Annual Goals Update from 2020

We set some goals for the year, and then we had 2020 -- the year of the unplanned EVERYTHING. Which naturally affected the progress on our annual goals... but before I update you all on what we spent for the year (ya, I tracked it), and set some new goals for 2021 and attempt to update the blog regularly again, lets all laugh back at what we thought would happen in 2020 before the pandemic.  

Put all of our savings accounts we borrowed from back. Emergency Fund: $5,175 & Vacation: $1,500

Well, we managed to get this done by March with extra paychecks and tax returns... and then in October, we had to buy hubs a new to us car... Our amazing mechanic was finally unable to source parts to replace worn out pieces on the car. After a new water pump went in and an oil change in May, we knew that would be our final repair. Our mechanic said "you got between 6 hours and 6-months and it will just die... and when it does, your towing it to a junk yard." So we kept our eyes peeled on SEVERAL different car types and in prices because we didn't have the cash to buy a long term car like we wanted. After test driving several cars, we faced the inevitable. Hubs WANTED a Subaru Forester and I couldn't find a car in our budget range that he actually FIT into that wasn't a Subaru Forester. 

We ended up finding a used 2019 one with 9,000 miles on it -- and we bought it 2 days before we would have had to pay the renewal DMV stickers on the Escort -- which was also the same day the car almost didn't start on his way home from work. The Dealer gave us $100 for the old car on a trade in and we forked over $9,000 in cash and have an AUTO LOAN for the balance.

I know what your thinking... how could you get a car loan, right?

1. It's Temporary.
2. We planned the payments.
3. We CAN pay if off right now if we have to... but this is our 2021 mission.  

First off, this car loan is temporary. We may have a four year loan, but we plan to have this paid off by the end of 2021. It's  $18,794.20 at 0.99% APR for 4 years. Because we bought used and a base model, we got a very low interest rate (and have good credit), but because of Covid, we didn't want to drain our emergency fund to pay cash right away in case we needed cash... and we didn't want to buy another clunker only to have to replace it in 5 years.

• We plan to remove most of this loan with our tax return, extra paychecks, regular monthly car payments, and our 2021 profit share check from hubs work -- which should be substantial as they haven't had a year THIS good since before the great recession. His boss also just told us last week that he's getting a 5% raise cause it was such a good year and he's been busting his butt!
• Over the course of the LIFE of the loan, we will pay only $382.33 in interest. This was a fee we were HAPPY to pay, to have our savings stay in our account until the profit share check comes in to knock out most of the loan, if not the whole thing. Its a peace of mind fee that we are chalking up to 2020. (it's less than $20 a month in interest right now and it shrinks over time, no joke). 

Secondly, we controlled the payment. WE TOLD the dealer what the payment would be, and asked how much they needed down to make the payment work. We didn't accept a payment and a 6 year loan or whatever. We have regularly been saving over $400 a month towards a new car for several years (first it was mine, then it was saving $9k towards his) -- so we know we can handle that amount on a monthly basis with flex. To keep the payments at $399 and change a month, they needed $9k -- which was what we had saved up at the end of October with hub's extra paycheck.  

Third, we could take the $20k in our emergency fund and write a check tomorrow --- but that would make me nervous. I wouldn't sleep right at night, and I listen to my gut on those issues, so our 2021 goals will be eliminating the car payment. 

Start saving for hub's next car.... (ya, kind of bought it already) Meet Tess :)

Old Car....

New to US Car

Finish painting the interior Doors - Ya'll, this actually happened!

Just before we did the tile floors, I got everything painted!!!! 

Seal our Concrete - Yup, our floors got sealed. 

I just posted the re-cap update on that one, but we have sealed floors and tile now... no longer walking on concrete is a step up if you will mind my pun. 

Things on hold:

• Purchase living room built ins -- and then do base boards: These are on hold as we now have a car payment.... and had to pay almost $8,000 for the new floors in our condo.... So we are cash strapped at the moment and don't spend money unless we have it.  

After those goals were supposed to be done, our plan was to Jack up retirement to 15% without counting matches and make our mortgage a 15 year term to pay it down faster...

• We changed hub's retirement contributions to 15% at some point during 2020, despite still paying $700 a month for daycare cause virtual school half day and weird schedules and no remote options means extended daycare for little dude. But we stopped Roth IRA contributions to my account after 2 months for more flexibility when the car was on the fritz. 
• We also refinanced our mortgage to take advantage of better interest rates, so a full post on that is coming soon. 

So not too shabby from the year we never thought would never end. 

I opened a money market account

Back before three year olds, I used to be more up to date on savings accounts, interest rates, and where was the best place to park my funds.

Well, now that time runs on a whole different circuit with little dude, I'm not so savvy and up to date. I was scrolling through my facebook feed in a 5 minutes for mom moment, and clicked on a random finance article otherwise know as "click bait sponsor ad thing"... and it actually had helpful info in it!

I found out that there were some money market accounts (MMAs) offering interest rates above 2%. The one in the article was from a bank I recognized at 2.10% so, instead of using those affiliate click bait links, I pulled up bankrate.com on our PC and did a quick check on their list of current high yield Savings/MMAs.

Sure enough, the link from the story was 5th from the top. Right underneath it, was capital one with 2% interest.

I already have my emergency fund with capitol one...

(and like 19 other savings accounts)... But that money is only earning 1% in a savings account.

After a quick browse through the top contenders, I could get a higher rate of return with a bank I've never heard of... but considering I had already wasted my 5 minutes of mom time, I opted for simple. I logged into to my existing account, opened an MMA, and had our emergency fund money moved over and instantly linked to all of my existing bank accounts with capitol one... and doubled my interest rate.

In a given year, we would have earned around $170 on our emergency fund because we keep the whole darn thing liquid like your supposed to do.

• It's just shy of 6 months of bare bones living expenses including paying out of pocket for health insurance assuming we both loose our jobs. 
• I don't believe in "investing" my emergency fund because an emergency can happen at anytime, and I don't want to watch it loose $$$$ overnight because someone in congress did something and the market decided to revolt. I like to sleep at night knowing my $$$ is still there.  
• Aa a general rule of thumb, any money you need to access for a purchase that isn't more than 3 years away, should be liquid. 
• Soap box rant complete.

So, since I refuse to invest that cash for practical purposes, moving it to an MMA is a no brainer, considering we will now earn about $340.00 for doing nothing.

Now sure what the difference between an MMA and a Savings Account is? You can watch the video on this website. It's straightforward and under 2 minutes long and it would take me way longer to type out what they did in an awesome video. (your welcome)

So for that little nugget of info, thank you facebook click bait.

Tax Time

We filed our taxes at the end of January... and as I alluded earlier, its a pretty significant chunk of change. We are getting over $4,000 back!

FEDERAL BREAK DOWN:
Adjusted Gross Income $ 85,706.00
Taxable Income $ 52,995.00
Total Tax $ 5,414.00
Total Payments/Credits $ 8,971.00
Amount to be Refunded $ 3,557.00
Effective Tax Rate 6.32%

STATE BREAKDOWN:
Taxable Income $ 66,776.00
Total Tax $ 1,048.00
Total Payments/Credits $ 1,972.00
Amount to be Refunded $ 924.00
Effective Tax Rate 1.23%

$4,481 back to be exact!!!!

So where is it all going? 

To savings cause we are boring people.

Specifically, $1,000 is going to replenish our medical savings account that we drained when we payed for hubs' dental work... which we still need to finish... and will soon...

$725 will go to replenish our vacation fund...

and the $2,756 remaining will be dumped into our Slush fund so we can finish Hubs' dental work. This move buys us a little time to to wait and earmark the $$$ for something more specific. We kind of want to wait to do anything with the money until we see what actually happens with his profit share check in March.

Regardless, February will be a good month for us. I sold over 100 hours of vacation time back and selected February as the month to receive it during last years "sell your time off" enrollment period.

We chose to sell vacation time for the first time to make sure we could afford to send little dude to preschool in the fall. We were looking into a few options and felt a month or so more in savings to cover enrollment and any deposits would be a good idea. I'll post more in more details on this decision at a later date.

I don't remember the last time this happened...

No, really I couldn't remember so I went back to my transaction history and did some digging... Well apparently my "history" only goes back to 2015 when ING was bought by Capital One.... which is really lame if you ask me... so I did some digging and here's a flash back to 2008 when you could earn 3.3% on liquid money... Holy Cow!

Savings Accounts

Now that we have received most of tax return (California has still not sent us our $600 back yet, which is kind of frustrating because we got our federal return back weeks ago and they has already accepted our return, so we aren't sure what the hold up is) and our glorious annual profit share check, it's time to get an update on our savings accounts...

All 19 of them....

Ya, we have 19 savings accounts... That sounds like over kill, but thankfully all are at the same bank but it makes it much easier for me to give every $1 a name in our budget. They are my virtual envelopes if your a Dave Ramsey fan. We don't keep one for everything (you won't find a grocery or a gas savings account), but they give me a place to stash our cash for intended future purposes.

We keep accounts for our once a year bills that we save for on a monthly basis to make sure we don't accidentally spend the money on other items and things; others  are "reserve" funds for specific items such as car repairs, cell phones (we use prepaid cell phones so we go a couple months, then spend $80 or $90 on minute cards); daycare (in case we have a small paycheck without overtime, or need to cover for a last minute babysitter) or smaller things like annual car registration and smog fees. This is also were we park of Emergency Fund so its 100% liquid.

I'm happy to report that all our sub savings accounts are at desired levels, minus our car repair fund -- so any extra cash we have at the end of the month will be diverted there until it hits $1k. 

• New Car Fund: $3,638.00
• Our "Extra Paychecks" get deposited here since both our cars are 10+ years old and are rocking over 100,000 miles.
• Medical Savings: $1,000.00
• Used for Doctors, Dentists, and Vision Necessities.
• Roxy: $1,000.00
• Our pup emergency fund. I'm glad we have this, we just spent over $400 on her at her last vet visit because she needed special allergy shots and some tests because she was vomiting and not well. We used our profit share check to bring it back up to $1k.
• Vacations: $1,500.00
• Trips to visit family or fun family local excursions. We replenish this as needed, but I love having it set aside so if an opportunity arises and we need to go see family immediately, we aren't worrying how to pay for it.
• Emergency Fund: $16,757.55
• You can view this post for how far it will get us. 
• Utility Bill Extras: $400.00
• Our buffer for high summer electricity costs. 
• Daycare: $838.79
• I like having a full month on hand saved up in case we have a sudden emergency, a job loss etc. since we have to provide written notice of termination of care.
• Slush Fund: $2,450.00
• Car Repairs: $348.18
• We have $100 a month out into this account each month, but we always seem to drain it and need our slush fund to cover repairs, so well be focusing on keeping this at $1k and then adding to it.

Do you use multiple savings accounts to keep track of our funds?

We made it! Emergency Fund Update

Despite the holidays and Christmas shopping, a $1,286.12 car repair bill, an almost $200 Vet bill plus medications and the itch to spend that always follows the holidays... I'm proud to say we were able to increase our emergency fund by the full $2,000 we were planning to do by years end.

For 2015 we will still need to add to it to bring it to about 6 months of expenses for our growing family.... but it feels good to make progress there. 

So what does 6 months of expenses look like for our family? (This assumes we both get laid off at the same time...)


Mortgage: $771.99
HOA: $295.00
Groceries: $300.00
Gasoline: $250.00 (to find a job)
Cell phone: $60.00
Utility Bills (electricity, burner cell, internet): $150.00
Insurance Savings: $ 157.99
Roxy Savings: $50.00
Doctors Savings: $50.00
Car Registration Savings: $25.00
Covered California Family Plan (Cheapest offered): $507.00

(the "savings" listed are our annual bills we pay broken down monthly which depending on when the layoff would occur, would could come due in a 6 month period.)

If we estimate diapers and baby stuff to cost us $100 a month and just round up a little...

We need our emergency fund to be $16,500.00.



If South County Boy were to loose his job tomorrow, we could get by with him being a stay at home dad to watch Eli and I could put the whole family on my work insurance plan, but it would be very tight since they only have fully covered plans. We would have to be VERY careful with not going over our budget and we wouldn't have money set aside for certain categories like we do now... so some purchases would end up coming out of our emergency fund and the only way to replenish that would be with 2 extra paychecks I get twice a year.

If I were to loose my job, after South County Boy adds the family onto his work insurance plan, we are only left with around $750.00 a month coming in, so we would essentially be pulling $1,967 out of our emergency fund each month.. and at that rate it would last us just over 7.3 months before it ran out at current levels. Once we get it up to $16,500 it would last 8.3 months.

Annual Goal Revision & Update

I thought it was time as i'm getting back on track to review our annual goals and make some amendments now that we are pregnant. This way we can get a good look at what we want to do with our income instead of somehow letting it slip through our fingers.

The original 14 for 2014:

1. Max out a Roth IRA for SCB for 2013 
2. Respect the Dirty Dozen and buy Organic 
3. Keep our EF in tack and round it up to $12,500.00
4. Participate in the Dumbo Double Dash w/ SCB 
5. Max out my Roth IRA for 2014
6. Max out SCB Roth IRA for 2014
7. Try to live off my income and save/invest SCB's. 
8. Visit family in Nauvoo Illinois
9. Save $1,000 towards a new car
10. Remodel our bedroom and closet.
11. Try 3 new vegetables
12. Toss a little more money to the mortgage
13. Be an awesome bridesmaid
14. Be better about doing more "Mormon" things.

I crossed off the items we have finished or are still doing...

We did meet the deadline for the 2013 Roth IRA for SCB and transferred $5,500 into a brand new shiny retirement account for him.

In an effort to get healthy, we have been buying mostly organic items, but definitely those from the dirty dozen list. There may have been a month or so in my pregnancy were it wasn't 100% followed, but I say its been a good change for us.

Our emergency Fund is sitting at $12,500.00, which is 6 months of a bare bone budget scenario where we pay just our mortgage, groceries, gasoline, 1 cell phone, utility bills, and save for our annual insurance, dog savings, medical savings, and our car registration savings. If you factor in the additional $2k we have as "padding in our checking accounts" we have a realistic 6 month Emergency fund if we were to both lose our jobs at the same time. The only thing this doesn't factor in is health insurance... which now it needs to with the new legal requirements. If only one of us loses a job, our emergency fund will stretch much further since we would still have income coming in and access to some type of health insurance for our family, so I won't worry about that for the moment. The problem would be if we both lose our jobs because we would only have one option for health insurance... Covered California.

• The cheapest plan would be $507 a month based on our area prices, which means we would need to save an additional $3,000 to have a true 6 month emergency fund since I don't like to include the checking account padding in the figures... (looks like I have our first 2015 goal in mind.)

We had to cross off the dumbo double dare when it sold out... and we ended up eating over $300 in our 1/2 marathon tickets because of our little goober and the august heat that made doing the 1/2 marathon a bad decision for me and SCB.

We also removed both goals for 2014 Roth IRA's. Its more important to get things done now and to save up cash if we can for the EF and for the baby for 2014 before attempting these items again. We are still doing SCB's 401k 6% with a 3% match... and my Pension which is about 8% of my income.

I think we have done well with only committing to expenses that fit within my income (AKA living on my income and saving SCB's)... I'll admit that we had a few spendy months recently, but we are getting back on track and its a good thing too with the holidays coming around the corner.

Some of our goals this year did focus on spending. We went on a vacation to visit family, finished most of the bedroom and closet remodel, spent the money on being an awesome bridesmaid, and spent more than 1600 on automobile repairs this year. I'm proud to say we have $400 in car emergency fund now. It might not be the full $1,000.00 we want, but considering how much we had to spend, i'm calling that goal achieved.

We did try 3 new veggies this year.. Jicama, Kale and fresh green beans. Technically I've had fresh green beans at restaurants or at friends houses, but I'd never cooked and prepared them and I did this year so for me, that counts.

As for more "church/Mormon things" we have been to 4 different temples this year besides our home temple in Newport (Nauvoo, San Diego, Mount Timpanogous, Draper, etc). Did some work and family history for my ancestors, and have made a point to make daily prayer with each other a bigger priority. Always room for improvement, but I like what we have been up to.

I didn't mark off "send some extra to the mortgage" because while i add a few cents each month, i've only tossed around $14 to the mortgage in extra and I feel in order to do that goal justice, it needs to be a bit more significant.

So where does that leave us?
Kind of done, (other than sending a bit of cash to the mortgage which doesn't seem as important at the moment so i'll probably just ignore it for the year...)... which is why its good to check on your goals throughout the year. Sometimes they change... and sometimes you blow through them early by being diligent. Sure, we deleted 11,000 in saving that we wanted to do... but we realistically knew that would probably need to carry over into 2015 again.

Since we still have 2 and a half months left of 2014... and we want to make the most of them, here's kind of our game plan.

• In October, Goober's nest/nook will be ready for furniture and baby stuff. 
• In November, SCB will get the murphy bed frame for our bedroom... and we plan to do a large food storage order to stock up on some better and more diverse basics now that we will have a bigger family and we like the idea of having more basics around the house to help keep costs down throughout the year. 
• In December I plan to have our carpets professionally cleaned because we have had the carpet for over 5 years and its never been cleaned before and some spots and walk ways are really showing their age and some stains. 

But here's the kicker. We would also like to add $2k to the emergency fund by the end of the year. 

• We are going to take the Roth IRA money we normally save and put it towards the Emergency Fund: October, November, December = $825.00
• We have $300 sitting in the Roth savings account right now after pulling most of the money out for our IKEA run... $825 + $300 = $1,125.00
• I have an extra paycheck coming in this month. We are hoping to take $800 from it and apply it to this goal. 
• That means we only need $75 to make it there and we are hoping by being good with our budget that we will be able to come up with that cash by years end.

If we save more, awesome... but we aren't planning to since we don't know how much we will end up spending as we finish projects up and we hunt for some more second hand things for the nursery nook.

Another Windfall

More money! Its just so exciting!

You see, I haven't turned in my mileage for work since November. For those of you who don't know, when I have to use my personal vehicle for work, my job will reimburse me based on each mile I drive. Some of my co-workers don't bother to keep track, but I do... It's generally just a few dollars, but rather a few dollars in my pocket then not I say.

If I have to run to another center to drop off money or pick something up... or say attend an offsite meeting... I just keep a little notebook in my car and write it down. It takes me just a moment to keep track of and I normally will turn it in every other month of so... only this time I hadn't turned anything in since November!

I know, I know... its really bad of me, but I have been so busy that every time I got a free moment to do it, I always got distracted and then it became this thing I never wanted to tackle and the list of trips just kept getting longer... which made me want to do it even less....

At the beginning of the month I thought we were still going to need to "find money" to make the Roth IRA deadline... so I bit the bullet and did all 6 pages or reimbursement requests...

...

and I got a check for $128.57

It might be a hassle for some, but $128.57 returned to my pocket is kind of awesome right now.

Profit Sharing

I wish their was a word I could type that would convey the sounds of angels descending into our bank account. You know those movie moments where the sound effects literally make the scene? So lets just insert one of those here:

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

The profit sharing check arrived... and blew our expectations out of the water.

Now before I tell you how much it is, MOST of the check goes towards taxes because it's considered a "bonus..." and remember, this check is only for him working half the year.... so we can assume next year might be double the amount we received... which was

$2,200.00

or

$1,314.50 after taxes

YES! 

Operation 2013 Roth Ira... End of January Report.

So how did we do after buying a vacuum and paying over $400 to register for the Disney Half marathon...? I'll tell you.

We made our January benchmark goal of sending $1,275.00 to the Roth IRA fund.

I have no idea how we did it... we over spent on groceries and I knew we spent more then just that one extra paycheck we knew we were getting from SCB since we had to register for the 1/2 marathon (and not the Dumbo Dash because it sold out).

So how did we get to $1,275?

I knew we had budgeted $275 from one of my paychecks to go to his 2013 Roth, because we normally have that money go to mine. As soon as that paycheck hit my account, I transferred the money over and deducted it like a bill so I wouldn't forget... We also had a few dollars of interest sitting in the savings account that we normally use to hold the money before transferring it over to Vanguard. With that we were at $278.27... which meant $996.73 to go.

Since SCB's last paycheck wouldn't hit out account until Friday the 31st, on the 29th I cut off our monthly spending and added up the damage because I knew nothing else would be spent until Feb (our next date night was scheduled for Feb 1st).

After all of our spending and budgeted itemized saving was taken care (transferring money to insurance, Christmas, birthdays, vacations etc), we had, to my surprise $481.82 left in the checking account.

That's almost all of SCB's second paycheck (well minus the tithing check).

I went back to look at our budget numbers and despite overspending on groceries, we had a low gas month, didn't go crazy on eating out, & only had one cell phone bill to pay, so the lower other expenditures created a little cushion in our budget to help absorb the marathon costs...

Mix that in with the fact that we were able to swap out the vacuum from Costco for the cheaper identical one at Kohls made it all work out, especially since the 1/2 marathon was cheaper then the Dumbo Double Dare.

So if we send that $481.82 to his Roth IRA, we need $514.91 to meet out goal... and his last check will give us around $520 of disposable income after tithing...

Woot! It's like magic!

We are still on track for our goals for 2014!

We are taking back our vacuum...

I know we just bought it right? But don't worry it's not broken... and we love it... I just found a better deal on it.

I was browsing online at kohls.com because I have $20 in rewards bucks I need to redeem by the end of the month (leftover from Black Friday shopping that didn't get credited until Dec because they had a computer glitch). So as I was browsing, I found my vacuum on their site.

It normally sells for $699.99 but was on sale for $479.99... which with tax and their free shipping on purchases of $75 or more would ultimately be $7.20 less than what I bought it for at Costco. In my other post, I mentioned how our Costco bundle came with all these special attachments, right?

Well I don't like them.

In fact, I'm quite happy with the 2 standard ones it comes with as they suit all of my needs. So I started playing around with the idea of returning the Costco model and buying it at Kohl's because I could use my $20 in rewards... but the total savings would only end up being $27...

But then I remembered I had a 30% coupon for Kohls that came in the mail just the other day...

$699.99  $479.99 Sale
Minus $20 Rewards, $459.99
Minus 30% made it $321.99
and with tax the total the total would come to $347.75 with shipping

instead of $525.58

A savings of $177.83...

and I'd get $60 in Kohls Cash...
and my purchase should net me an additional $15 in Kohl's rewards because you get $5 for every $100 you spend...

And I wouldn't have to keep the attachments I'm not thrilled with...

So I clicked order...

New one should be here this week and I'm taking the old one back to costco for a refund.

They wanted how much for a Key???

We went to Utah to visit family and do some shopping the tail end of December. While we were there, South County Boy managed to bend his copy of my car key (the only spare key to the Camry) to the point were it would no longer start the car nor open the trunk.

We drove home using my keys and when I was out and about, I stopped into the Toyota Dealership to get a quote for making a new set of keys for my car.... and an additional car clicker, since SCB has always wanted one. I handed my keys to the service rep.

A sample of my key

A sample of my clicker

The man in the service department spewed off some numbers really quickly and said something north of $370 and told me it would take an hour. I thanked him for his time and promptly left.

Over $300 for a set? and the guy wanted like 70-80 bucks for just the key? Something couldn't be right... When I told South County Boy about the "quote" he decided to do some research. Apparently most keys now a days have these little chips in them that make them "special"... and so if you car has a chip in the key, copies made will only open the door, and turn the ignition....  (See this You Tube Video if you don't know what i'm talking about).

Since my key looked normal and not like the key in the video... and since SCB's newer Ford Escort "Sally" was currently being driven with a home depot copy key, we decided a little experiment was in order and well worth the possibility of flushing $5 down the toilet to avoid spending $100 for the same thing.

We walked into Home Depot and handed my car key to the clerk and asked him to make a copy. He grabbed a book, looked up our car, and pulled a key out. He told us it was his first time making a key and that he wanted to look everything up to make sure it was correct before trying since the regular key guy was busy. We hung around 5 minutes or so waiting for him to figure out the machine. He told us that they always "cut" the key twice to make sure it really matches the original and to make sure all the excess metal gets cut away.

When he was done, he handed the key to SCB and told him to go see if it would start our car before we paid, offering to try again if it didn't work. The door opened... the car started... so we made a second spare key... and it worked too...

I took both keys and checked out for a grand total of $4.69 with tax.

Talk about a difference. We drove home a few miles with the new key, and then I used the new copy to drive to work the next day, no problems.

Curious, since we still didn't have a second clicker, I called the dealership up on the phone to get a better idea of what they were really wanting to charge. I waited on hold for a while before I finally got a member of the service department to help us out. I asked him for a quote on how much it would cost to get a new key and clicker for my car.

He asked me what type of car I had and I told him an 2004 Camry... not a hybrid but an LE... When he came back, he told me it would be $60 for the key and $129 to program it. When I asked him how much it was for just the key and not the clicker, he was confused. Thankfully since I purchased my car there, he was able to pull up not just the exact make and model of my car, but my exact car. I then spent more time on hold before he told me it would be $43 for a key, $120 for a clicker, and $129 to program the clicker...

How does a clicker that's not also a key magically double the price? You would think a key-clicker combo would be more expensive than just a clicker right? I mean how does my first quote of $60 for a key/clicker combo become $120 for just a clicker since both have the addition of $129 for the labor to program it? (Not to mention how the first quote from the guy HOLDING my keys was $370????)

While I was thinking, he asked if I had the original and when I told him I did, he said good because keys have chips in them and without the Master Key, you can't make copies... We'd have to re-key the whole car...

Playing devils advocate, I asked why a regular old key without any power anything was $43... I mean "couldn't I" just go down to Home Depot and make a copy there? In response, the guy put on his "smart" voice and told me again that keys have chips in them, and if I were to make a copy, the copy would only turn the ignition, not start the car... Like in the you tube video.

When I asked him "what if it does start the car" the guy said, well then I guess its okay, but they don't do that. I had him re-quote just the clicker price to me and he told me again $120 the clicker, plus $129 for the labor to program it.

For now I'm thinking I some how just saved $40... (technically $80 because now I'm using a spare and my precious master key is in our safe now, along with the bent original spare key) ...

but anyone out there know more about cars than me?

Emergency Fund Update

I got to dump South County Boy's entire paycheck in our emergency fund... and now its at $12,189.47... or $20.47 away from being 6 months of bare bones expenses for us! It feels so much nicer to see that 12 out in front...

Already the air feels nicer and fresher... its good to have money in the bank!

Below is our bare bones budget if we both suddenly lost our jobs:

• Mortgage $771.99
• Roxy: $50.00
• Groceries: $250.00
• Prescriptions/doctors: $50
• Bills (Cell + Internet + Electricity) $150.00
• HOA: $270
• Insurance: $143.00
• Gasoline: $250
• Misc: $100

Total: $2,034.99 a month (times 6 months) $12,209.94. Eventually we will just bump it up to $12,500 just to keep it at a nice round number.

He got a raise!

SCB got a raise at work! 

Woot! Woot! 

When he was first hired at his job, they started him out at $10.50 and promised him they would review his compensation after he had been working there 3 months to see if he was a good fit for the company... and they kept good on their word.

They sat down and gave him a raise!

He's now getting $11.00 an hour, or a 4.76% raise.

I'm really excited for SCB since this is not only his first "real" (as he calls it) non-minimum wage job, but its also its first raise too!

With our new plan to save his entire income in 2014, this will help us grow our savings even more.

**Happy Dance**

I'm a genius

Did you remember a few weeks back when I wrote this post, Adventures in Dog Food... Well apparently I'm not the only one thinking about what goes into my pets bowl. I saw this on MSN Money today Does your dog need expensive food?...

Well apparently i'm just awesome.

Here's a quote from the article:

Ways to save

No matter what brand you buy, there are lots of ways to save. For example:

Shop big-box stores. Overall, Consumer Reports found better prices at Target and Wal-Mart than at PetSmart and Petco. Compare prices everywhere before you head to the specialty shops.

Buy generic. Store-brand dog food is often cheaper than other brands. Compare the labels on a store brand and a mid-range name brand. If they have the same nutritional content, you'll save money going generic.

What did we do? Just that!

... we shopped around
... we compared labels

and we went with that awesome generic and cheap brand from Walmart that had the quality we wanted for our pup.

After that post I thought it was funny that Walmart was mysterious running out of that brand of dog food for a week or two after I did that post...

So if you don't want to take my advice... you can listen to them!

Ditching the smart Phone part 2

If you remember back to last month, we mentioned how we were going to be Ditching our smart phones ... well, it finally happened and not a moment too soon...

Literally.

South County Boy began the process of "porting" (taking your old phone number to a new carrier) on July 8th. We waited until the 8th because our billing cycle would start over on July 13th and the process can sometimes take up to 48 hours to go through... and we wanted our smart phones for the last farmers market ---just in case--- while we tested out our portable internet on the go that we picked up earlier this month at Walmart to use with our square reader.

So we figured that would give us plenty of time since it normally only takes a few hours for the phones to port over. Sure enough, 4 hours later I was all set up with my Trac Phone.

But 24 hours later, South county Boy was not... and 48 hours later it still wasn't done and it was July 10th...

We called that evening after the full 48 hours and after hitting a slew of * and # keys to finally got someone real on the phone. We discovered our problem. South County Boy had typed in the wrong phone number to port...

Thankfully the gal was able to restart and open his ticket and told us it would take probably 4 to 24 hours for the transfer to go through...

After 24 hours passed we had to call again because we were worried.... I pressed a bunch more * and # keys... got hung up a few times... and then eventually someone told us we had to wait the full 48 hours before they could do anything since their computer showed it was still porting and being worked on.

That's when we started worrying... because the full 48 hours would end at like 5pm on July 12th... so if it didn't work, hello $100 phone bill for just a single day or two of service.

But we woke up and found out at 8 or 9 am on the 12th that number had ported over. I called Sprint to verify our cancellation and the lady wanted to know why we were not longer continuing with their service. When i told her we were going to trac phones for maybe $20 a month for both our lines with texting and we were just going to use our smart phones on a WiFi network for free she was a little speechless...

Heck, before my husband, I wouldn't have known that was possible and would have assumed that you had to have a contract and pay $50-$60 a month for a cell phone...

The only down side was having to enter in all our contacts since there is no little chip or disk we can insert. Other than that, its great. We have perfect reception and signal, the battery life is really good since its not a smart phone, and my old smart phone still updates my applications on WiFi and works like it always did-- its just not a phone anymore.

The bill I hate to pay the most is officially gone. I promised SCB that we would bump our home internet speed back up a level where it was before we cut it when money was tight now that we will have more things running off the home network. So next month I'll call Cox up and increase our speed a little bit. Well probably budget $30 a month for our phones. We have also been using our wall AC a bit more so when we get our next bill we will budget accordingly and take the extra after that and add it to our gasoline budget.

Guess I don't have to go to court on tuesday!

Sorry this post is a bit late today, but I had to re-write it now that i'm not going to court after all. Court you ask?Well if you remember last year, I petitioned my property tax value on our little condo:

• Challenging My property Taxes
• Challenging My property taxes part 2
• My Day in Court

and I won!!!! They agreed to reduce my condo's value down to $115,000.00 instead of $120,903.00 so I saved around $60.00 on my property tax bill.  When I got my property tax statement for 2012, I decided to petition them again.

• Property Tax Assessment Petition, year 2

I was planning on going to court on Tuesday to present my findings (based on property sales from 2011 values, up to March 30th of 2012 since you use the value the year before)... and instead I got a call from the assessors office. They said if I signed off on a value of $115,000 i wouldn't need to come into court... They would just process the change and issue me a refund.

Which works for me, especially since the lady told me the one "smoking gun" property I was going to use to state my case is outside the sell period i can use (its July 2012 and I need before March 2012-- I miss read the dates originally). Since the 2 bedroom units had such a degree of change (140k to 180k) she was fine signing off on $115K since that was the price the last one bedroom sold for.

The Details:

OLD:

Land: $77,093

Building/structures: $4628.00

Total taxable value: $123,321.00

NEW:

Land: $69,000

Buildings/Structures: $46,000

Total Taxable value: $115,000

I automatically get a $7,000 value discount for living in the property as a homeowner, so before the change, I'd owed $1,224.30 a year... and now I get to pay $1,137.53!

Which means I'll end up saving, $86.78 this year :) and now I get to just spend Tuesday at home playing catch up on blogs, crocheting some baby gifts, and getting some time with my pup-- instead of paying for parking and getting all nervous talking to a judge!!

It may seem silly to petition my property taxes over $86, but that's $86 I can send to my mortgage or put in savings... and if i'm being honest, I don't feel like I should pay more than I have to in property taxes if I'm willing to look into how the system works and follow all the rules and go through the process... which isn't that hard and the people at the office have been really friendly and informative. 

Most people don't even look at the details and just cut a check, but that's never been me. Speaking of bills, I got another notice in the mail from the tax assessor... but this time it was about 2013. They dropped my 2013 value from $125,787 to $123,321... and that's without me doing a petition. I was planning on petitioning because of the $100,000 property that sold in the time period, but since i did refinance this year I wasn't sure if I was eligible to petition. 

So I decided to call the assessors office and ask. 

I told the guy that I had successfully won my case the past 2 years and was wondering if I should go through the process again for a lower value for the current billing cycle based on the value of my property on January 1, 2013.  I told him I had refinanced in May of this year since the values had started going up after that date and he said he would have an assessor look into it and call me on Monday since I had already received a new lower rate notice and I was able to give them the properties I would bring with me to court over the phone. (it makes my research much easier when only 2 one bedroom units have sold in my complex since I bought my place 3.5 years or so ago.)

So who knows... maybe i'll save a bit for for this past cycle too and I won't have to fill out the petition! 

I won't be able to petition for 2014 since the values went up and i used that to refinance with, but if they drop mine for 2013 and just average the 3 properties (mine bought at $120k, another at $115k and the last one at $100k that would knock my value down to $112k -- so who knows! Either way their new notice saves me $25!

Adventures in Dog Food

My husband and i were talking with some people from our doggie circle (aka- the neighborhood pets from all the condos that gather in the park after work to play and visit) ... about pet food.

We know that MEAT should be the first ingredient in a "quality" dog food and when we first got Roxy, we didn't have all the time in the world to compare every bag of food in the store since she was so scared at first. We just took some advice from the people in the store and grabbed a small bag from the "Better" section (At pet smart they segregate their dog food by aisle. Good dog food, better dog food, and Best dog food). We picked up a small bag to make sure she liked it and we figured it would give us some time to test the waters.

We paid around $12 for the 4.5 lb bag.

My husband and I want to be good to our little love bug and feed her quality... but we also wanted to be practical about it. SCB said he was okay with us continuing to get the "better" type foods from pet smart since she seemed to eat it fine-- but only if we took the effort to shop around first and try to compare the labels since the pet store was probably the pricier option.

A lot of time its hard to compare brands together because they are often are not sold in the same stores... or in the same packaging. But the key to comparison is the ingredient list (and if your dog will eat it).

Since we are almost through the bag (1/3 left), we decided now would be the time to hunt around. If we decided to buy something new, we would still have enough of her old food left to slowly mix into the new food so there would be less chance of anything not agreeing with her ... or we would have enough food if she didn't like anything new we tried.

So we started at Walmart. I couldn't remember what the ingredients were in ours from home and I didn't have a list on me, but since pet smart is next door to Walmart, we decided to just take a look and snap photos of any of the brands that listed Meat as the first ingredient.

We turned every bag over and they only had one brand in which meat was the first ingredient in the whole store... and get this... they wanted less than $7 for the small bag (which was a full 5 lbs instead of 4.5 lbs...)

So, we snapped the picture and went next door to Pet Smart so we could look at what we had been buying... and we were a little floored. Meat wasn't the first ingredient...

It was Chicken meal... I turned over the bag in my hands for a bit and kept comparing it to my phone picture. When I looked deep in thought, one of the store clerks (who happened to be the manager) came over to see if I needed any help. I fibbed and told her my "friend" sent me a picture of what she feeds her dog and I wanted to know which one was better... what we were buying currently or the brand from my phone.

The lady looked at my phone and then at me and said hands down, the black bag on your phone,

"Your friend probably bought that at some high end dog boutique..."

It listed both chicken and then chicken meal as the top 2 ingredients... and she pointed out that you could pronounce more of the ingredients in the pure balance mix than you could in the natures recipe so that made it also better. Being the good sales lady she was, she steered us down the isle where the BEST dog food is and told me that the brands on that isle would be more similar to what was pictured on my phone... and of course they wanted WAY more for those then Walmart wanted for the Pure Balance... even their store version was way more.

So we thanked her, left... and went next door... back to walmart and picked up the Pure Balance for $7...

The next day when I fed roxy we mixed in 1/4 cup of the new stuff with 3/4 of the old... Guess what she picked out first, nugget by nugget? The Pure Balance.

Look who's happy! She so belongs to us!

In case you were all wondering.... this is not a sponsored post and i'm not getting anything out of sharing this little story with you all. :)

July Budget and Annual Goals

July Budget...

I'm posting one large combined budget this month instead of a paycheck by paycheck break down. Hopefully I'll be able to share more details with you all about this later this month, but for now you can all guess at my aloofness.  

• Giving $454
• Fast Offering: $10.00 
• Mortgage (Includes Property Taxes): $771.99
• Additional Mortgage Principle: $220.00
• Roxy "Dog" Savings: $50.00
• Groceries & Food: $275.00 
• Prescriptions & Doctor Savings: $50.00 
• Birthday Savings: $50.00
• Discretionary/Clothes/Things/Eating Out: $160.00 
• Vacation Fund: $100.00
• HOA: $262.50 
• Insurance (2 Autos, earthquake, homeowners) $129.00 
• Utility Bills (2 Cell Phones, Electricity, Internet): $230.00 
• Gasoline/Auto: $200.00 
• Christmas: $50.00 
• Kaiser- Health Insurance: $178.00 
• SCG Roth IRA: $275.00
• SCB Roth IRA: $192.00
• New Car and Auto Maintenance Savings: $355.00
• Long Term Savings: $220.00 
• Pocket Money: $40 SCB, $40 SCG
• Technology Upgrades: $220.00

You'll notice some distinct changes from last month to this month besides making sure every dollar now has a name instead of just savings. *wink*

• We have added a $50 a month pet savings account for our little pup. This will also be what we will pull from for food and other items we need to buy for her. 
• We are also upping our grocery budget a little bit more ($25) now that we have some more money coming in and i'd like my husband to stop eating so much junk and convenience food. 
• We have also combined our clothing, eating out and discretionary budget to $160.00 a month to help us balance eating out and buying things. 
• For this next month, we are keeping our cell phone and bill allotment the same because we haven't cancelled our smart phones yet and we'd like to have this money just to cover any accidental fees that may happen. Once our cell phones drop off, we are going to up our internet speed, keep a bit more for electricity usage and actually use our little wall unit to stay cool this summer. Once all the changes are made, any leftovers will be added into our gasoline budget.
• We are bumping up my Roth IRA contributions because we will now be aiming to put the full $5,500.00 away for me this year. We have also decided to add a Roth IRA for SCB with him putting in 15% of his income. 
• There is a new Long Term savings account. We will be using this money after we get SCB's dental work done to beef up our Emergency Fund. Essentially this money will be the start of our future Baby, Bigger house, home improvement, etc savings account. Once we get our $400 escrow check returned to us, I think we will already have enough money for SCB's dental work.
• We are also going to be adding in a new car/auto maintenance savings account because that's the next large expense that will need to be replaced in the next few years... and our last goal for the year. If we start paying the monthly payment to ourselves now, we will be able to pay cash for a new car down the road. This will also help us budget in those pesky once a year car registration and smog fees to just have money every month going in to savings... (more on that later)
• I promised SCB if we cancelled our smart phones that we would start saving up for tablets, a gps running watch for me, and some various other things like a portable WiFi system if he is still able to make and sell his pens at the farmers market now that he's working full time. So we have added a temporary technology savings account.
• We added a small vacation and trip fund to our budget so we can start to save up for a nice vacation for SCB and I... or just a bunch of little day trips throughout the year.
• Pocket money. $40 a month for each of us to spend however we want with no accountability... because everyone needs a little mad money. 

Phew! Talk about some changes. Essentially after making sure tithing and retirement are covered, we are taking each of SCB's weekly paychecks and putting them towards 4 over all areas. 

• Big ticket item - A new car.  We have committed to no new loans or borrowing money with one exception, a house. Everything else can be done by saving money and being patient. We don't want to owe people money... which leads to our next area.  
• Paying down debt - Our mortgage is our only debt. Period. While the interest rate is low because we just refinanced, 3.75%, we should still be trying to pay off our loan obligation faster to build up some equity for 2 reasons. First, we can't get that type of return on liquid money right now (money sitting in a savings account or a CD) and with where we are in life, our money needs to be liquid and easy to get to if its not for retirement. Secondly, we would like to keep our options open to either sell our place and use the proceeds for a down payment to get something bigger in a few years if the market is in our favor at the right time, or continue to pay it off to have the flexibility and equity to either refinance again and rent it out for a positive cash flow and move somewhere cheap to wait out a bad market if prices go down, etc. 
• Long term savings- I mentioned that we are currently in a position where our money needs to be liquid... and here's why. First, SCB is currently a Temp worker. His income could disappear at any moment. We may also want to start having a family in a year or two... and kids are expensive and there is only so long you can have a kid in a one bedroom condo before you need more space for sanity... and if that were the case, most likely SCB would either be a stay at home dad or work part time and take care of our future bundle so having more in savings to get us though that transition period is important. We may also need to replace some home appliances and get some new furniture (considering all my furniture is almost a decade old, are hand me downs, or garage sale and freebie finds).
•  Spending/technology- There's always something you want to save up for that's a few $100 once or twice a year. This will help us do that!

Remaining Financial Goals

1. Make one extra Mortgage payment this year:  ($162.66 / $650.64) 25%
2. Put at least 15% of our income into retirement: 10.16% thus far 
1. Deferred Comp: $50
2. Roth IRA: $965.15 / $5,000.00
3. Pension: $791.06
3. Save $1,500.00?????? for dental work for SCB
4. Save $1,000.00 for future car repairs and the start of a car replacement fund.
5. Change the last name on my credit card.

The chair...

My husband has had this weird issue with breaking chairs...

He's 6 foot 5 inches and just doesn't sit well in them. As a result, he has broken a few chairs since he's moved into the condo with me.

My fiance broke the desk chair for the computer a while back so he was making due with a kitchen chair or the bench for a while... we ended up getting one for free from our church... -June 25th, 2011 From Trash is Treasure

That "kitchen chair" died... and than that office chair, became this shortly afterward...

SCB destroyed office chair number 2... yup, apparently these things aren't made for 6'5'' tall men who like to lean back in them 100% of the time.  He tossed the broken parts and now its being used as a stool because I don't want to replace it and I don't miss the parts that are missing. :)- October 23, 2011 From Weekly Updates and Spending Goals

about 4 months later.

This chair was eventually replaced with this lovely "freebie" from keith's first job... we had to fix the arms after a little while because the stuffing was coming out and that was the fabric we had in the house. This one hung in for a long while actually-- probably because it was ugly and driving me crazy waiting for it to break. But I digress.

In between this chair, hubby broke another patio chair he was using to play video games.... and then broke this one:

Along with the discarded items and the gnome was our patio chair... Yes. SCB managed to break another chair.... again.... making it the 5th chair he has broken since he moved to California. He has gone through 2 office chairs, one dinning room chair, and 2 folding/camping chairs... I don't know what to do with him anymore...  he always manages to break them right along the arms or possibly the back if there is no arms.... -- From January Purge Fest

Then, something happened... we found this beauty by the dumpster because all the bolts were loose. 5 minutes with a little allen wrench and we get to replace the ugly old work chair (that never actually broke), with this leather beauty. 

 I call that a nice trade up. While SCB might have a job now, and it appears we are spending money left and right this month with Roxy and a little shopping, we aren't planning on making a habit out of it. And we aren't beneath free office chairs :)