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Easy Come, Easy Go...

July 17th, 2007 at 02:44 pm

Though I guess it could go a lot easier...

I was listening to Dave Ramsey yesterday (just interesting) and someone called with my income and said his mortgage was $1700. I choked. Dave Ramsey said his mortgage wasn't the problem. I choked again. LOL. But he knows what he is talking about (sort of). He also had $700/month in car payments as well as credit card debt. I thought dear lord, if I added $400 to my mortgage, and almost $1k/month to debt I would be BEYOND broke. It is eye opening to listening to these stories. I feel like we have it tight enough as is. I feel we live quite well, but lately it just feels tighter than it should be. I feel conflicted on the mortgage comments as the caller was clearly scared his mortgage was too much and scared Dave would tell him to sell the house. I think that comment speaks volumes. He *knows* they bought too much house. Heck, now that I think about it he said their combined income was in the $70k range. They need 2 incomes to support their mortgage - which is just dangerous. So I think Dave missed a big one. But then again he was right too - he had bigger issues...

I was cleaning some files and saw my list of bank accounts/important info and saw we have 4 bank accounts, 6 retirement accounts (between the 2 of us) and now 2 UGMA accounts. Most opened in the last year. It's a little overwhelming. I don't foresee opening any new accounts in the near future though. We've just been in the process of re-organizing. Gosh, we may have 7 credit cards as well. Though 3 are solely for the purpose of balance transfers & 1 is an old one dh has yet to close. We only use 2 cards and dh has a backup card. I closed my backup when we got a second rewards cards for bigger rewards. But he isn't big on closing cards like I, so he has more...

It adds up fast! Of course before getting organized we had maybe 4 retirement/investment accounts and we had 5 bank accounts (at 2 institutions) that we have since closed. So lots of shuffling. I just see a list of financial institutions growing fast. But for the long-term I Feel much more comfortable spreading our money around (not all in one basket).

I am anxious to move ahead on some retirement things and just have to remember to hold my horses. I think we are doing well on cash and I could probably do all I want in a sense, but I have to remember we have $10k tied up in a CD and the rest isn't really our money (lots of balance transfer money). We need a cushion over the $10k in case the BTs make me skiddish and I decide to pay them back right away. Anything can happen...

Plus I found we were considering $100/month for LM for preschool and $50/month to the kids' college. I am getting antsy to open my T Rowe account which would be $50/month. But I also need to save up a good $2k for the IRS. If everything goes perfect between now and December we can swing it, but isn't that the big "IF"? Part of me feels like, eh, we got a good $10k, do we really need more in an efund? Twice as much as we had a year ago! I am just not sure if it makes that big of a difference, truly. Shifting more to retirement than I originally intended...

The other things in my mind are that I want to divert $1k into an IRA I opened but gave up on the transfer because both financial institutions were difficult. The account sits open with no cash and as long as that is okay (so far no complaint) is fine with me but now that the dust has settled I wouldn't mind diverting the $1k minimum to open the mutual fund. This one is pushing it for now, but a cash advance on next year's contributions to get this account settled is not the worst. Just more "retirement over cash" thinking. I would probably be wise to just hold off as long as I can - until they send me a notice or something. Even if they close the account I can just start over later. Then again maybe I should just suck it up, pay the stupid medallion fee AGAIN and transfer. I am just so annoyed the other financial institution called me 3 times to straighten out the problem and this one just sent me a note that I had to start over - medallion fee and all. Bah. But $10 is probably a lot better than $1k...

I also would like to divert $1k to start a taxable account, but I am not sure. I don't think we will add a ton to it right now, but I would like to divert a little of our cash savings into an investment account so we don't get too cash heavy. Overall I think this can wait another year though.

Mostly I find all of a sudden I find that we are doing much better than I thought and all these competing wants rear their ugly heads. I just have to prioritize.

I think the $50/month is small beans for T Rowe, and also that I can come up with the money if I put some effort to ebaying and stuff like that. So that one I am going to go through with. May be a bit hasty, but not a big dollar amount.

I don't have much choice with the IRS.

I guess once July is over I can attempt my IRA transfer again. Bah. Of course now that I think about that one I can't because I just converted the original account to a ROTH. Figures. I forgot about that whole thing. Guess I have to close the other account anyway. No more regular IRAs here... Sometimes it helps to just think aloud and realize stuff like this. I can hardly keep it all straight. We are officially all switched to ROTHs though (well - in the process) so will make things easier going forward. I just need to close that account before I forget it is not a ROTH anyway... Hadn't even thought about that.

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