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May #s/Efund maxed

June 4th, 2007 at 03:28 pm

It's funny but we have made our exact efund goal with all of our cash accounts. Exactly $12k. How bizarre. I just noticed as I was adding some interest. About $1k of it is really just short-term savings, but I am putting away far more into that then spending until December, since property taxes and insurance and all that all comes due in December - a hefty $4k or so. So anyway, the point being, nothing bad happening, I think we will stay up above $12k the rest of the year. By the time December rolls around and we drain our short-term savings, we should have a good solid $12k in the efund. So basically, we've pretty much made it. Woohoo!!!!

The money I transferred from GMAC showed up in my account this morning. Wow - fast! I am thinking on it. If I put all the money I want to (& transferred) into a CD it leaves about $1800 cash in my accounts. But I expect to receive $6k balance transfer cash any day. So in the grand scheme of things it isn't so bad, but in the meantime I am tying up most our cash. Eeeks. We'll have more balance transfers though to build up cash for the next few months. It might even simplify bookkeeping a bit as most of the interest I will be earning will be from the BTs then - our savings interest we can track separately in the CD. Hmmm... Might be easier to get an idea how much mony the BTs are really generating - with less calculating anyway. Well I haven't committed yet, but will do so today. The thing is our parents are always good for a short-term 0% loan, so it isn't a huge biggie. But then again I don't want to come crawling to them either if we tie up too much cash. Wink

& here's our expenses for the month. It's ugly. I already posted all about it though - but find it easy to share my Quicken snapshots:



Auto is a little high/groceries low - pretty much a wash. Already explained over on the dining - definitely enjoyed this month. Education was for a bunch of classes. Don't foresee paying that much going forward. Medical included $130 for my filling last week. Misc - some stuff for around the house, dh rock climbing, etc. Subscription to beloved cooking mag (think I got 2 years though - was on discount). & vacation was all of our expenses for our Monterey trip - funded by my writing monies.

So yeah we splurged and enjoyed but we still saved more than we spent, so that is something. Here's to some cheaper months though - generally try to keep our spending around $4800 and have been trying to save $450/month. Did not happen in May. But not going to beat myself up over one bad month either. Sometimes you just got to splurge.

& there is about $800/month fat we could easily trim in case of lost job so how I get to $4k/month expenses, or $12k as 3 whole months expenses. It feels so good to have that though! Big Grin Of course with time I would like to edge that up to our true expenses. But on the other hand if I lost my job tomorrow I think the gardener and preschool and stuff would go, regardless how much cash we had. Just can't justify those kinds of things with no income... So overall maybe $4k is right on... We lived on $4k easy peasy when I was on maternity leave last and we weren't driving anywhere and such. So kind of my thinking for now, plus $4k/month = $50k/year which makes it really easy in terms of thinking in terms of expenses. Since my goal is to increase our net worth by 1/2 our expenses for the year, makes it an easy $25k/year or on average $2k/month. So yeah, that is going to be my set basic spending/expenses in terms of financial goals, for a while. I think once we make all of our goals I will up it to $5k/month though & $30k net-worth-annual-increase goal. It's a little too much to bite off today, but would be rather conservative. MEans once I meet my e-fund goal I will need to add another $3k to stay at 3 months expenses, but one thing at a time. $5k/month would be a pretty darn good living for us. In the end I think $15k would be an awesome efund, but that will take a lot longer, and smaller goals make it easier to ahieve progress AND feel accomplishment. Not that $12k was exactly small - I really didn't think I would make it this far this year - but have so far had a pretty darn good year!

I mean as far as expenses go, $3k simply covers our fixed monthly expenses - mortgage & health insurance mostly, and then property taxes and all of our other insurances. Leaves $1k/month for everything else - utilities, groceries, car expenses, etc. So though $4k sounds like a lot, it's all relative. We could also move just about anywhere and cut out most of our mortgage/insurance expenses, which is always a sweet option. But $4k/month is really squeaking by with our fixed expenses. On the other hand, $5k just makes all the difference. MEans preschool, gardener, retirement, savings, etc. Maybe $4500/month would be a good compromise as basic living expenses. Would leave some wiggle room. Well, somewhere in there. I could probably dig revising my efund goal up to $13,500 once we hit $12k. I guess overall my conservative side is still popping out wanting to save more cash. The rest of me thinks we need to put a lot more efforts to investing going forward.

ETA: Oh, I just set up my CD. Woohoo. I had no intention of, and don't really recommend overall, tying up most of one's savings in a CD. But the timing with the balance transfers is just uncanny. IT just works out perfect. I have been sitting around waiting for my bank to offer a great promo rate and the timing really couldn't be better. Anyway, guaranteeing a 5.7% APR for $10k, or about 1/2, of the balance transfers makes it pretty darn worthwhile. Until now there was of course risk of falling interest rates and such.

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