Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Retirement, Paychecks, Budgetting & The Flu

Well, it looks like my medallion signature did the trick! My funds from Capital One 360 have arrived to their new home in my Roth IRA at Vanguard!

I still have some money left over in a Roth IRA at Capital One, but most of it is in some CD's so when I'm able to close the rest of them later this year, I'll do the final transfer next year and move the rest of the $10K that's remaining in my old Roth IRA.

In other news... our City council finally voted to have all employees pay more money into our pensions... and  they have granted us a small Cost of Living increase to help offset the amount we have to pay. Still no word on whether merit increases will come into effect anytime soon, so even though we are officially done with our agreed upon 3 years without raises it doesn't appear like we will see them return anytime soon... (But as I always say, I'm thankful to have my job and I'm not going to complain about that for the time being... but eventually if SCB and I are going to think of family planning, I will need to have a better paying job... so here's to hoping those come back soon.)

All in all, that means that i'll be taking home a couple of extra dollars each paycheck! I'll re-do the budget for March to reflect the small changes-- The extra bits will be going towards our "birthday" savings account so we don't have to rely on mad budgeting skills when birthdays pop up "so unexpectedly."

But I have to say, SCB and I have been doing really well with the written budget and our goal planning thus far for 2013. We've decided every time we get to cross off a real goal from our list that we can take a little break a funnel some extra money that comes in and do something nice for each other as a reward. Like taking the $50 from our credit card rewards system and spending it like we did earlier this month as a reward for being really diligent is replacing our checking account money from last years car repairs and for not "blowing" our tax return, but setting it aside for important things like our annual bills, new computer parts, and servicing our car.

So, we are thinking that once we get to cross off our next two goals (because we already have the money saved up to get Wanda checked out left from our tax return, so it would be that plus saving up some money for a summer trip to see family), that we will probably do something similar again.

Hopefully that will help "curb" our wants and let us really focus our spending this year.

Me... Sick... Not so Pretty!
Oh, and for those of you out there that keep suggesting I send SCB to the market alone to grocery shop to help save me some time and take something off my to-do list...  I present the following true story... complete with sick photo of me on the left.

SCB gave me the flu despite me telling him not too... I literally was begging him to stop hugging and touching me while he was sick... but he just couldn't keep his distance and my nose decided to run like Niagara Falls. So I was naturally really feeling sick this past week so I sent SCB to the store to get me some generic Night Quil... and some orange juice...

The man paid $7 for a single Gallon of Orange Juice. He bought name brand minute maid... and told me it was the best deal.... **smacks hand to forehead**

$7 for OJ...

That's more than we pay for a gallon of milk... and a gallon of gas COMBINED and that's with gas at $4.30 a gallon!

So, no. He can't go to the store by himself... He must be supervised... 

Monday, February 25, 2013

Lowering our internet bill

Normally I don't open my monthly cox statement. It's one of the few bills that actually comes in the mail because I can't seem to get their website to let me view my bill online successfully. We have auto pay and I normally just acknowledge it's arrival by handing it to my husband for his "shred" pile...

But this past month I opened the notice because I knew it had been almost a year since Cox had graciously given us a  "temporarily" rate reduction because SCB wasn't working. If you remember last year, I called them up to drop our internet speed to something slower to save money when they were increasing the fees and instead they offered us a discount to keep our current plan so we leaped on it.

So, I opened the bill and I was glad I read the fine print! 

They scheduled a rate increase not only to remove our "unemployed" discount-- but one that would be across the board for all cox subscribers.

Each month we used to pay a total of $35.14 for internet and for a cox service protection plan with our discount. If I hadn't opened that bill, the next time we would have been charged we would have been paying $49.98 ...

a 42% increase.

Ya, you read that right. Our bill would have been 42% more because our service plan would have gone from $31.19 to $43.99 and the cox service protection plan from $3.95 to $5.99 a month.

So I called cox and asked them to take us out of "Internet Essential" and drop us into the first tier of internet they offer. Essentially we went one level lower than that what we currently had. Then I had them remove our cox protection plan policy... and then I had them lock us into a 2 year contract at our current price to prevent any future price increases from coming and spiking up our bill since they seem to come around every year.

If we cancel them before 2 years, we get hit with a $45 fee, which goes down each month you have the service. I figure if this rate hike alone was $15 the next will be higher and since we aren't moving or canceling our cox for 2 years, we will be okay having a contract.

So our bill should be around $30 even each month, so not only did we not have to eat the increase, we ended up saving around $5 a month from our service bill.

:)

Friday, February 22, 2013

Free Money makes me happy

My new hair cut. Kept the length,
Just added layers and had them
thin like half of it away!
While I was paying some bills last month, I noticed I had $50 in Credit Card rewards that were just itching to be redeemed. This week the check got here and we had originally planned on putting this money in our checking account to get us closer to getting out of the hole we went into for car repairs... but since we were able to put that money back with our tax return, we decided on a little treat for knocking out not only one, but 3 of our annual goals for the year!!! (Replace our checking account padding, purchase the parts we needed to repair our desktop, and set aside money to fix a few things on Wanda, our 20+ year old clunker).

We turned that $50 into a nice new haircut for me, followed by dinner for SCB and I to Pei Wei... and some V-day clearance/holiday cheer.

We made our own Chocolate covered strawberries with supplies from the grocery store, picked up a heart shaped door hanger that I can put up next year, and I got a valentines holiday headband on clearance!

Yup, $50 free and clear and we decided to blow it and spend it.

and it was awesome.

Especially since I don't have to account for those receipts and stuff in our budget because it  was rewards money... and speaking of money, we got a refund check for $52.53 from our mortgage's escrow account!

Just out of the blue!

After challenging my property taxes last year we got $60 credited to our escrow account that I forgot to request and apply to our mortgage principle. Since we had a slight increase this year in our tax bill, we ended up getting back $52.53.

Since SCB's parents are in town this weekend so we will most likely do lunch out with them once... and the rest will be going towards a shirt that SCB REALLY wants.

Hopefully this will end our mini spending splurge and we can get back to our next saving goal... which is Wanda. We technically still have more than enough money from our tax return to cover what we originally planned to do to Wanda... but we should also take her in for her annual service check up and we might need to get her new breaks and buy the parts needed to fix the trunk and a few other minor issues to make our life easier with her.

So that's our next focus. :)

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Mortgage Update! (Feb_13)



Principle paid down: $168.26
Interest: $482.38
Additional Principle: $54.22

New Balance: $110,077.99

The pay off date is now November 2038 which is 10 months ahead of the initial schedule. If I continue to pay the minimum on my loan, I will pay $111,237.83 in interest instead of the original $116,404.23. The extra $1,592.55 I've tossed at the mortgage over the life of the loan has saved us $5,166.40 in interest to date.

All in all, it took me $7,057.08 to get the keys to my condo... and another $17,672.29 to remodel and repair it...

In short, I was -$24,729.37 in the hole on day one...

But thankfully the hole is getting filled in a little bit each and every year.
  • In 2009 I got the First Time Home buyer's Credit giving us $8,000.00. I also got to write off some of the property tax I paid in addition to taking the standard deduction. This gave us an extra $90.10... but then I had to pay an Electrician $95.00 to fix an outlet... We also ended 2009 with a refund from my botched tile job that gave us another $1,265.00.
  • In 2010 I saved $1,087.00 on my federal taxes and $461.00 on my State taxes from itemizing my homeowners expenses. (This is what I received ABOVE what I would have with just the standard deduction).
  • In 2011 I spent $12.97 at home depot, and $72.29 on a kitchen door, when we subtract those costs from what we saved by living in our condo instead of renting, we came out ahead $494.04 (See Mortgage Update + Condo Costs December '11 for that break down.)  We also received a small $70 refund check from over paid closing costs. Since we tied the knot in 2011 we won't be able to itemize our housing costs so there's no savings there for us.
  • In 2012 we finished our Kitchen/Laundry door which cost us $103.24.. We also replaced both our glass slider doors which cost us $2,957.00... and repaired our dryer for $81.42....It ended up being $3,383.47 cheaper to OWN our condo than to rent an apartment on a monthly basis,  (See Housing Costs 2012 for the break down) so even after we subtract the windows and other minor repairs, we still came out ahead $241.81 by owning our condo instead of renting... 
  • In 2013 we got $52.53 back from challenging my property taxes in 2012.
Leaving us $13,062.89 in the hole...

If we assume our home is worth at least what we paid for it (which in this market you never really know...), then we have $9,922.01 in equity...

Leaving us only $3,140.88 in the hole after 3 years, 5 months.

For 2013, we will again assume our monthly mortgage payments are a wash since its cheaper to OWN our home then to RENT an apartment. Check out Housing Comps 2013 for how we figured that one out.

Thus far for 2013 we have spent $2,239.28 to live in our condo, instead of $2,722.00 to live in the apartment.
  • Mortgage (including P&I, Property Taxes, MIP, & additional principle:) $1,714.28
  • HOA:  $525.00
  • Small Home Repairs/Improvements:
  • Earthquake Insurance: $0
  • Homeowners Insurance: $0
As of today, we have saved $482.72 this year by not renting.

If I sold the condo tomorrow, I'd have to sell the property for $120,477.72 to break even. Which is darn close to what I paid for it in the first place!!!
  • This assumes a 6% total commission ($7,228.66)
  • and enough money to refund the amount we are in the hole for ($3,140.88)

Monday, February 18, 2013

Mid Month Update!

Us outside of Peter Pan...
(yup, all my friends are tall... what gives?)
 Life Updates:
I've been working really hard to get everything set up for SCB's wood turning business in the digital world these past few weeks. We now have a blog with hopefully weekly updates on what he's making and what we have in the works... and a pinterest board so people can like and re-pin his work to hopefully get the word out (We already got one sale through Pinterest so in my mind it was worth the effort)!

But besides all the work work work I've been doing, I've been making it a priority to have fun and enjoy life a bit and make me a priority. I got to go see Peter Pan up in LA with my friend because she ended up having an extra ticket! I felt bad abandoning SCB on a Friday night with very short notice, but sometimes you need to get away and have a girls night out-- especially a free one!

I also got to see one of my best friends who, because of work schedules and distance, I only get to see a few times a year. She came over and we grilled up some yummy burgers and gabbed. It did wonders for my sanity.

Me finding where SCB hid the
chocolate!-- No clue he was
watching me climb the counter to
find it though... sneaky man!
I've also been 1/2 marathon training for Childshare again and raising funds to boot! Instead of doing the full marathon like I have for the past 3 years, I've decided that being married, working, helping out at church, and planning Relay For Life are taking a lot of my time and energies, and if I attempted the full marathon, i'd drop like a fly. So my friend Jenny and I are doing the charity half marathon. She'll do the first leg, i'll do the second and together we will take a step for every child in the foster system in orange county... all 50,000 of them. If you don't know why Child Share is so near and dear to my heart, then you should check out the "about me tab" at the top and read my story and why I run so every child out there can have a good wonderful loving home. Consider donating and supporting us here! Our goal is to raise $2,500 and find a child a home.

Money Updates
We have been working really hard to be careful with our spending and I'm proud to report we have made some really great progress on replacing the money from our checking account that we needed to use to fix our car in December. We ended January with $239.03 left to put back.
  • We transferred the monthly interest from all of our now Capital One 360 accounts to our checking account. It was only a few dollars, but hey-- it gets us closer! Interest: $2.15
  • We also get our Car Registration bills in the beginning of the year and we lucked out. Both our bills decreased slightly so that extra money we would have needed to pay from our annual bills savings account got transferred to our checking. ($1 for SCB's car & $10 for mine): $11.00
  • We transferred the monthly interest from our emergency fund account at Sallie Mae: $12.78
  • I worked presidents day in January, so I had some holiday pay on the first paycheck we got this month. After paying our tax prep fees and a small $30 clothing trip to Walmart, we had $111.12 left so we immediately put this towards "the hole."
Leaving us left to find $101.98! Now that's some progress!

I was going to leave this update at that, but our tax return already hit our bank account and with that money, we are officially outta the hole... and working through some of our financial goals for the year!

Monthly Spending Thus Far:
Giving: $168.00
Gasoline: $97.15
Groceries: $188.03
SCB Health Insurance Premiums: $178.00
Tax Preparation Fees: $56.98
Mortgage: $857.20
Valentines Day: $8.50
Clothes: (SCG- $21.00, SCB- $9.07)
Electricity: $40.37
Date Nights/Eating Out: $35.00
Computer Parts: $297.32

We did a larger portion of our grocery spending for the month a bit earlier than normal. We did our once a month Walmart run to pick up on some pantry essentials, a Costco run for Dairy, & a trip to Fresh & Easy for our regular groceries. Since February is a shorter month, we should be okay since we only really have 4 weeks of shopping to do instead of 5 so i'm confident everything will balance out by months end if were more careful... plus Fresh & Easy just mailed out a bunch of $5 of $25 coupons, so we won't need to drop $40 in the store now and might get by with a lighter run for produce.

We also used some of our tax return money to order the computer parts SCB has been really wanting and some needing. Since he helped with our annual goal planning this year, including helping me prioritize some of our goals, this one was next on our list.

Financial Annual Goal Progress
(were working on the ones in bold now):
  1. Make one extra Mortgage payment this year:  ($54.22 / $650.64) 8.33%
  2. Put at least 15% of our income into retirement: 9.00% thus far (This will go up dramatically when I get my 2 "extra paychecks" ---I'm paid bi-weekly--- that we'll dump into my Roth IRA)
    1. Pension: $208.66
    2. Deferred Comp: $15.00
    3. Roth IRA: $ 233.34 / $5,000.00 
  3. Replace the money we borrowed from savings for the 2012 Car Repairs:  $571.83 Done
  4. Put money aside to cover the annual bills we just paid or shortly will: Done
    1. $81 SCB's Car Registration: $0 / $81
    2. $108 SCG's Car Registration: $0 / $108
    3. $60 Car SMOG Check : $0 / $60
  5. Save $300 to upgrade our computer that's been having issues lately.
  6. Save $100 to fix a few things on Wanda "our 22 year old clunker"
  7. Save $500 to go camping with the family in southern Utah this summer
  8. Save $1,500.00 for dental work for SCB
  9. Save $1,000.00 for future car repairs and the start of a car replacement fund.
  10. Save $300 for a winter trip out to Utah to visit family.
  11. After that, throw everything we have at our mortgage to try and get it under $93,600.00 so we can refinance and loose the MIP payments we currently pay. 

Fun Annual Goals Updates
  1. Find something new to crochet-- sweater, pattern, anything.
  2. Sew something from scratch or re purpose something I was going to toss out into something I'd wear.
  3. Cook or try to cook 6 new things or recipes
  4. Read / Enjoy 6 new books
    1. Sabriel by Garth Nix (audio book)
    2. Lirael by Garth Nix (audio book)
    3. Abhorsen by Garth Nix (audio book)
  5. Loose weight (or just get the scale to 148 lbs and stay there or under)
    1. at 152, so 4 more to go! (and that's on my work scale fully clothed with shoes and everything!) I'm already smaller than I was at my wedding!
  6. Change my last credit card to my married name
  7. Grow a garden with my neighbor
  8. Complete a half marathon in 3 hours and 30 minuets or less.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Valentines Day, Our Way

To many, Valentines day is all about spending money on your loved ones, buying flowers, candy, teddy bears, and lots of red and pink heart shaped items...

and in truth, if SCB had free will on the subject, he'd be in line somewhere trying to plan a grand occasion for the two of us... complete with roses, teddy bears, and who knows what else... But that doesn't fit our budgets and priorities this year... so we decided to pass on buying V-day junk... and be a bit more practical this year. 

Yes, I got a nice v-day card and a small rose plant that we picked up for $0.99, (and he got a bag of peanut butter M&M's)... but we put that as our limit. Anything else heart and valentines day themed that enters our house will do so after Feb 15th on a post Valentines day clearance post V-day sale -- and only if we feel the need to.

So what did we decide to do? Use the money we would have spent on full price valentines day clutter to buy some things we needed/wanted instead.

SCB got a grey long sleeve pull over (something that's on the thin side) because he's been a bit chilly in the house in the mornings and feels too hot in a sweatshirt and too funny in a jacket when he's wearing pj's. He found it on clearance for $9 and has worn it almost every day it hasn't been in the wash so I call that a win.

I on the other hand have been really wanting a pair of brown leggings to wear under some of my slightly shorter dresses to make them more church appropriate... and since I've lost a few pounds and inches already, I've been wearing my brown cinch belt to take in some of the baggier clothes--- and a brown belt doesn't match well with black tights... So I found a pair of brown leggings for $6 at Walmart... and while we were there, I found two running shirts on clearance for $3 a pop (I originally had 4 in my hand and put 2 back because in truth, I'd only really need 2)... and I found a plain long sleeve brown t-shirt that I can layer under my work shirts for extra warmth in the mornings for $5. (We picked up the long sleeve shirt because it was the only small left on the table and I was really excited to go from a Med to a Small in their basic T-shirt size!)

and that was that.

For dinner, we just cooked and ate in and had a normal night together and I didn't feel like I missed out on anything because our dinner wasn't served on heart shaped plates with a "special" menu.

While we don't know what next year will look like for us financially, for this year were happy with our version of "Valentines Day."

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Annual Credit Report monitoring time!

It's a new year folks and if your like me you know what that means...

It's time to take advantage of our free opportunity to access a copy of our credit report from each of the 3 national credit agencies to make sure no one has stolen our identity and tried to go shopping!

The free website is annualcreditreport.com

Once a year you can visit each of the 3 major credit agencies and check out your information. Some people like to do one every 4 months or so, but i'm kind of forgetful so I tend to run them at the beginning of the year when I remember to actually do them! 

I thought it was a bit funny trying to get the information from my husband to run his checks for him... because at 26 he has never pulled his credit report in his life... and didn't know that you could do so for free... or why you should take the 5 minutes to look it over.

I didn't really know what i would find with his, but thankfully no one has taken his identity and ruined his credit. He only had like 3 accounts to glance at... unlike the 16 or so that are listed on my report that i needed to go through to make sure that they were ones I had opened and that the opened ones were open and the closed accounts closed...

Happily all were in good standing and only the addresses I've lived at were listed.

All in all it took 15 minutes max to do ours and you should do the same!

Monday, February 11, 2013

I get really bad gas mileage...

I have a 2004 Toyota Camry that we affectionately refer to as Stitch since its blue and I like to think that I'm a decent driver. I don't shoot off when the light turns green and I try to slowly start and stop my car when driving. (I might still tailgate occasionally  but i'm getting better at it!)

After driving out to Utah over the Christmas holidays and seeing my car get over 400 miles on a tank of gas, I was a happy camper...

I took advantage of cruise control and highways and the 400 miles we got out of my car on every fill up could have easily been more since we never once hit the gas light in between fill ups because that's just not smart driving when your away from home and not familiar with the area.

But this week I hit the gas light on my car since I was trying to only fill it up once last month so we could send a bit more money to savings to help get our accounts get back in order...

But back in California gas is approaching the $4 a gallon mark AGAIN. I don't care what the national average is, we are paying between $3.83-$3.99 a gallon for gas in Southern California (with the lower end being the costco price!).

When I last filled up my car, the gas light had come on after my car only went 289 miles... By the time I got to our local gas station my car was at 299 miles... I filled up the slightly larger than 15 gallon tank and did the math.

My average city mpg is 19.5 miles...

OUCH!!!

Being so close to work, I only drive about 10 or 12 miles to get there, than another 10 or 12 to get home so my car never really "warms" up and i don't do very much highway driving at all.

We try and take SCB's beater car when we go out and about to save the miles on the Camry and so Wanda gets driven around while SCB isn't working at the moment... but even then, Wanda barely hits the freeway and despite being 20 plus years old, gets pretty good gas mileage and has a smaller tank to boot as well. (It helps that she's a stick shift)... but even with her just doing city mileage, she gets way better mpg. (too bad I can't drive her... we tried to teach me but because she's so old i'm actually too short to drive her around).

So i'm driving Stitch to and from work, and getting poor mileage... which is one thing in and of its self... but then I heard the news about how the government is thinking of imposing a new tax on fuel efficient cars-- a per mile fee... (they claim its so they have more money for road improvements)... and i'm upset. We have been thinking about possibly trying to get a hybrid in hopefully 5 plus years when one of the cars dies if we need to be a 2 car family, and one of the perks behind a fuel efficient car, is the gas savings.

(Now we haven't done research to see if the savings outweighs the cost of the hybrid car and the repairs, so don't worry... we aren't jumping the gun or anything here-- just a conversation in passing that our next car should get better city mpg)

But what I do worry about is if they do impose this "per mile fee" on everyone, will they remove the gasoline tax? If they do, I might be for it since we don't drive a whole lot... but it will screw over a lot of companies and truck deliverers for sure...

But I bet they won't remove the gasoline tax, so people who have bought hybrids will get double taxed... and another thing, (since i'm already ranting and its on topic) I'm not sure why gas is so expensive when a few years ago oil was selling for the same price per barrel... If its the same price per barrel... shouldn't it be similar in terms of price per gallon if its costing them the same amount to make???

Are you feeling the pinch at the pump?

Friday, February 8, 2013

Tackling our Taxes

We bit the bullet and tackled our taxes...

I know that most PF bloggers out there don't pay to get their taxes done, but we pay for turbo tax. Why? Because i have an account with Vanguard so its a bit cheaper to do it through Turbo tax because they have an advertising deal (we paid $56.98 for our Federal and State returns together) and I feel I understand the program enough to use it... where I don't with the paper forms. For some reason my state return is always wayyyyyyy off if I don't do the state return with my federal return because I miss things I can deduct so for us, its worth the $50 or $60 we pay to use the software.

Despite the fact that we have a mortgage and now make charitable contributions to our church, for 2012 we ended up taking the standard deduction again because we saved more money doing that... but of course that doesn't mean that I didn't write in all our deductions into turbo tax just to double check. *wink*

I have to say I was a little worried while we were adding everything up for our wood turning business because I knew our expenses were more than our income and I wanted to make sure we had all our receipts for the business printed and saved in case we get audited... but other than that, it wasn't bad at all.

I broke it up over a few days, entering information as we got everything squared away. I think i'11 be more prepared for next year now that I've gone through the process with our business once.

Either way, my husband truly loves me every time I do the "scary adult things" like taxes and our finances.

I'm just bummed that every year I think i'll get more out of the savers credit then we actually end up getting (again, $200 this year instead of the $1,000 I thought it would muster???)... but hey, if the government thinks i'm too poor to save for retirement and wants to thank me for being responsible, so be it. If SCB gets a real job in 2013, I think our income will prevent us from qualifying so its best to just smile and take what we can get.

So on to our numbers:

Federal:
Adjusted Gross Income $ 41,506.00
Federal Taxable Income $ 22,006.00
Effective Tax Rate 5.38%

State:
Taxable Income $ 29,784.00

Effective Tax Rate 0.61%

We should be getting $1,200 back between both our State and Federal return... so that should really help us with some of our goals once we get the money direct deposited into our accounts.

I know its bad to get a tax return because your giving the government an interest free loan, but with SCB having unemployment and a few other smaller gigs, we just weren't sure how things would pan out so we left everything the way it was last year just to make sure we weren't going to owe money... especially with the business and having to pay self employment taxes and the like.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Food in January...

I have no idea if this will be a regular posting feature because I tend to get lazy and forget to do things with the receipts I pick up, but with food prices being what they are, and with our main grocery store on the possible fritz (fresh & easy isn't sure if it will be staying open much longer), I thought it might be nice to try and keep track of what we buy each month... and from where so we can get a good price long built so we know what to buy and where to buy it.

Plus it will be nice to see how long things last and when they need to be replaced.

I know this sounds silly, but I didn't know that Costco sold block cheese in other flavors than Colby jack until last week. Why is that? Because they put the name brand cheese in one area of the store, and the Kirkland in the other...

I have been passing the 2 lb block of Kirkland sharp cheddar there every week thinking it was some sliced cut up stuff because it was hiding from me... near the shredded and sliced cheese prices that are expensive... and I assumed those prices where the block cheese prices...

*** smacks hand to forehead***  

Mistake corrected.

We won't be buying cheese at Fresh & Easy anymore because its WAY cheaper at Costco since we eat a lot of cheese even though its just my husband and I :)


As for Fresh & Easy... I really hope they make it as a store... I'd hate for them to close their doors and for me to have to go back to *crazy* shopping...  (ie, having to go to 5 stores in a single weekend to get the best prices on everything because then we would have to really shop by the ads so we didn't get stuck paying $4.99 for chicken breasts ...... (please stay Fresh & Easy)... 





Monday, February 4, 2013

Capital One 360 Fail


So you all know that ING Direct was "acquired" by Capital One some time ago... and this month they finally swapped their name so ING Direct is no more... its now Capital One 360...

It's a sad day and I mourn the loss of my orange bouncy ball and my simple banking... Why? because they have already failed and its only day one.

Earlier this month I pulled paperwork at Vanguard to start moving some of my funds from my first Roth IRA to my new Roth IRA at Vanguard. I called and got all the things I needed from Vanguard (very helpful by the way), and then I called the folks at Capital One about any additional steps I needed to do to make the transfer happen... and they told me that no additional forms or paperwork were needed on their end and I simply needed to just send in Vanguards forms and all would be taken care of.

I called Capital One first because of the last time when I tried to move one 457 to another and ran into 6 months of red tape and bad phone calls and customer service issues--- and I didn't want to repeat the process. 

I asked again... They told me I was set to go.

So imagine my surprise when when I got the mail yesterday and found my paperwork from Vanguard had been returned with a letter telling me that I would need to get a "medallion" signature on all my forms because Capital One required it...

I looked at the papers feeling dumb... I had no idea what a "medallion signature" was and quite frankly when you have an online only bank, you can't really walk into an office and ask people to explain it and provide their John Hancock for you...

oh, and in case your wondering, a medallion signature is different than the signature a notary can do... It said so on the papers... so i was at a dead end and went to the internet.

According to Wikipedia,
In the United States and Canada, a medallion signature guarantee is a special signature guarantee for the transfer of securities. It is a guarantee by the transferring financial institution that the signature is genuine and the financial institution accepts liability for any forgery. Signature guarantees protect shareholders by preventing unauthorized transfers and possible investor losses. They also limit the liability of the transfer agent who accepts the certificates.
I decided to put the task on hold and run some errands with my husband instead because procrastination is the best solution sometimes :)

We had some funds that needed to be deposited for our small business (You can see what my husband makes here), so SCB and I went down to US BANK where his account is. The guy who originally signed us up for an account was there and was happily chatting away about the woodturning business with us while my husband deposited funds.

While we were chatting I just happened to bring up the medallion signature problem... and he said he could do it for me there! At no charge too!

the forms were in my purse so I whipped them out and handed them over... He let me use his computer to print off my latest account statement to prove the account was mine... then signed it and let us go on our way.

That's a customer service WIN in my books! 
Thanks US BANK!!!

If I liked their online interfacing and account set up more, I might consider trying to get rid of BOFA... since i only keep my accounts there because of my mortgage and the fact that I need a brick and mortar bank for peace of mind...  So if your reading this US Bank... model your website after capital one 360 and i'm yours :)

Friday, February 1, 2013

January Spending + Feb Budget

Knowing you need to find almost $600 in your monthly budget to get all your accounts back in order can really help you keep your spending in line... At least that's what it did for SCB and I this month! Our spending actually looks quite low, but some of that is because we got $75 in Christmas money that we didn't have to include in our budget and we were in Utah for a few days at the beginning of the month and that spending was included in our 2012 numbers because it was from our 2012 holiday trip to Utah.

Since we need to put $571.83 back into my checking account (the money from our December car repair bill), we tried to be good about not wasting food, eating in, and generally just trying to cut back as best we could. I think we only ended up tossing out a head a broccoli, some sour cream, and one yogurt! (which is really good for us, especially on the produce end!)

January didn't offer us any overtime or extra revenue coming in, so we just had to make due with our budget... (and no awesome new job for me either) so the goal this month was to try and get a bit closer to our goal of putting all that money back into the bank account. Its so much easier to do our monthly budget when I don't have to wait for a paycheck to clear my account before paying bills. I never realized how much easier it is for me until this month so and i'm glad to say we made some very good progress.
  • I ended up transferring $25.53 from my emergency fund checking account, which was the 2 months of interest that was just sitting in there from Nov/Dec to make it a fresh $12,500.00.
  • Since we paid our January health insurance premiums in November when we applied, we took the $178.00 we had budgeted in this month, and applied it back to our checking account reserves. This bill is now set to auto pay on the first of every month to my credit card, so Feb's bill will be paid in Feb.
  • Then we took the left over money from paying our monthly bills (electricity, cells, and Internet), almost $80 left over from our groceries and household items and around $60 left from gas purchases since we both managed to squeak by with only one fill up once this month!
All and all, that leaves us with only $239.03 to replace, hopefully by the end of next month. I worked the holiday in January, so hopefully we can take that extra income and toss it towards the hole next month. 

What we spent money on in January:
  • Groceries/Household Supplies: $158.34
  • Car:
    • Gasoline: $89.03
    • Car Registration: $81.00
  • Church Giving: $543 (We were out of town for DEC, so we cut Dec's Checks this month too)
  • Date Night/ Eating Out: $45.41 (we did 3 dates instead of 4 this month)
  • Cell Phones: $137.96
  • Internet: $35.14
  • Electricity: $44.52
  • House: 
    • HOA: $262.50
    • Mortgage: $857.08 ($54.22 Extra Principle)
  • Clothes:
    • SCG: $17.27
  • Other:
    • Utah Corrections Board: $50.00
Not too bad if I do say so myself :)

February Budget:
Our budget for Feb looks very similar to our January budget. I'm still waiting for for our city council to approve a small cost of living adjustment that will cover the increase we will be paying to our pensions this year... so I'll just assume the numbers will stay the same for Feb that they did for Jan.

Paycheck 1: $1,355.88
  • Mortgage (P&I, Property tax, MIP, & $54.22 in extra principle): $857.08
  • Giving: $136.00
  • Fast Offering: $10.00
  • Groceries/Food/House Items: $240.00
  • Prescriptions & Doctor' Visits Fund: $50.00
  • Date Night/Discretionary Money: 62.80
Paycheck 2: $1,355.88
  • Giving: $136.00
  • HOA: 262.50
  • Insurance (2 Autos, Earthquake, Homeowners): $129.00
  • Bills (2 Cell Phones, Electricity, Internet: $230.00
  • Christmas Savings: $50.00
  • Health Insurance: $178.00
  • Roth IRA: $233.34 
  • Birthday Savings fund: $12.96