I thought I would. His team is going with grey pants, navy socks, and a navy belt; all things he had from his team last year. I was, and am, so happy! He also needed a new bat as he continues to grow like a week. The Husband redeemed some Amazon gift cards and we only had to pay a little more than $3 out of pocket for his bat. The total price was just over $100. Because of the gift cards, I feel like it was free. I know it wasn’t but, psychologically, it feels like it was. The only thing we had to pay for out of pocket were his baseball cleats. We bought those yesterday at a cost of $59.39 after tax, not too bad. I budgeted money for “kids activities” in our next pay period, so I charged the cleats, but will pay that amount when The Husband’s paycheck comes through on Friday.

I’m also so happy that it looks like we are going to stay within our grocery budget this pay period; we haven’t done that in quite a while. As of right now, we have $6 of grocery money left. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but having anything left means we stayed in budget. Yesterday, we went grocery shopping, after first meal planning, and bought everything we will need for the rest of the week. We bought fruits and vegetables, several boxes of tea, and the ingredients we needed to complete our meals. And I still had $6 left over! I also started buying the food for the family party we are hosting at the end of the month. I bought a bag of meatballs and some parmesan cheese. I still have a lot to buy, but I padded my grocery money this month to compensate, so I should be good!

I took my kids down to Universal Studios this weekend, (we have annual passes and we had a $100 hotel credit). The exciting tidbit here, is that even with driving all the way down to Universal Studios and back, I will also stay within my gas budget for this pay period. I actually charged my gas, but as soon as I got home, I took that amount of money out of my gas envelope and plopped it in a jar with a post-it note to remind me it goes directly towards the credit card. I still have $40 in the gas envelope. I will need to fill up this week as my tank is nearly empty so I won’t carry any gas money over, however, The Husband might. For the foreseeable future, leftover gas money will go into the “car repair” envelope until it’s up to about $1000, then I will reassess and decide if I want to change how I allocate the leftover gas money.

Nothing too earth shattering here, but a few things I wanted to blog about since major victories are made up of minor victories.