Sabrina’s Money Madness

Almost any savings are going towards my 2013 goals. Except my 10% fund. Basically that’s not 10% of my regular pay because I just don’t have it to save right now. That 10% comes from any extra money that I get my hands on. That could include overtime, rebates, checking account bonuses, sweepstakes winnings, etc. The 10% comes up off the top and goes into a special account and I can add any money that’s left over to my savings goal.

Right now, I think I can make my savings goals without using the 10% money. That’s just an extra little cushion in another account. Once I have a nice balance, I’ll take that money and buy a cd or invest in stocks or something and start the account over. Right now, I have $1k in mind for that purpose. We have overtime so I can make that money by next year but in the future it definitely won’t be that easy to get that much money in a short amount of time.

I’ll just keep plugging along and watch my balances grow.

I just did a new savings budget that will take me through March of 2013. These are not my ultimate savings goals, they are just the goals that I’m working towards for the next year. Well actually about 10 months because I started in May, but you get the gist of what I’m saying.

In the past year, this is the second set of yearly savings goals that I have set. I met my first set with my house savings account and now I’m moving to the next set. One thing that I’ve learned by making goals is that the numbers aren’t so daunting when you break them up into yearly chunks.

Instead of saying that I need to save $15k, for example, I’ll say that I need to save $2 or 3K in one year. Then for the next 5-7 1/2 years, I’ll save those amounts to meet my goal. In the end, it works out to the same amount of money. But instead of looking at one huge number and trying to work towards it, you break it into yearly chunks which look way more manageable. And on the plus side, since it’s only for a year, you don’t mind throwing that extra $10 or so into your account to help meet the goal.

This probably wouldn’t work for most people but it’s definitely something that works for me.

I saved over $3,000 over the past year between my housing account, my regular savings and my 10% fund. My goal for the rest of 2012 leading into 2013 is an additional $4,800. Those numbers seem unrealistic to me considering how tight my budget is. But it’s weird because once I have a goal and start working towards it, it seems to get even easier to save.

Hopefully I’ll get a raise or a new job so I can start squirreling away money that is just for savings and not towards a goal. Even if it’s only $5 per pay, that money can really add up over time. As it stands now, I won’t see a raise for almost a year and that’s a real pittance so $5 is realistically all I could save out of my check. Like I said though, it’s better than nothing.

We’re not even going to think about a new car fund yet. That’s a whole nother ballgame.

My new goal is pretty ambitious to say the least. I want to make it by March 2013 so I have a lot of work to do. It breaks down like this:

• $1,500 in short term certificates of deposit. I already have $500 so I need to save $1,000.
• $3,000 in regular savings. This will help cover the 6 months of mortgage payments that I will need in the bank. When you add my cd’s to this, it will be enough. Right now I have $500 in savings so I need an additional $2,500.
• $1,000 for my house. This does not include the money that I have already saved. This is $500 for hand money and $500 to pay for my inspection up front. Right now I don’t have anything saved towards this so I need to save $1,000.
• I also plan on adding at least $300 to my individual stock plan. I will probably add more but this is the minimum that I will add. I’m not counting any money that I have already added to my stock but I do have some money to get this started.

So in less than one year I plan on saving an additional $4,800. It is ambitious but I think I can do it. Hopefully I can even get there early. Wish me luck.

I made the last deposit into the account last Saturday bringing my total in that account to $2,000 even. Whew, it seemed like I would never get there some days. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be though. The fact that we had overtime at my job made things a whole lot easier to say the least. I was also able to save money in my 10% fund and I was willing to put that money into my house account if necessary. It wasn’t which is cool.

Now I’m eligible for a matching grant from the sponsor of my home-buyers class. That gets me to right at my 3.5% but I also want to save some additional money towards my down payment.

I do have a new goal for savings which I will be debuting soon.

And it’s not one that I mind taking either. It’s not required as a stipulation of the program that I’m in though. My counselor suggested it and I think it sounds like a good class so I signed up.

It’s basically a do it yourself kind of class that teaches you how to do basic home repairs. Once I buy a house I’m not going to be able to call my maintenance man to repair items around my house. So if I need to fix a leaky faucet or stop the tank in the back of the commode from running, I need to know how to do those things. If I call someone and they tell me to go and find a captive screw to fix something, I wouldn’t know that it was a hardware fastener. Ok, I know that one but not much else.

The class can be scheduled at any time but it’s suggested that I take it about a month before I close. As crazy as it seems, I’m excited about the class.

Wow it’s a big mess too. Without really saying too much, we pretty much had a meltdown and there’s a big recovery effort to get some data back. We use an outside firm for our tech work and they had a “issue” that occurred behind the scenes. I hope they used TechInsurance.com for errors and omissions insurance because there is the real possibility of litigation in the future.

We have found that we’ve been able to restore some of the things that were potentially lost but it looks like other information might be unrecoverable. I’m just glad that I don’t have anything to do with it. I have a feeling heads might roll so I’m going to duck and cover.

During the month of April I added $100 to my account for a total of $1,950. I have moved my 10% fund to a totally different account and there is $500 in there. So my goal was $2,300 which I’ve technically met even though there is only $1,950 in the housing account. On either Friday or Saturday I will add the last $50 to that account bringing it up to $2,000 before my goal of the end of May.

I have a new savings goal that I will be starting later in May or early June. I’ll bring that goal into focus and update it monthly.

Happy savings!

Well no wonder it felt like I didn’t win anything in April. I literally didn’t. I looked through my calendar where I write the prizes that I won and they day that I won them and it’s totally empty for the month.

Well at least I know that May can’t be any worse!

Yes the holidays are coming up, Mother’s Day in May and Father’s Day in June. Some people
out there need gift ideas. Unfortunately, I’m horrible at gift giving. Well not horrible because most people like the gifts that I give them. It’s just that I’m a self conscious shopper who always worries about the gifts I give.

So I usually give home care products because you can’t go wrong there. Almost everyone needs something for their home no matter if they own or rent. Who couldn’t use an extra shower curtain or bathmat. Sometimes I’ll buy the gift for them, and sometimes I give a gift certificate. It really depends on the recipient as to what I give.

Right now I only buy for my brother and my niece and nephew. That keeps my list nice and short and easy to shop for. That is a major win in my book.

Here at work we have a “birthday club”. There are about 10 members that participate monthly. They buy a card, a gift certificate and a small cake which they cut and pass out. They seem to enjoy themselves but it’s not my cup of tea.

I already talked about not liking to shop for other people and this is no exception. I would even stress about which cake to get. No thank you. But one of my good friends has a birthday coming up. She really helped me out with a project that I was working on last year. The project was not even remotely work related. She’s also helped me to acquire some hotel loyalty points this year. As a thank you, again, I found some cool retro candy gifts online. It’s candy from the 50’s all the way up to the 80’s. There’s some great looking stuff too including these silver and gold covered chocolate pops. Yum chocolate.

And who knows, in the midst of shopping for someone else, I might just buy something for myself.  You know, like chocolate.

In the past few months I’ve pretty much broken even at the casino. I won a little bit then I started losing. So I’m pretty much back at where I started. Now is the time to stop though, because I know if I don’t I’ll end up way in the hole.

It was fun while it lasted though.