Sixty-Two Sixty-Two

It was another good week in the world of budgeting. There were a couple more purchases that were out of the ordinary, which is stretching the miscellaneous budget line item, but that's okay. Tickets to Sydney's plays = $34 White boards used to track budget progress and kid's chores = $5.49  16 oz beer = $2.49 The kids are doing well with their chores, and it's good to see that. Their allowance program is underway. I spent Sunday the 25th cleaning out my basement, which will hopefully lead to selling a few things. I was able to sell a "battlerope" fitness item for $25. Frugal fitness: 64 miles on the stationary bike this week, 3 strength circuits. It was a good week. I'm hoping that by the end of this 30 day cycle, I can be at 25% of my phase 1 goal paid which would put me on track to getting that completed this year. To the weekend.

I'm currently reading The Greatest Game Ever Played by Mark Frost. The movie depiction of this story is one of my favorite Disney movies, so I'm really enjoying the book. Early chapters describe the childhood of Harry Vardon, the professional golfer from England who was one of two main characters in the story. Harry is considered to be the father of modern golf. Nicknamed "The Stylist", he invented the club grip that many people still use today. He toured the United States at the end of the 19th century, and played a huge role in stirring up interest in the game on this side of the pond. Reading about his childhood, I couldn't help but feel extremely grateful. Just over 100 years ago (not that long ago!), the world was very, very different. Vardon was the oldest of 4 children, and grew up with very limited means. When I say limited means, it's a stark contrast to what modern day people in this country would consider to be poverty. Their situation was complic

I have a terrible long term memory. When I say terrible, I mean, it's horrendous. I've reflected a bit on this recently, and I think my natural level of anxiety (or the anxiety I developed in my childhood) always has me thinking in the future. I rarely think about the past, if ever. My headspace is always consumed with the tomorrows that have yet to happen. This isn't healthy, and I've really been working on staying mindful and present, but... ...it makes me more goal oriented than most, and this is probably to a fault. My daily choices and abilities are often packaged with thoughts that I can do/achieve better, at the expense of thinking positively about what I've been able to achieve. When I latch on to a goal and actually stay with it, though, it focuses my thoughts and can reduce overall anxiety. This financial goal has done just that. It's given me a focal point, and it's given me a positive mindset to base my decisions on. I sat through another bene

Sometimes a dollar bill has an uncanny ability to burn a hole in your pocket. I've noticed that having a budget which allocates every dollar that hits my accounts has made saving an easier task. First off, my 401k and Health Savings Account deposits are taken out of my payroll. There's no easier savings than forced savings. My first suggestion would be to open a savings account and talk to your payroll administrator about establishing a direct deposit from your paycheck that will fund this account. You can't spend it if you don't have it. Having two checking accounts now, I've found it's easier to separate the funds that I dedicate towards general weekly spending (groceries, gas, and a bit for misc spending) from the funds that I use to pay off debt. Using this method, it limits the amount of free cash that I have. Again, if it's not there, I won't spend it. This is all made possible with an emergency fund. If something was to come up, that can b

I had a few atypical purchases this week, kicking off with S's birthday party over the weekend. Pizza - $27.76 Sleepover snacks - $10.77 Lego platform for her other Lego gifts (L bought the gifts)- $12.30 I filed these under miscellaneous spending. I also bought a coffee this morning...up late for a fantasy baseball draft last night = $3.51 I had heating oil and water/sewer bills hit this past week. It was nice knowing I had allocated money to my savings to cover these. Before I started budgeting, I was always hoping that these bills hit when I had extra money in my checking. Frugal fitness for the week - 51.5 miles on stationary bike, 30 minute treadmill workout while in Virginia for work. 4 strength circuits. Overall it was a good week, and it's nice to be seeing progress on a weekly basis. Happy Friday.

If you're on the younger side, in a lower tax bracket, and haven't opened up a Roth IRA (individual retirement account) - let me attempt to get you thinking about opening that account. A Roth IRA is a post tax, retirement savings account. The money you put in this account has already been taxed, so there are no immediate tax savings (that is why those in lower tax brackets benefit a little more from this account). However, the money you put into this account AND THE GROWTH are tax free when you withdraw it after the age of 59.5. Another benefit is that you can access the money you've contributed to your account penalty free in the case you experience an emergency (once certain conditions are met). You may also be able to access the growth on your contributions, but that will be taxed and penalties may incur. Let's run a scenario: Age: 30 Income: $35,000 Annual Contribution to Roth starting at 30 years old: $5,500 (max) You many think contributing $5,500 is

One of the positive things my company offers our employees is an annual, conference-like seminar that educates our employees on our benefit package. Yesterday was our first seminar, held in Virginia. One of the standout presenters was from Fidelity, educating our employees on our 401k benefit, investing strategies, and retirement goals. With my personal financial goals in place, this was the first year that I found this presentation extremely motivating. I would guess that there's a large chunk of the population, especially at my age, that are not giving their retirement savings enough thought. There was one chart in particular that stood out to me. It was a chart illustrating basic retirement savings goals by age. Take a look: https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/how-much-money-do-i-need-to-retire This is obviously a guide. I imagine some would look at this and feel a little overwhelmed based off where they currently find themselves. I can also imagine som

Happy Friday. It was another great week in the way of hitting the budget. But, I have to admit that I did get a coffee whilst traveling for work yesterday...$3.51. There was also some misc spending for L's birthday, but that's why I have that line item on the budget. If I spend it, fine, if I don't, it gets allocated somewhere else. Yesterday's pay started a new cycle, and I'm excited for the challenge of getting the food spending down. So, the progress chart for the first 30 day cycle looks like this: I wanted to complete phase 1 by the end of the year, so will need to stay aggressive. Frugal fitness: 66.3 miles on stationary bike, 4 circuits, another hour of shoveling That's all for today. I hope you have a great weekend.

Our bedroom has one closet. The closet is barely big enough to hold L's clothes alone. To remedy this, we had purchased a wardrobe storage closet for my clothes; two in fact. I never liked the look of these wooden portable closets in the bedroom and wanted a different option. So I bought a bureau. I bought this bureau knowing that I would struggle to store all of my clothes in it. I bought the bureau with the goal that I would reduce my wardrobe to whatever I could fit in it, and get rid of everything else. It was my first step towards a minimalist approach to organizing my life. I achieved the goal. I much prefer the look of having the bureau in the bedroom over the other two pieces of bloated furniture. I must also admit, I really enjoy having far less clothes. It's amazing the amount of stuff we collect. I think it's a left over mentality from a time when things were not so easily obtainable. You held on to the things you possessed because you never knew when the

I've always had one checking and savings account through a credit union, but have recently been sent a lot of "special deals" to open checking accounts with online banks that want my business. Many of the deals have been a little out of reach, like "Deposit $15,000 in 2 months and we'll give you $200". I drive a compact Chevy and don't roll like that. Recently, however, Bank of America sent me a deal that was a bit more of my slice of reality. Open a checking account. Make two $250 direct deposits, and get $100. Simple enough. The process was quite seamless because one of my credit cards is through them. I set up to have $250 of my take home pay go to that account per pay period. I'm guessing in 4-6 weeks I'll have a $100 windfall to throw at the cause. More snow headed our way today...leave a comment if you have any suggestions on best managing/taking advantage of multiple checking accounts.

The first 30 day cycle is essentially over. The budget is balanced, and the results are: Food = +240 Household Items = -26 Savings = -100 CC payments = -59 Recreation/Misc = -27 Balance = +26 These don't fully add up, because each line item wasn't met to the exact penny. The above items were those that were off by $3 or more. I've mentioned that I don't care to track everything to the penny, but want a general understanding of where money is going. I added the line item for household items to my spreadsheet more than half way through because I wanted to separate those purchases from the food budget, which you can see was eclipsed early on in the 30 day period. By overspending on food, it took away from adding more money to savings and putting towards credit card repayment. To reduce spending on groceries, more planning is needed, and a little more frugality could be employed. I look forward to the challenge of reducing that in the next budget cycle. I&

It was another great week of controlled spending. There was some money spent that found a home in the recreation budget, $21 to take the girls to the ice arena for an hour and a half of public skate. Next week I'll provide a full 30 day update. Minimal fitness - 73.7 miles on the bike; 60 minutes of shoveling; 2 resistance training circuits. It was the first week to climb over 70 miles, so I feel good about that. Even though I find it a little more difficult to motivate myself to work out at home at 5am, eating breakfast with the family before heading to work has been a nice addition. Apparently my scrambled eggs are the best. That's all for today. I hope you had a fantastic week. To the weekend...

Ahhhhh, March snow storms. It wasn't as brutal as they predicted, thankfully. Another tip to save money and get a free workout - shovel your own driveway! I think I've saved hundreds in my 4 years of home ownership and burned thousands of calories. Next week wraps up my first 30 day cycle of budgeting and keeping a journal alongside it. I wasn't quite sure what would come of this once I made it public, but I have to admit, it's already given back to me in many ways. I'm looking forward to continuing. I've mentioned a few motivations that I have to complete this goal. Another one is that alongside the financial independence, I hope it provides a little more time to do the things I enjoy. One of which is giving back. Working a full time+ job and having two young kids with a spouse that also works full time, doesn't present me with much free time. The plan is this goal will be achieved at a time that the kids are older, and together we could explore volun

Quick post for today - I didn't post this morning because I was attending a forum on the current state of healthcare as it relates to policy and the Affordable Care Act. I realized two things - 1. My shoes were not shiny enough to blend in well with the crowd, 2. I'm really glad I work on the "grassroots" side of the issue as opposed to the policy side. Healthcare in this country is a mess. Without getting political, it's obvious at every level that prevention will have the greatest impact on reducing the financial burden of healthcare. They shared a statistic this morning - 86% of our healthcare dollars go towards paying for chronic and mental health conditions. Eighty percent of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are preventable through diet and exercise (along with weight management). These are just two of the preventable conditions that are a huge burden to our collective quality of life and pocketbooks. The situation is getting worse at a rap

In Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up, one of my favorite observations of his was night guy vs morning guy. Jerry talks about the fact that he doesn't get enough sleep because night guy is always screwing morning guy. Night guy wants to stay up late, forcing morning guy to have to deal with the fact that he only got 5 hours of sleep. It's not night guys problem. Morning guy was helpless to night guys antics, and cursed him ritually at the sound of the alarm. Morning guys only line of defense, according to Jerry, was to oversleep often enough so that he lost his job and night guy would no longer have enough money to fuel his night guy activities. One of the questions many of us have to ask ourselves when beginning our goals is the "why". Why are we deciding to put forth effort? Why are we deciding to experience sacrifice? It's easier to be night guy, taking everything today has to offer, leaving morning guy to deal with groggy moments of regret. Night guy is all about

Do you snowball or avalanche? Are you aware of these terms? These are two different ways to tackle your debt accounts. First, list all of your debts including total, interest rates, and minimum payments. Once you have this list, there are two contending strategies that exist to help you pay these down. Which one you choose will depend on your personality and your motivation levels. The debt snowball method attacks your smallest balances first (benefit of celebrating successes earlier), and the debt avalanche goes after the higher interest accounts first (benefit of saving on interest charged).  Before you choose, you need to determine your cash flow. This is where a budget comes in handy. Once you create a monthly budget, and determine where you'll allocate your money, hopefully you have a positive balance at the end of the month. If not, this definitely deserves your attention. You need to stop going in to debt before you can begin paying down your debt, obviously. Onc

Another week in the books - thank you to all that are following and commenting. So, the spending... I've already admitted to having to commit more effort to the food budget. But as far as out of budget spending, there was only one.. 4 pack of Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA - $11.79 (This helped fuel a night by the fire with a good friend Saturday night ---- into the wee hours of Sunday morning). I can live with that. Keeping alcohol to a minimum, barring special occasions, is definitely a focus. This is a financial and physical wellness goal. L and I will share a glass of wine most nights - but our palate is satisfied by a $3.99 bottle of wine. Score. Another good week. I'll post a progress chart at the end of the 30 day budget cycle, which looks like it will be Friday March 16th. Frugal Fitness = 58 miles on the bike, 2 miles walked in nature, and 2 circuit sessions. I was also gifted a guest pass to the UMO rec center by a co-worker friend and got a solid hour and a h

I'm learning that financial goals are tough. They take extreme patience; something I knew I lacked when I became a parent and something that I'm already battling 3 weeks in. The thoughts. The time I know it's going to take. The long, delayed gratification it will take to feel like I've accomplished my goal. A trait that my generation lacks according to the opinion of the generations before us. I had thoughts of getting a second job yesterday. Not for the extra income (which would be nice, too), but to feel like I'm maxing out my efforts . The opposite of extreme patience - extreme effort. While the extra income would be nice, I know that another job would put strain on everything else that is important to me. It was a reminder that things take time. When we don't appreciate that, that's when our resolve begins to fade and our effort slips. Our goals fail. I see this all the time in myself and others. Appreciate and enjoy the journey - with every area o