My Email Was Hacked

Oh My Gosh! What a pain this was!

One morning I woke up to a couple emails saying "your account password has been changed". I didn't think anything of it and assumed they were spam. You know, the emails where they get you to click the link and then you really are being hacked?

A couple of days later, I got a similar email from another account. I deleted it as spam. Then about three days later, I got another one, but this is from an account I actually use and had just changed my password about a week prior.

I brought it to The Husband and we got it sorted it out. All secure, new password, no problems.

Then, on the following Sunday, I ordered some stuff from Amazon. Everything went through, no problems. About an hour later, I wanted to check something on my Amazon purchase and I was locked out. My account said I requested 2-factor authentication, which I didn't. I was effectively locked out!

When we called customer service, they proceed to tell me that I requested this and they sent the email to fix the problem. But I wasn't getting any emails. At this point we realized my email had been hacked.

Luckily, Amazon froze my account so no purchases could be made on the card on file and I had to start the very tedious process of changing all my passwords! And they all had to be different! Before this, I was one of those people who only used about 2 or 3 passwords for everything! Once my email was hacked, they just started trying that email combination with that password on "every" shopping website: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Banks, etc.

Luckily for me, with the exception of Amazon, I don't keep credit cards on file with any shopping sites. Otherwise, I imagine, I would have had big charges from Target and Walmart that I didn't make!

I was slowly able to get everything cleared up and all my passwords changed. Although Amazon was very quick to lock my account, they were the most difficult to deal with to get everything cleared up. Eventually, 4 days after we realized for sure my email was hacked, we were able to get everything straightened out. Thankfully, nothing was charged on any of my accounts.

This whole experience sucked, quite honestly! However, the timing of it was very helpful! Being on shelter-in-place gave me the time I needed to sort this whole mess out!

*This has been in my draft folder for 6 weeks. That's when this actually happened. I have been monitoring our credit card and any online accounts very closely and still haven't seen any unknown charges!

Stimulus Check

Like most tax paying Americans, The Husband and I received a stimulus check from the government because of the Corona virus. According to "their" calculations, we made too much money to get the full amount.

All told, we got almost $2400. The Husband and I each got almost $700 and we got $500 per child we have.

Then we had to decide what to do with the money. We decided we had four options:
     Option 1: Transfer the money into savings and sit on it.
     Option 2: Send the entire amount towards our credit card debt.
     Option 3: Hybrid of the above options: X percentage towards debt and X percentage into savings.
     Option 4: Take it all out as cash and have it available at home.

We actually went with Option 4. Although we still have debt, we were very lucky during the entire Shelter-In-Place to not have to worry about money. Both The Husband and I were able to work from home and pull full paychecks. For us, the stimulus money was truly a bonus.

We pulled out the entire stimulus check amount and held it available to us in cash. Banks were closing and we didn't know what was going to happen and we thought it was really important to have some cash on hand.

We still don't have a definite goal for the money, but we have it if we need it. We have decided to use it like a little cash safety net.

I know many people were not as fortunate as us and needed to use that money for food, rent, car payments, electricity, etc. so we don't want to take that money for granted and fritter it away on new clothes or random crap.

We want to make sure and keep that money around as a rainy day fund.

Because rain will come and it's better to walk in it with an umbrella if you can!

How did you use your stimulus check?

A Month?

How has it been a whole month since I posted anything?

You would think because we are sheltering-in-place that I would have plenty of time, but that really has not been the case.

I have several post ideas and drafts to get ready, but time has not allowed for it.

In the last month, I have: finished up school, helped my kids' wrap up their school year, cooked and cleaned until I felt like I couldn't cook or clean anymore, paid bills, ferried kids' around as necessary (including a quick trip to Oregon and home again the next day), discovered a leak in our roof, gotten said leak repaired, done laundry, more laundry, and yet more laundry, and with all that, there hasn't been much time to blog.

Now that my summer break has started, I'm hoping I can blog a little more consistently.

I've been so busy that I only started catching up on all the blogs I read this week. I am weeks and months behind on reading success stories of all my blogger "friends" who have paid off debt and made progress.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop on to say I missed blogging and to give a quick update!

Vacation

Before we were quarantined due to the Corona virus, we bought airline tickets for our vacation. We planned to fly into Ohio and rent a car and road trip through several states. We were going to go into Pennsylvania, New York, into Toronto, Canada, and back down into Michigan, through Indiana, and lastly fly home from Chicago, Illinois.

That plan is in limbo now.

If we had only waited 2 weeks to buy our tickets, we would have been fine; but hindsight is 20/20.

We were due to leave at the tail end of June and return home mid-July. Now we don’t know where we stand.

We are hopeful that if we are unable to travel because of the Corona virus, that the airline will give us vouchers to travel at a later date. We would then “postpone” our trip and hopefully do the same vacation the following summer, or barring that, travel somewhere for spring break next year.

The unknown is the most difficult part for me. We don’t know what the future will hold; we don’t know when we will be allowed to travel; we don’t know if vouchers will be awarded; we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.

I’m hopeful that we won’t lose all of our money and will be able to salvage something for our family vacation, but I’m afraid we’ll lose it all.

The most difficult part of all of this for me is that if we had only waited 2 more weeks, we wouldn’t have to worry about losing our money now! That could be $3000 we never get back! I’m hopeful, but not overly optimistic, that we will be able to travel or at least get vouchers for our trip!

May 2020 Goal Check-In Part Two

Welcome back to installment 2 of May's 20 for 2020 update. In my last post I reviewed the first 10 goals of our 20 for 2020. Here’s how we are doing on the last 10…

1.       Open, and use, a Health Savings Account for The Husband’s braces.

Pass: This is done! The Husband’s company loads all the money at once, even though it is only taken from his paycheck each pay period. The braces are paid for in full (we got a 5% discount for paying all at once) and The Husband loaded a little extra money to pay for doctor’s appointments throughout the year!

2.       Increase my 403b contributions by $100 sometime during the year.

No progress here: Still no action on this goal.  Hopefully sometime in the next 10 months.

3.       Increase The Husband’s 401k contributions by 3% by the end of the year.

On-track: The Husband earned a 3% raise this year! Yeah! We have already designated 2% to his 401k and when his work-aversary comes around in August, another 1% will automatically be added! He is very close to maxing out his 401k contributions. Next year should do it and then we can start upping my contributions!

4.       Have one billing period where I don’t charge ANYTHING (except autopays) on my credit card.

Fail: Charged way more than I even wanted to last month and already have several charges on the statement for April. Again, with “sheltering-in-place” we don’t have many options but to purchase online!

5.       Have a successful “No-Spend” September.

No progress here: It’s not September…

6.       I want to drink the loose-leaf tea I already have and not buy anymore until I am only down to 3 flavors.

Back-On-Track: I bought loose leaf tea once and have since been drinking what we have. I also “shopped” my mom’s cupboards as she is staying with us and have been drinking some of her flavors, but I didn’t buy any more.

7.       Add all our “subscriptions” to our monthly budget.

Pass: All done! Going forward, all our “subscriptions” or monthly recurring charges are an item line on our monthly budget sheet.

8.       Don’t spend any money, out of pocket, on supplies for my classroom. (This does not include lessons I might choose to purchase.)

On-track-ish: This one suddenly got much easier! You don’t need to supply your classroom if you aren’t in it!

9.       Keep current (monthly) with what I owe The Kids.

Pass:  The Kids did some more work for us over the last month and I made sure I tallied up what they were owed and paid them all out! We broke it down into savings, spending, and tithing and I am now current with what I owe them!

10.   Check in on my financial goals monthly.

Pass: Same as last month: so far so good. It’s so easy to be vigilant at the beginning of the year. The real test will be if we are checking in on our goals next October!

Overall, I’d give myself a B. I am “passing” on 10 of 20 goals, on track with 4 more, “failing” with only 4 of our goals, and “on hold” or “not yet started” another 2. I’m feeling pretty good about our start. We still have a long way to go but are making pretty good progress.

Overall my successes are in mostly the same categories and so are my failures… Must do better. Must put in more effort!

I can’t stress enough the fact that if we are successful with these goals, we will definitely be creating a firmer financial foundation!

May 2020 Goals Check-In Part 1

One of my intentions for this year is to check in on my 2020 financial goals monthly! Although I am horrible at finances, one thing I have learned over our last 10 years of debt, is that when I pay better attention to our finances, our finances do better...

I still believe that if these 20 financial goals are met, we will drastically improve our financial situation by the end of the year! In all honesty, even if only some of these goals are met, we will be in a better place than we were when this year started. Please wish us luck as we try to do better and be better!

1.       Get credit card debt below $10000. This has been a monkey on my back for way too long!

Pass-ish: We are making progress. I would say we are on-track-ish. I don’t know if we will make it to under $10000 by the end of the year, but we did decrease our debt. It’s going in the right direction. The last couple months haven’t seen much progress, but we haven’t increased our debt, so I will call it a win.

2.       Track our family spending every other month of the year.

Fail: Quite honestly, life threw us several curve balls in the last month so tracking my spending has been the least of my worries. Exactly the same as last month! With quarantining and social distancing, tracking our spending has fallen WAY down the list! In one sense, we aren’t spending much money, but in another, very real sense, online shopping is no joke! Also, our food budget has ballooned! We have nothing to do all day but sit home and eat or try new recipes! I should be tracking this so I know how much we are spending on food, but I’m afraid to look!

3.       Increase contributions to envelopes and go “cash only”.

Fail-ish: We have actually met 50% of this goal, but because 50% is an F, I’m giving us a failing grade overall. We did increase envelope contributions, but we did not go cash only. We are still not cash only, but we are paying more in cash and charging less. Working on it… Same as last month. However, again, quarantining has lent itself to online shopping by necessity. Groceries and gas we are still using cash, but right now everything else is credit.

4.       Increase Christmas savings.

Pass: We increased from $200 per month to $300 per month. I still don’t know if it’s enough, but it is an increase of 50%. We have already bought several Christmas presents and I’m happy the money was there to use. So far we are on track but it’s early times yet. Yes! Same! We are close to half way done with our Christmas shopping and still have some money in the envelope. I’m definitely calling this a win! The real test will be when it gets closer to October and November and we see where we are!

5.       Church Tithing. My goal is to donate $300 EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

Pass: So far so good. We donated $300 in January, February, and March, and April. We have already budgeted the money for the rest of the year, but we need to follow through, which is not always our strong suit. Also, because of social distancing and “shelter-in-place” rules, this could become more difficult because we aren’t actually attending church. I didn’t want to set up online giving because of some recent issues I’ve had (more to come on this in a few days/weeks) so I called my church and asked if I could mail them a check. The answer was yes. I mailed a check for our April tithing last week and will do the same for May in a couple of weeks. (It’s very important to us to remember to give even amidst all this struggle because the church still has bills that need to be paid, salaries that need to be paid, and community services that they want to provide.)

6.       Pay off car!

PASS: I’m very pleased to say that we paid our last car payment and already received our pink slip! This goal is fully completed and met!

7.       Once The Husband’s car is paid off, put $345 payment into savings each month towards a new car fund.

Pass:  So far, so good. In the couple of months since our last payment, I have made sure to deposit the “car payment” into our savings. We are seeing good growth in our savings account!

8.       Save $5000 above and beyond my “normal savings” or any car savings.

On-track: After March, we had already deposited $3886 towards our goal of $5000. In April, we deposited an additional $558 (above and beyond our regular savings and not including our “car payment”. (We deposited our federal tax refund of $108 and $450 from the $5000 Savings Challenge.) That comes to a total of $4444 towards our goal. We are 88% of the way to our goal only 4 months through the year! Feeling confident about this one!

9.       Meal plan 8 months out of the year.

On-track: Because our goal is 8 months, I will still say we are on-track. Covid 19 has thrown our whole life into disarray so we did not meal plan for April or really for May, however, we talk and plan our meals the night before. We have a ton of food and more time than we normally do so the need to plan our meals on a calendar for the month has gone away.

10.   Assuming I can meet all of the above goals, my last goal would be to increase my savings rate.

Pass: I would actually give us a pass on this because we are putting our regular amount in savings plus working on completing a $5000 challenge, plus we put half of our unexpected money towards savings. Thinking good thoughts on this one!

As I think these posts are only going to get longer as the year progresses, I have decided to split them up into two posts. I will publish them during the same week but even half of them are a lot to get through!

What We've Done With Money During Quarantine

In theory, this time of quarantine and social distancing should be cheap… but for some reason it hasn’t been. The Kids aren’t getting their hair cut or nails done, we aren’t going to the movies or out to eat, there are no new books in the house, but we are still finding plenty of creative ways to spend money.

We have shopped online for a lot of stuff we don’t need. We have bought paint for The Girl, a ton of baseball equipment for The Boy, new running shoes for The Husband and me, and myriad other unnecessary things. (Although, I don’t consider running shoes unnecessary.)

Going forward, I’m hoping to not spend too much money online. I don’t know what else we could possible buy, however, I’m sure we will find a way.

One of our local stores has had to shut their doors as they are not an essential business, but the owner has been doing “live” sales on Facebook. I have bought from her both times she has done a “live”. I want to support local businesses and have shops I can go back to once the quarantine is over. 

Between her two “live” sales, I spent just over $200. Obviously, I can’t keep this pace up, but I want her to know I support her!

I don’t see us having too much to buy over the next few weeks, so I’m hoping we will not add anymore to our debt. Also, I won’t need all the money I budgeted for some of our different budget categories in the coming weeks. I’m hoping that “extra” money can go towards our credit card bill.

Our credit card bill is big already this month… I’m afraid the balance might increase so any extra money that can go towards debt will be a boon.