Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Monthly Update

Pay off car loan - 23.8% (Up 2.4%)
Pay off student loan - 10.4% (Up .3%)
House down payment - 77.8% (Up5.5%)

Build emergency fund to 6 mo expenses -101.5% (it's back)

It was a good month again. Well, technically it's not over yet but I don't expect any huge changes today :)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

ING Tools

I spent a half hour this morning playing with ING's toys.

The first is an application where you enter as many details as you want and then they compare you to others in the areas of saving, spending, debt, and retirement. I will say I was disappointed in the results as they didn't really seem to have any canned verbiage that applied to my situation. Like, one of the quick steps was "Enroll in your employer's sponsored retirement plan." But I already told the survey I was contributing to an employer sponsered retirement plan. Minus the report it was neat to see how I'm doing compared to others in my bucket.
ING Compare Tool

The other tool is to tell you how much you need for retirement. Holy cow! I said I wanted to have my current salary and have money to live till I was 95 and it said I needed double what I had been thinking. I remember using someone else's tool to get my first number so now I'm very curious if I'm mis-remembering or what. My other thought is that my salary now will probably be pittance then, so does the tool account for that? Or will I need even more? Scary.
Find Your Number

Sunday, March 15, 2009

House Hunting

I thought I found my house but then with some help I realized there were expensive issues lurking. So sad, some of them could have been prevented with proper care. Not many other options right now so I'm hoping more houses pop up as spring emerges here. It was quite warm today which gets me itching to have a yard. But it will happen when the circumstances are right.

In other news, I got a subscription for Smart Money. I found it on Amazon for $7. I currently have a subscription for Money magazine. Unfortunately I already feel like I know most of the goings-on. I'm hoping a strong favorite of the two will emerge and then I will cancel one. I do love those articles where Money takes a family and looks at their financial goals and tells them how to get from here to there.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

February Update

Pay off car loan - 21.4% (Up 1.6%)
Pay off student loan - 10.1% (Up .7%)
House down payment - 72.3% (Up 27%!!)

Build emergency fund to 6 mo expenses - 99.5% (boo)

So I was planning on leaving the e-fund off my updates since it's been full but then the market took a big dump. The money I added this month didn't cover it so I'm short. I'll try to catch up this month. Part of me is still grateful for the opportunity to buy at such a great price, and part of me is really waiting for the economy to turn around. Anyway, since I'm getting pretty far on the house fund, it shouldn't hurt much to divert some funds. Especially since there are no houses I'm really interested in now.

And a WOOHOO on crossing the 10% mark on that big student loan beast. Another woohoo for crossing the 20% mark on the car loan.

I did get myself a new toy - an external hard drive. The first reason is because I have a small-ish hard drive (60gigs) and I store music and some movies on it. The second reason is because my trusty laptop is 4 and a half years old and I imagine at some point it will start having issues. It's been awesome for me so far. But when it does have issues I'll be so happy to have back-ups. It never used to bother me, but now that I spend so much time tracking and obesessing over my finances, boy I'd hate to lose my spreadsheet collection..haha. Anyway, I got 640 gigs for $70 with free shipping. I asked my brother to find a deal for me and he came through :)