I am guilty of paying too much attention to the daily stock market swings. Every night I try to update my Quicken accounts. I do notice that I am a lot less enthusiastic about the daily updates on down market days. Experts say that you should not watch your accounts so closely and only update every month or so. I can’t seem to help myself though. I get a rush when I see that my investments have increased in value. Of course on down days I feel like I have been kicked in the gut.
I just did a back of the envelope calculation that showed that if I had saved the maximum I could have in my 401k for the past 15 years (even when I was only earning $30,000 per year) I would now have about $201,425 saved for retirement as opposed to the $89,420 that I currently have. The $201k amount does not even include possible employer matches! That is a very depressing eye opener for me. The only thing I can do now is to maximize from here on out and increase my savings any way that I can. I currently save 11% in my 401k and $100 per month in my Roth. I have a $510 car payment for the next 24 months that is my main obstacle to saving more. I remember several years ago there was an ad on TV that had a tag line of “How are you spending your retirement” and showed people spending on new cars and other material things that would inhibit them from saving in their 401k accounts. I am literally counting the months until I free myself from the car payment.
Today’s newspaper had a coupon for buy one Sundae get one for 99 cents. Being the cost conscious consumer that I try to be I marched into the shop and ordered what I thought was two Signature sundaes. Apparently what I ordered did not constitute a Sundae so I could not use the coupon. I could not even find the word Sundae on their menu board when I looked for it. UGH!!! That is the danger of shopping with a coupon…you may end up buying something you normally would not have. If it were not for the coupon I would not have made the trip for the ice cream to begin with. Lesson learned!
I went grocery shopping yesterday and stuck to my list. In fact after using $2.75 in coupons I only spent $44.83 which is way below my $60 budget. I would definitely suggest that people use a list when shopping. Totally out of the blue, I also recieved a dividend check from State Farm for $58.90 in the mail yesterday. I will put it in my savings to help replace some of the funds I took out for my recent trip to France. I put my info in the Pudding Index and was unhappy to see that I am in the high 30’s. I have a lot of savings to catch up on. Since my raise earlier this month I am saving 11% of my salary in my 401k which is about $444 each paycheck. During 2007 I have saved $100 each month in my Roth IRA although this month I invested $200. My emergency fund grows by $175 each paycheck although I have been having to borrow from it lately and will have to borrow again this month to pay my Amex bill.
I am currently a Bellsouth telephone customer but I have my cable and internet through Comcast. The total cost is $142.71 per month for telephone, cable, and internet. I am also considering keeping my Comcast cable but dropping the internet for Bellsouth DSL. I need to do the math and see what makes the most sense. I think I could get a BellSouth bundle for about $120 plus I could get $225 cash back. Even if I only save $15 per month it would add up to $180 over twelve months puls there is the $225 cash back to consider. My only hesitation is that having everything installed would be a pain.
In anticipation of yesterday’s interest rate drop I transferred $1,500 into a new a 6 month ING CD at 5.15%. I noticed today the 6 month CD rate is now 4.90% at ING. In retrospect I should have locked it in for 12 months instead of just 6. Regardless, it was a good move on my part. I just wish I had more money to lock in. I transferred a little less than half of my cash savings to the CD. The ING savings rate for regular savings accounts dropped from 4.5% to 4.3% overnight.
This morning I took my car in for its 37,500 maintenance at the dealership thinking that it was a covered expense under the original warranty and got a little bit of a shock to find out that it isn’t covered. The four previous scheduled maintenance checks were covered under the warranty. My car has a warranty of 4 years or 50,000 miles but I guess at this point it is only good for things that actually break. I was able to convince them to let me use a 10% off coupon that is worth $32 so that will bring the price to about $288. I plan to keep this car for many years so I just need to get used to paying for proper upkeep. Soon I need to buy new tires for the car. If it is not one thing it is another.
I am getting very close to $100k in net worth. Hopefully the stock market won’t have a major meltdown in the next few months. My goal is to surpass $100k by the end of the year but if all goes well I may be there sooner. $100k represents a significant milestone for me.
I have noticed that I am not using my cell phone hearly as much as I used to. I did have a Verizon plan with 2,000 minutes per month and unlimited nights and weekends. The past two months I have used about 450 minutes per month. Based on the reduced usage I decided to change to a 900 minute per month plan that costs $59.99 before taxes. I will also get a 20% discount through my employer. My old plan was $99.99 and I received a 19% discount. In the end I was paying about $88 per month but I was able to expense about $60 of it every month so my part of the bill was about $28. I have changed roles in my firm so I can no longer expense $60 per month of cell phone charges that I have been expensing up until three months ago. I will be able to still expense about $20 per month every once in a while but not every month. Now my bill will be $47.99 before taxes of approximately $5 per month. The new plan will help me save about $33 every month in unused charges. That really adds up (almost $400 a year in savings). I am proud of my new frugal mind set.
for the month by buying an expensive ($378) birthday gift for someone special. It was one of the brand new iPods. My own iPod is on its last legs and I don’t plan to replace it anytime soon.
The truth about this budget buster is that I didn’t even budget for a gift and that is where I wnet wrong. I need to plan these things far in advance as it is not like I didn’t know the date of the birthday. I think I need to budget extra allowance every month and roll over what doesn’t get spent into the next month.
Vacations are great but it is always nice to come back home. I could not believe how expensive everything was . Even if the exchange rates was $1 to 1 Euro it would have been expensive. Ouch! I did have a great time though.
I leave tonight for a five day vacation to France where I am sure I will be shocked by the exchange rates. A co-worker told me to use my ATM card overseas as that is where I will get the best rates. I have also alerted Amex, Citibank and my bank to let them know I will be traveling overseas so that my accounts won’t be locked if I try to use them.
I am bringing lots of little snacks to save money and just in case I don’t like the food.
Today is another down day on the stock market but I don’t mind because I have 401k deposit of more than $1,600 going into my account today. I would rather buy the funds cheap and watch them go up later. I am hoping to invest $10,000 in my account this year and will max it out next year. I was hoping to max it this year but my budget just won’t allow it
