Grrls (Lux's Personal) Just Wanna Have E-funds!

$1,391.56 02/18/09
$2,662.81 08/15/09
$3,044.52 08/24/09
$3,194.01 09/22/09
$3,346.03 09/26/09
$3,361.50 10/07/09
$3,408.01 11/07/09
$3,450.18 11/08/09 new balance

Grrls (Lux's Personal) Just Wanna Have E-funds!-w/Fidelity

$1,391.56 02/18/09
$2,662.81 08/15/09
$3,044.52 08/24/09
$3,194.01 09/22/09
$3,346.03 09/26/09
+0,000.47 interest 09/30/09
+0,015.00 autodraft 10/01/09
_________
$3,361.50 New Balance-updated 10/07/09

Worked Thursday to get Hubster's 401-K rolled over to Fidelity. Tried to do it online by ourselves. No luck. Tried to do it online while talking to a Fidelity rep. No luck. Forced to go the old fashioned paper route mainly because of where the 401-K is being held. Crossing fingers. That mail went out Thursday.

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On Friday we sold a big old heavy iron smoker/BBQer for $25 using Craigslist. It would not fit into our plans to downsize some time in the future. It was rather gigantic and old, starting to have some rust out issues and I had gotten it for FREE years ago by being a willing Sanford & Son type hauler-away of 'almost' any good junq'ue. We used it for many years when we were hosting church picnics, but that need has fallen away as the church we belong to now is way far away. Haven't decided what to do with this $25 yet, probably divide it up between my various goals. Will make a followup post when I decide. Any condo or smaller house we may buy in the future? Ehhh, we can either get by without a cooker or we'll get a nicer propane one or maybe a nice George Foreman electric grill on a stand.
We're not that big of entertainers any more and we don't grill out often anyway. Yes, I probably could've bought some heat-resistant paint and painted this and got a bit more out of it, but the sides are rusting out, and most importantly I wanted it GONE! One less thing to move if we decide to later.
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We are waiting until the September interest posts in our Money Market account to move some of it to Emigrant Direct where it will earn a bit more money. Leaving just enough in MM to cover a true CASH emergency. Haven't decided yet whether to stash the money moved in $1000 incremental CDs ladder, but that's the likely way it'll go. This is our Household Emergency Fund.

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Today I deposited $100 in my pre-Roth account aka Grrls Just Wanna Have E-Funds, on my way to getting as much of next year's Roth IRA contributions together as I can. I did this by depositing a check by mail - this is the first time I've made a long-distance deposit of a check into Fidelity. Usually I just deposit locally and then go online and move it. We'll see how it goes. I always feel sketchy about trusting the mail! That envelope went out this a.m.

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While I was out I cleaned out my wallet at the bank and deposited $52.02. This & the $100 will go towards my $20 Challenge and in the Grrls Just Wanna Have E-Funds because that's where it temporarily resides. I came home from the bank and moved it to Fidelity.

$106.17 balance
+152.02 check & wallet cleanout
_______
$258.19 Sep MTD

2009 Total = $962.28
Cumulative Total $2016.04

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Passed one without stopping but did stop at another garage sale - bought nothing! Yeah me! So today likely to be a No Spend Day as I don't intend on going back out.

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Early this a.m. FrugalSon and I hit the walking trail down by the river for a nice 30 minute walk before he had to report to work. Nice and quiet in the park at that time of the morning. Noticed one of our local hospital has installed free bicycles to be loaned out with a CC deposit in case the bikes aren't returned w/i 24 hours. Nicely done with a self-serve set-up! Might have to try that some time.

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I'm working on painting crown molding trim's last coat today before it's ready for Hubster's installation portion of the program. This is for the living room.



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Rehabbing an old deco 'bow front' chest of drawers that had veneer chipping off. I went to my small town art supply place and they were out of the 'goop' I needed to fill in those chipped out places w/o replacing the veneer. The lady there was nice enough (I am a GOOD regular customer) to loan me her giant tub of it. Came home and filled that stuff in. Chore for this afternoon is to sand it down and start painting it.



I'm also going to do my girlhood bed. I already fixed the veneer on it once with a costly $250 veneer job years and years ago and then all my kids used the bed and the veneer on it is now chipped again as well. So later today I'm planning on hauling it out and filling the chunks in on it as well. And then I'll be painting both these pieces out in a low-gloss black. More AFTER pics to follow later.

Yes, I checked and...by 3:00 p.m. yesterday the money had cleared out of our Money Market Account (more still needs to be removed from this low interest paying thing! GAAA!) and made it's way to the mortgage company. When I checked there late yesterday afternoon it hadn't shown up there, but I did take the time to go in and manually stop the automatic drafts that we'd been using for our house payments (this was Bank of America after all and we've all heard the horror stories! I don't need some nasty surprise EXTRA payment deducted from checking that I have to try and retrieve.). I printed out our bank's confirmation e-mail of the wire and put it in the folder.

Then, of course, I checked again before our celebratory dinner last night and yep, the balance did say ZERO!!! (AND, I printed out the completed amortization schedule to put in the file as well.)

Mortgage BURNED!

Woooooooooooooooooooooo-doggies!! The other side of the finish line looks good too!

Then before bed last night I went on Fidelity where we have most of our retirement monies stored and did one of their 'Retirement Assessment' tests and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, I will outlive my money. IF I'm careful!

This is to reassure those of you who are getting a later start. You do need to start and keep your nose to the grindstone. Catching up is DIFFICULT, but can be done if you are disciplined!

If I can do it, so can you!

You just have to get in the race! And stay there!

P.S. Today is a No Spend Day! Added $100 to the $20 Challenge and $100 to the Grrls Just Wanna Have E-Funds!

P.P.S. Guess what? They didn't even write and say Thanks For Paying Along! What's up with that?

Grrls (Lux's Personal)Just Wanna Have E-funds!-w/Fidelity (not to be confused with the household budget's Emergency Fund)

$1,391.56 02/18/09
$2,662.81 08/15/09
$3,044.52 08/24/09
+0,000.49 08/31/09 Aug-interest
+0,015.00 09/01/09 Sep-Monthly autodraft
+0,034.00 09/15/09 extra deposit
__________________
$3,094.01 updated 9/15/09

I'm going to start funneling extra $$'s into here towards my 2010 IRA contributions. Since I can put in $6000 a year as I'm over 50, I have only 2905.99 to go for 2010's contributions.

And, in my Roth IRA I added two positions - PYEMX @ $13.25 and FAMRX @$11.38.

Today I'm updating the left side-bar as I've got a few minutes.

Grrls (Lux's Personal)Just Wanna Have E-funds!-w/Fidelity

On 2/18/09 this fund was sitting at $1,391.56. Since then I've been putting $10 a month in it, adding the itty bit of interest in it as well. Some of you may remember I got a nice big gift from parental units and a bit of that went in here as well, some of that went into my Roth IRA - some to municipal bonds, etc. Anyway I've also been hitting the Grrls Fun e-Fund with some portion of my junque' booth sales. Today it sits at $2,662.81 updated 8/15/09.

This is my own private emergency fund that is seperate from our household e-fund.

I added $1000 of the $1300 truck accident money...

(see back story: http://luxliving.savingadvice.com/2009/01/04/she-did-a-costl...)

...to my Grrls Just Wanna Have E-Funds account. It had been sitting in my checkbook earning zip, so moving it to there at least temporarily. I have some other household plans for it, but meanwhile it should be working and earning some interest. The $300 went else-where.

Slave on Money, Slave On!!


GRRLS JUST WANNA HAVE E-FUNDS
$0386.50 1/20/09 balance
- 5.00 contribution to the Playing For Change Foundation 1/21
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$0381.50
+0000.06 interest income 1/31
+0010.00 Feb Savings Allocation 2/1
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$0391.56
+1000.00 Truck accident - temp. parking 2/18
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$1391.56

See 1/22/09 blog post for more about this worthwhile organization.

http://luxliving.savingadvice.com/2009/01/22/crash-boom-life...

For the best explanation of wanting your money out slaving & earning children $'s & grandchildren $$'s & great-grandchildren $$$'s for you, take the time to read George Clason's "The Richest Man in Babylon".

This particular account is not the most aggressive that I have for interest bearing but is the only one I have that has a checking feature built in and I want these particular dollars quickly accessible.

I started this account in April of 2008 as an experiment on Fidelity's Smart-Cash balancing feature (so I'd be familiar with it when we begin withdrawals in our retirement accounts) and this $5 check to this foundation was the first time I've written a check. So far it hasn't cleared and I'm uncertain now if the $1000 deposit hasn't defaulted my rebalancing setpoints that I originally set.

I think I set them relatively low (maybe $250??) as I don't keep a lot of cash in my other local checking account and didn't want the auto-leveling feature of an expenditure to take my local checking to the point of an overdraft.

Adding to the $20 Challenge:

$20 CHALLENGE
$000.75 Feb balance
+002.25 wallet cleanout
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$003.00 Feb MTD

2009 Challenge Total $24.15
Cumulative Challenge Total $1026.93

$386.50 updated 1/6/09

This is NOT the same as our Household Emergency Fund. We've got one of those fully funded with a years pre-tax salary already. This is my personal e-fund.

Target for this goal is $1,400.00, to be adjusted yearly on or near the anniversary of my husband's birth.

$1400.00 target
-0386.50 01/06/09
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$1013.50 needed to goal completion

This is being built by an automated draft of $10.00 a month. Currently it's earning about .40 a month in interest.

The backstory is here:

http://luxliving.savingadvice.com/2008/08/16/adding-to-my-ho...

Do YOU have a personal e-fund? Tell us about it!

I added $2.00 to the Retirement Houseboat ticker over on the left! New total $177.00.

Also new on the left is the Grrls (Lux's Personal) Just Wanna Have E-funds! ticker. See below for a more detailed explanation. New balance $335.00.

Spent $11.05 yesterday on new black t-towels and those multi-color candles for the Frugalis Wine Cellar. What wine cellar would be complete without a Chianti bottle with a candle and all it's drippings hanging about? Will post a pic of it when we drink the Chianti and get a decent amount of wax built up! Who knows maybe it was a 70's thing?

I also signed myself up for a FREE wine-making course in the next couple of weeks. I want to see if I really would enjoy a full on wine-making setup before expending dollars on the equipment. The wine I've made in the past was done in my kitchen w/gallon pickle jars, plastic wrap & rubber bands.

Currently brewing is a bottle of homemade rootbeer. I'll let you know how it turns out. The extract I had is kind of old so it may be a waste of sugar water.

I did finally get pictures up the other day of the wine cellar before we got the floor mopped (this area gets run-off from the hole in the wall when it rains heavily):


http://luxliving.savingadvice.com/2008/08/08/dressing-the-...

Scroll down for the pictures of my hole in the wall!

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I also added a new ticker as well called "Grrls Just Wanna Have E-Funds!"

This is a checking account I recently started at Fidelity and it didn't really have a purpose. I've been married for 25 years so I don't really think I'm gonna have to fend for myself as in a divorce situation but I figured I'd take the going apartment rental rate here as a good figure to start with. Small studios are renting here for $450 a month. Add another 900 to cover first and last months rent and a 50 to round it up gave me the 1400 figure to start with.

Hubster and I have our combined years worth of emergency fund at another bank. I doubt he's running off* anytime soon (likely NEVER) leaving me stranded but I needed - in my minds eye - to give this account a goal. That's it. It's my personal emergency fund. If I never need it so much the better. (Plenty of women have never seen it* coming!)

I plan to update and adjust the rental rate figure each year on Hubster's birthday which is sometime soon this month.

I have this checking account set-up with an autodraft addition of $10 a month out of my hometown personal checking. Mainly

I started it because I wanted to see how Fidelity's SmartCash checking accounts work before we eventually use them to withdraw from our retirement funds. I've had the account three or four months now and have never written a check on it.

Somehow it has an auto-leveling feature that pulls from one account to keep the balance at a minimum that you set. Checks were free, but it currently pays only 1.49% interest a month. Ehhhhh & Bleck!!

I need to write a small check some time and see it in action. I started with $50 in there in late April. I deposited $250 a day or so later and I earned 5 cents interest on 4/30, .38 on 5/30, .37 on 6/30, added $10 autodraft in July and earned .39 on 7/31. Added another autodrafted $10 on 8/1 and yesterday I added $13.81 in there to round it off to a nice even number of $335.00.

Feeling generous with myself while at Fidelity yesterday I also rounded up my 2008 Roth IRA contributions by $12.00.

Today's mission - clean up my sidebar! I'm doing that by adding some of my historical stuff to the "My Pages" section of our blogs. Did you know we could do that?