Tripods68's Personal Finance Blog

That's right folks! I can't believe it either. I hope to do this more often and be able increase our saving rate. Now if I only also correlate this with losing weight, I'd be a kid in a candy store. SorryI digress. Anyway, I still have $290.00 on my envelope budget for the month and were already one-third away. Outta the way folks! cuz' the train is rollin'.

At the end of April we were able to save $1275 from our disposable income which brings our total to $8225.00 EF. We didn't have any big expenses in April. Just plugging away!

Last year was a great year for us. Our gross income went from $105K in 2006 to $142K in 2007. Unfortunately, our marginal tax rate also went up from 9.2% to 14.2% because of raises a little bit of OT. Our AGI was $122K. So when we did our taxes we got back $3200 but owed the state $207. Still not bad considering our income went up significantly. That will go up again this yea. We still claiming 1 exemptions on our withholding so not to owe money and we preferred this option. Plus we'll get another $1800 in May from Bush's stimulus package. That's a total $4792. I know most people hate the idea of loaning the government money for free. But for us, that's really the practical solution because we stress more on "owing" than how much interest we'll get in invested interest.

It's a good thing that we get money back each year because that funds our property tax and family vacation every year. We're not a big spender; we don't stay on fancy hotels, or fly to exotic locations. We preferred to drive instead. For example, last year we took our kids to see the Grand Canyon and Lego Land near San Diego. On the way to Grand Canyon we stopped to Las Vegas and Hoover Dam. I think my wife's enjoyed it more than my kids since she hasn't seen any those places before. It was a blast!. The year before that we visited my wife's relatives living just outside Seattle WA. On the way there, we stopped to see Mount St. Helen. That was the highlight of the whole trip for me. From there, we drove straight to Seattle and stayed there for a week. I also finally got the chance to visit my Aunt who I haven't seen in decades. She lives just outside Vancouver BC. That was really fun.

This year, we might spend few days to Disneyland or San Diego Sea World. But were also thinking of renting a beach house in Oregon for a week just to get away from NorCal. So we're looking forward to that, but we haven't found a place yet. So if anyone know a place in Oregon to rent a nice beach house with excellent view, please share them.

It's that time again already. I tell you time fly before you know it, its summer time.

Anyway, the month of March was fantastic. We were able to throw our son's his 4th year birthday party. We rented a Palace Jumping place for $315 (max 26 kids) for toddlers. Some of his classmates from school was able to attend. The rest were friends, relatives, and coworkers. We had about 24 kids attended the party and about 30 adults. We originally budgeted for $700.00 but we were able to spend less than $600.00. My mom paid for the cake and all the preps. We saved just over $100 bucks from everything else which included food. My wife's best friend made her fantastic spaghetti.

We also did some landscaping project for our front yard and side corner of our house. We live in the corner lot so we had bunch of weeds and stuff growing that we wanted to eliminate and clear things out. We put new rocks and new plants. We originally budgeted for $2K but only spent exactly $1K for the entire project. Again, we did our due diligence and invited lots of bidders to come. Thats how we were able to save.

I should also mention. The $10 a day limit for lunches seems to work really well for me. For 3 weeks this month, I brought my lunch from home which saved me about $200 from our budget. I also brewed my coffee each morning. I'd say I saved about $300 just on coffee alone this year and by staying away from Starbucks. That explain Starbucks losing its appeal lately. Huh go figure!

With all those extra expenses for March, we still were able to saved $1015 towards the EF, which met our goal again for third straight months. Again, majority of those savings came from less eating out, brewing my coffee, more cooking at home, and less DEBIT card activities. So far this year, we have increased our EF to $3015.

It's about time i update our progress.

We thought the month of February was going to be a tough month to save. My wife got sick because of the "flu bag" but she recovers and started going back again today after a week off. I'm still recovering myself but only missed one day of work. However, because she couldn't cook and I don't really cook either other than making basic stuff (hotdogs, sandwiches, salad etc) we ate a lot of take outs. At least my kids love it! However, the big difference before why we spend so much money was we didn't have a budget plan. This time we did. And so, at the end of the month we were able to save an extra $1000.00 towards building our EF. As long as we were conscious on what we spend we were able to keep each other in check all the time. Our balance as of Feb 29th is $5935.00. We still have another $10K to save by the end of the year. We're still moving on...!

March is typically where we spend lots of money because of birthdays for our son, cousin, and relatives. Not only those gifts, but our property tax is also due so that's a big chunk. Thank god we have a separate pot of money to pay that every year. That pot is well funded again this year. Nevertheless, we got our budget planned out for all the extra expenses. So we should expect to save an extra 1K. I almost forgot to mention, we did received our tax refund which is about $3K. Not bad given our AGI was $122K. But this is the fund that helps fund our Property Tax and summer vacation. As long we can maintain between $4K to $5K balances on this account, we don't worry about a thing. We don't know about what we're going to do about the rebate checks ($1800) when we get it. But I suspect we might just use it for all towards our vacation in Oregon this summer.

Well, the good news is that we were able to follow thru our budget for this entire month without major sacrifices. I agreed to bring my own coffee and lunches to work, which help me save more. Of course our biggest worry was not able to stick to our budget. But we did it. Our goal original is to save an extra $1000.00 a month toward EF (split between me and wife). We did better than we thought, our combined saved a total $1009. Yippie So this money is going straight to our EF. 1 month down 11 months to go.

In the next several months, lots of of bills will start to pop up; car maintenance, birthday parties, including my son's 4th birthday party (planned) in March. How can I forget our Property tax due ($1600) in March. We're gonna have to apply the brakes harder to stay within our budget. The good news is that DW received an extra $600 a month net pay increase which help us for planned expenses. Wish us good luck

By the way, I appreciate the encouragement and feedbacks from many of you here like scfr, baselle, Ima Saver, Koppur, and DisneySteve. I took many of your advice to heart. So we're just going to plug away until we achieved our goal. Thanks

Great news! My wife just got an 11% raise for this year, which was a real surprised. Not that I'm complaining

We were both betting that it might only be 3% being the market was so bad. I loss the bet. Hard work does pay off So we're going to celebrate it with a nice family dinner to Cheese Factory this Friday And Yes, I'm happy to be paying.

Let me tell you the background first before anyone replies: I have some play money that I trade online from time to time aside from our emergency fund or retirement accounts. I strictly use this account for the purpose of taking profits to purchase gifts or do whatever. I'd had this account even before I got married so I'd had it for years.

Anyway, I've been following this one stock for about a year, which by the way I'd made some money just before x-mas. So I'm very familiar with this stock. So the same stock took a tumble down 37% post xmas holiday. No reason why the stock is down, excellent fundamentals, and earnings outlook. But lately, traders took profits which pulled the stock price really low.

So this week the stock was downgraded for the year down from its high $112 in early December to $71 Tuesday, where it became so attractive and everyone including grandma was scooping some shares. So i thought, why not...so i bought some 30 shares at $72 Tuesday. So for the next two days all market traders started buying up the stocks because of its discount price, pumping it up so high it reached $79.00 a share at one point and the volume high @ $20 Million trades, unusual for this stock since it only average about $4 million volume a day.

So by noon yesterday I was deciding whether to take the profits about $210.00 @ 79.00 a share. So here's what I'm thinking at this point. Should I sell now or later. I also knew this stock will go up again $100 at some point, especially when the earnings comes out in several weeks. It should provide a nice rally. I also hate paying commission. But I also knew this stock will pull back for profit taking late Thursday and early Friday and I could be the last man standing. So come Friday, I expected to be down but not much. So after all that, I stayed bullish and didn't sell.

So I woke up this morning and got to work. Check my account, the stock was already down $4.00. So I was like ok, not a problem. Then I watch it for the rest of the day which continued to go down until the market closed @ $71.40. So i just gave up and didn't do anything. On paper I lose $210.00 so what's the point of selling. I just let it ride. So at the end of the week I'm down $30.00 instead of up $210.00 for a nice weekend getaway with my kids. My wife is working all weekend. Instead we'll be at home watching football.

But what's tick me off, I knew I could have sold it yesterday and take a nice profits but didn't. I listened to my own logic instead of my trading instinct which would have done the opposite: bought back the same stock today at a lower price $71.40 while taking profits.

I'm glad I took this out of my chest. I actually feel better (deep breathing and release....ha)

Just another day in the office.

Here's our debt we pay a month. We pay a little bit more toward each loan except my parent's loan.

Loan 1. $15K remaining balance (2nd owned property) @ 5.39% = $200 A month
Loan 2. $21K Car payment @ 5.59% = $700.00
Loan 3. $12,573.00 remaining balance (owed my parents Down Payment towards our current home @ zero rate) = $213.00 a month.
A total $1,113.00 monthly payment.

My wife and I save an extra $1000 a month towards our emergency fund goal of $12K this year. In addition, I also saved an extra $210.00 a month towards my own personal savings account (earning less than 2% ).

My dilemma: Should I use this extra money towards paying off the car faster, which we pay the higher interest rate, or should I just continue to saving it?

In defense of saving the money, I use this savings as my day trading account online. On the other hand, 2007 has not been a good year, but not the worst either. I just broke even. So it really hasn't appreciated that much except what I put in.

So far this year we had been really good spending wise. We'd hardly use credit cards at all except just a month ago to fix my commuter car. We only owe $1300 left. I'll make $800 payment in January which will give me $500 to pay the rest in Feb 08. Although, my wife and I both make good money, we don't seems to able to save more than than we like. Our goal for next year is to really build our emergency fund at least 6 months or $30K. With our existing expenses and the tendency to pay everything cash crimp our ability to really save. You could say we're a spender more ways than one. We don't spend on lavish things or have bad habits, don't gamble, smoke, or buy big item tickets. We do spends however on many family functions; birthday for our kids, presents for relatives, friends, and coworkers. My wife parents travel once a year to visit us and stays. Their roundtrip costs about $2000 a pop. We did upgrade our carpets to flooring last year which cost about $5000.00 but paid that off in 4 months.

So our plan is to save for next year. Based on our expenses we could save about $700 per month which will be towards our emergency funds and and additional $300 per month towards our planned vacation next summer, birthday, and xmas presents. That's about $12K we could potentially saved in additional to our retirement contributions (403, 457, ROTH, and Pension).

This won't be easy but I also figured that I need to cut down on things i spend daily; starbucks, lunches, and dining out. This month alone, i spend $25.00 a day, which is $100 bucks a week. I'd figured i could save $300 a month alone through drastic measure.

I like to get some feedback from people and hear your story....