MariRDH's Personal Finance Blog

Hooray! We had a fabulous vacation and actually came back with money unspent! So $250 of that money is going into the Emergency Fund.

July was also a 3 paycheck month so I sent a bunch into the EF from that also. Our EF is doing really well and I am hopeful we will achieve our goal of a $10,000 EF by 12/31/09! We just need to average $750/month into it for Sept, Oct, Nov & Dec to make it to that goal.

Over at Marie-Madeline Studio, they are having a contest to win one of their quilts and it is just about the prettiest, put-a-smile-on-your-face quilt I have ever seen! Yup, it is the one shown here. Wouldn't you agree?



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I have been slacking on my posts lately, but I have been trying to update my sidebar regularly, so my EF has been growing which is good. I've been doing horribly with my tracking.

Summer is always the hardest for us since my DH does not work in the summer so only one paycheck. My boss tends to take quite a bit of vacation time in the summer so my check is usually a little anemic as well. So, I love summer but my pocketbook does not!

We have a family reunion vacation planned (and saved!) for August so we are really looking forward to that, especially since it is in the budget and we should not have any problems going over the amount we have put aside.

Well, I had 30 coupons for the Bayer meters this past week (which made them free and my state does not charge tax on these items so absolutely FREE!) and used every last one of them plus gave a few away to the cashiers who rang me up so they could also have $10 Walgreen money to spend.

Including the Ecotrin I bought as a $2 moneymaker, I ended up with about $260 in Register Rewards!!! That is just amazing to me. I have never been a Walgreens shopper but I am pretty sure that this week has converted me! *lol* I will be giving away the meters to family members with diabetes as well as donating a load of them around town so nothing goes to waste.

I put a little money into the Emergency Fund this week:

FT JOB: $5.56
PT JOB: $143.30

Total EF: $4,981

The week of 5/31 has a few nice deals especially if you've been collecting coupons.

$10RR wyb $10 Bayer Diabetes monitor - these boxes should have a full Mail in Rebate inside the box, so you can actually MAKE $10 on this deal. Sweet!

$2RR wyb $2 Ecotrin aspirin - there was a $2/1 coupon in last Sunday's papers so you can MAKE $2 on this product as well.

$2.29 Domino Sugar 5-lb bag - there was a $0.30/1 coupon in last weeks paper to make this $1.99 which is a pretty good deal on sugar around here.

I'll be doing alot of Walgreens shopping this week!

PT Job: $435.51
FT Job: $7.17
Refund Ck: $3.25
Total Added to EF: $445.93

EF Balance @ 5/29/09: $4,832

$501.65 from PT job
+ $5.56 from FT job...so...
$4,386 Total EF Balance

I need to buy our DD a bunch of stuff for summer camp. This will be her first year going away to camp for 3 weeks, so she needs quite a few things. Hopefully next summer will be cheaper because she will have some things from this year. I already bought her 2 new swimsuits, a sun hat and some new summer clothes. I have also been stocking up on sunscreen as we must send that with her and she is very pale so she will need lots. I have a feeling this is going to end up costing way more than I expected.

We took a trip to the Payless Shoes in the mall today. I had acquired 3 coupons for 20% off one purchase and they all expired tomorrow so I did not want them to go to waste. All 3 came from those "catalina" machines that print coupons after you make a purchase at a store. In this case I got 2 from the grocery store and 1 from Walgreens over the last few weeks.

My DD always seems to need new shoes so we put the coupons to good use. She ended up getting a pair of rain boots (she went right out and made sure they were up to snuff as you can see in the picture), a pair of dress shoes and a pair of sandals. These are all things she needs and will get lots of use out of, plus both the rain boots and the dress shoes were already on sale before the 20% off. I think we did really well (even for Payless) since we got 3 pairs of shoes for under $10 each.

Well, those problems my DH was telling me about proved to be costly. We put over $3,000 into the car back in August and this time around it was going to be over $1,000 with no telling how long these repairs would make her last. The poor car has been a trooper and given many years of faithful service. This was my very first car and it has a special place in my heart. A 1999 Saturn SL2 I bought new when our first child was just 6 months old. It has over 170,000 miles on it now and is a real eyesore since someone decided to use it as a canvas for their "keying" while I was in school a couple years ago. I am sort of sad to let her go, but that is what we must do. We're going to place an ad on Craigslist as well as put it out on the street with our contact info and we'll see if we can get a couple hundred dollars for the poor old dear. She does run, and maybe someone who has a mechanical sense will pick her up and make her new.

We went today and got hubby a new 2009 Civic LX at a great price. We pulled $3,000 from the EF as a down payment. of course, our car insurance will be going up as well, but since I used a good amount of this year's tax refund to pad the Freedom Accounts, we have plenty to meet the new obligations.

Time to start up that EF mountain again!

I mistakenly added an extra $10 to the EF last week, but have decided it can stay there. Plus, I added the interest from ING and my local CU accounts.

New EF balance: $6,870

My EF is edging closer to my goal of $10,000. I am fairly sure that once it reaches $8,000 I will start to split my PT job money (that now goes 100% to EF) 50/50 between EF and my $11,000 loan. However, my DH now tells me that he thinks his car is "dying" and will need lots of work. Not what I want to hear right as I am so close to a fully-funded EF!!! If you recall this is exactly what happened last year when we got the $5,000 EF fully funded, and it is the same reason I decided to go for a more robust $10,000 EF this time around. *sigh*

Anyway, on with the good news. Since my last EF update I have put 2 PT checks into the EF plus some extra from the FT job, so my new EF balance is $6,851.

Today I received a big, fat booklet full of coupons from Proctor & Gamble. This is a booklet that was offered a little while ago through their website and their monthly newspaper insert - you had to buy $50 worth of P&G items *before coupons*, mail in the receipts with the items circled and they would send this booklet.

After coupons I paid basically nothing but tax for the products I purchased (mostly Duracell batteries that were on sale at CVS for $3/pack and I used $5/2 CVS coupon and $1/1 manufacturer coupon so paid nothing oop for them). It probably took 6 weeks from the time I mailed my forms but now it is here just in time for K-Mart super doubles this week! Hooray!

I put my paycheck from my PT job into the EF, so it is now just over $6,300. Once it reaches $8,000 I think I will split the PT job income 50/50 between EF and the new $11,000 personal loan. I'd like to have that loan paid off in 12 months if all goes well.

I went down to sign for my loan at the credit union today. I asked to see my credit score since I haven't pulled ours in a couple years, and my Experian score is 813 which is excellent. I expected it to be high 700s or low 800s so no surprises which is a good thing.

I just got done setting up the transfers to the 2 cards this loan will pay off. I sent a little extra to cover interest accrued so we'll see how close I was in figuring the payoff amounts. I can't wait to see zero balances on them both!

On the other hand, I am resetting my ticker to the new loan amount- $11,000 so no more "paid in full" on my debt ticker. Alas, soon it will read "paid in full" again so I am not going to be sad about it. I am just really happy to have a plan and some extra income to make the debt payoffs go faster & faster.

I am heading to the credit union right now to pay my loan in full. This payment will now be rolled into my next debt, but I am still not sure which debt it will be.

I am going to request another personal loan at the CU so that I can consolidate 2 CC's - CC#1 is $6800 at 12.99% and CC#2 is $4200 at 9.17%. (We will still have one CC with a largish balance that is a fixed promo rate of between 3-5% which I am just praying will not change.) The CU's best personal loan rate right now is 7% which I should qualify for with my credit score, so that is better than 9% and 13%, but I still wish it were lower. Then again, beggars can't be choosers, eh?

My DH and I both got "change in terms" letters from Capital One yesterday which made us think it would be wise to move most of our CC debt to a fixed loan. It certainly looks like CC companies plan on raising interest rates into the stratosphere over the next few years. I would think that we are both excellent customers in the eyes of the CCs - have kept a large revolving balance over a period of many years and have been paying slightly more than the minimum each month but I guess that's why we received these notices since they think they've got us pretty well stuck...fortunately they are wrong and we are paying off debt rapidly these days and we do have options.

Hubby's notice says that, as of January 2010, his rate will be jumping from 9.17% to prime plus 14.65% (which would be equal to 17.9% right now, so it basically DOUBLES the current interest rate) and my account (which is at a zero balance and I do not use) says it will be changing to the same terms as of April 2010. Given these drastic changes, it certainly looks like the perfect time to be moving these accounts to a fixed rate loan at the CU.

I am just really relieved that we are in a good financial position right now and are on our way to being CC debt-free.

Thanks to compounding interest (even if it is only 1.85% now) my EF is at $5,830 today.