June has been little busy with kids final weeks in school. Now they are off for summer, lots of activity plan (basketball and bowling). Our oldest will be attending summer school starting next week.

Last week was also our 13th year anniversary. We took 3 days off and spent 3 days in Sonoma County coastal beach. Beautiful beach all around. The good news we were able to stick to our $300 budget for entire trip.

Now that Father's is coming wife advanced me to do some shopping on the way back from our trip; new dress shirts/shoes/socks for work. I totally forgot about Father's day. I missed this expense to include under discretionary spending.

Next week, I have 2 interview set up (one is definitely a promising prospect for 2nd round). I got a call from the Manager last week from our budget office to meet with Director of Financial Services. I kind of nervous at the same time, I want to impress the shit out of these people. I'm ready!

Financially, our budget for June is on track. We already saved YTD $11,051 in taxable savings. Tax Deferred contributions $17,098.75

Almost done the budget for May. Some expenses we are looking to do in the house, replace the garbage disposal and fixing our bathroom faucet with new water lines. I found a handy man who live nearby (labor charge $225)...No DIY! I'm looking around $400 that include new garbage disposal & 4 waterlines replacement.
In June, our dog Yogi needs major teeth cleaning, (I mean he needs it bad) about $1100.00 Seems expensive so we are shopping around.

429 bucks is my ticket cost for failing to stop completely intersection. It's been a while since I got a ticket but this the most expensive ticket I ever got. It's my fault, i doubt the judge will even lower the bill since I got by a camera. Got to suck it up and pay the price...Oh well!

Traffic school here i come!

We finally paid off our Honday Odyssey after 3 1/2 years of making payments. We just couldn't stand it anymore. We used $8K of our EF to do it, but we still have a running balance $11,200. The good news, we will be adding $1625 a month towards it starting this month. The end of the year EF balance will still be around $22K.

Ok...i've been very careful trading individual stocks this days. So today BOFA was very attracted at $3.43. So i put trailing stop sell on the upside. Voila! Not much but i hope to utilize this more often.

Why every year I cringed whenever I send my payment towards property tax bill? Maybe I could have added that towards our car loan. At least, we won't have to worry about it for another year. Wohooo...I feel liberated lol

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'.

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....