No Spend Beginnings





Photocredit: M. Carlson

Yesterday 01/01/2007 was a no spend day for me. Lift a glass to a year full of No Spenders for those of us who practice at it!

Day 364: Updating 2006 $20 Challenge Final Tally a/k/a Stuffing Piggy




I just now got Piggy down off his shelf and counted his contents in order to get ready for bank deposit.

Somehow in the mad rush up to Christmas
?somebody? tended the sign and stuffed more money in there than I knew about.

$20 CHALLENGE
30.01 balance
+3.11 extra stuffing
_____
33.12 Dec 06 MTD


Which makes the 2006 grand total $126.11 instead of just $123.00.

Adding then the 1.71 that we started off with yesterday brings the Cummulative Total to $127.82!

YEAH PIGGY STUFFERS!!

The Doorman Cameth!



The door man came (with his girlfriend no less on a holiday???) and measured all our openings for new fittings. The doors in this house are not a single one a standard size that you can pick off the showroom floor.

He'll go home, enter his figures into the computer and we'll go back maybe tomorrow to the big box lumber outlet and pick out what they say they can make work in our weird sized openings and can squeeze out of our door savings account.

I'm very excited about getting some doors on two of the closets and a door on one of the bedrooms and two new exterior doors and glass storm doors installed (what will it be like to live here w/o the winds blowing thru the cracks????). Some of the other doors may have to wait. We'll see!

Warm Cockles and Budgeting Done Right



Here's hoping there's a chicken (or TWO) in every one of your pots for 2007!!

After this post I'm off to make a big pot of chicken soup for the hungry hordes who are bound to come out of hibernating some time this year! In the crockpot is the traditional New Year's hoppinjohn (blackeyed peas & ham).

Ta-da, just now checking the mail from the last few days and here's the tag notice for Hubster's car. Happy I am that the money is sitting there all nice and pretty in savings waiting to pay the little sucker!!! Anticipatory budgeting does work if you do it right!! Yeah Frugalis Family!

Just updated the mortgage information over to the right! Oh how I wish that bugger was gone! Good to know that zillow.com states my equity is inching upwards quite nicely! Warms the cockles of my heart!!

Ummmm...I'm with disneysteve, moving and selling is quite the chore. That's why if The Hubster and I do decide to downsize it'll be one last hooray right about the time he retires. Getting his Dad's house ready to sell was a MAJOR chore and still we have no buyer in sight! I'd hate to be trying it when he's pushing 70's or beyond! Makes me tired just thinking about it!

My mother just recently built a home and she is still a year and a half later disconcerted when trying to find her stuff to bake and get ready for the holidays!!

NEW always sounds fun and exciting...but a wise person counts all the costs, eh? Seems more and more I turn things down because of the effort it would require.

How about you?

Day 365:Cinching the Ol' Belt Up A Bit Tighter!



Photocredit: hooodlumm

I like the countdown idea - let's go backwards...it is day 365 here! And off we go counting 'er down! Tomorrow is day 364.

Have been out and walked down to the creek bridge this morning already and come back to read that someone else has beaten me to it. Ima we are way too much alike!! But, I love a good competition and will use you as a carrot dangling in front of my face. Like I said on the forum...I keep thinking "What Would Ima Do?" The air is cold and brisk here this morning - fine day to step it off so you can hurry back to the house for a cup of hot joe!

Checking the Fidelity statement this a.m. we are up over $6,000.00 this year w/o any additional contributions from us, so that was good news. Two of our better performers were FSIIX up 26.15% and FSUTX up 30.08%.

I haven't set any specific goals yet for 2007 - am still mulling it all over! I've been busy trying to cross most of the '06 goals off that I haven't really spent much time thinking about '07 YET!

I like to do things incrementally (either percentage or $$$$ wise)- so t'will be helpful to get all of 2006 reports in and then take off from there!

You guys are all so very inspiring to me!!

I do know one thing that I'm working on for 2007 is to pay an additional $60.00 monthly from OUR family budget on the mortgage this year. That's the projected figure that Countrywide's new little calculator tells me I need to add to each payment in order to pay it off by retirement schedule! Sooooo, there is that.

However, I just increased The Hubster's 2007 401-K contributions to 10% and the first paycheck came in last week with that out of it - so it's smaller and things have already been scrunched up tight!

We've been pretty successful in living only on our own current income during 2006 and staying out of the inheritance money and the emergency fund and I would surely like to continue doing it that way!

???Where??? to come up with the additional $60 is going to be interesting!!

At any rate I was able to do it with the payment just posted 12/29 (hehee!! extra interest deduction captured) for January so we're good until February. I'm working on the final draft of January's budget right now (which will include February's house payment) so I'm just going to MAKE IT HAPPEN!

What won't happen is - I will not decrease our Roth IRA contributions to make this happen. The investments have a possibility of growing to MORE THAN we put in. While the mortgage payoff is a definite set return (6.75%), but the house payments are still certainly doable even w/the possibility of an economic down-turn or even into our retirement if it doesn't get paid off before then.

Yesterday was a no spend day for me! I actually made it to stay awake til midnight last night!! That was a total fluke and unplanned. Usually I'm beat and hit the sack around 9:30 or so only to rise at 2 or 3 in the morning to read under the cubbies!

Pedal to the Metal



Okay to start gunning on the 2007 $20 Challenge, I'm adding $1.71 that is sitting here in my coaster in change!

$20 CHALLENGE

$00.00 balance
+01.71 gunning it
______
$1.71 January '07 MTD


2007 Total $1.71
L.L.Frugalis' Cummulative Total $124.71

Bring it on Ima!!

How was your 2006 financially speaking?

(Following is my answer to the above forum question - thought I'd post the answer here as well so maybe I can keep up w/what's been going on in our financial life! Hopefully we'll be golden in 2007!!)




Great! But could be better!

Got FIL house empty and ready to sell, painted, roof repaired, carpeted and listed w/RE agent. Not so good in that much of this has cost us money that is still out - house has yet to sell. Estate has yet to settle and keeps having to borrow from us to keep the utilities on (cold weather winters).

Upped The Hubster's 401-K contributions to 10%. Currently 60% vested (he's worked at the same place 40 years come January 2nd, but a buyout a couple of years ago set him back to zero on this vesting point).

Have automatic deductions set up for his/her Roth IRA's. Not maxed this year. We had some big house remodel expenses on our home that were near necessities AND trying to keep lots of cash available until the estate settles - all of which kept the IRA's from being maxed this year.

The Traditional Rollover IRA from the above said buyout (profit-sharing plan monies) is up 16.45% for the year. And we are getting ready to reallocate some of it into one of those Targeted Date funds. Set up the Fidelity Income Management Account during November which I'm really looking forward to watching it purr along come 2007.

First meeting with financial planner tells me that we are doing all the right things to get ourselves ready for retirement in 6 years. An A++ from the CFP certainly was a high spot for the year.

Best for me was these last two points: 1)that we stayed on budget all year with only slight variations from our monthly target goals - all of which adjustments were able to be made by underspending in other categories - so each month the budget balanced!!! A big thanks goes to Jesse Mecham at youneedabudget.com for his zero balance budgeting software which made this doable by being able to see it all at a glance. I was rather anal about this as I didn't want to see any of my categories off target and having to be shorted on the next month!

In reality w/just one of us working our margins are so small that any variation from the plan caused a nasty ripple effect and the software makes it visible! In mid-2006 a $75.00 charge on the CC that was forgotten to be entered into the checkbook whould have made a nasty lil' dent in the next month's spending and had to reach }}}}}}shudder{{{{{{ into the carefully hoarded EF to make it work - so that it became an incentive to make sure it didn't happen again!

2) Continued to use our credit cards as aids only and not a crutch. Anything that was charged was fully paid off on every single billing cycle!

Bad points: I have had the cash crunch come out of my wallet - if money was tight it was MY spending and the grocery budget was often too TOO tight this past year. Christmas was also rather scimpy for my tastes. Need to up those three areas in the budget. Hopefully the year 2007 will see a little loosening in those areas as some of our biggest expenditures are now out of the way (house painting, house windows and the already saved for doors that are coming in the next little while).

On the horizons for a targeted savings goal is putting in new carpet at perhaps the end of 2007/beginning of 2008. We think we may downsize in a few years, but I refuse to fix my house up at the last minute to sell for someone else to enjoy all the new goodies. We're doing stuff now - enjoying it and hoping that it will enhance the sellability of our house in the future.

2007? Bring it on!!!