my finance matters

Two years ago, I had my first exposure to home canning. I went to my mom’s (she lives on a farm) and spent the afternoon making strawberry-rhubarb and four berry jam. I put the jars into my Holiday goodie baskets and received rave reviews. This year, I wanted to go strawberry picking so I could make more jam and be able to say I knew where all the ingredients came from.  Ten pounds of strawberries later…

The canning bug bit me! I ended up borrowing the canning gear from mom’s because the weather has been stifling. I have central AC, ha HA! I managed to crank out 7 pints of strawberry-rhubarb jam after work one night and still got to bed at a decent hour. The next day, I was dreaming up all kinds of things to can and pickle.

Here’s the breakdown of my costs to make the strawberry-rhubarb jam:

I probably could have shopped around, or found jars at yard sales but the strawberries were already picked and they spoil quickly. Stores tend to run out of canning supplies around here too, so it is unlikely they will go on sale in the fall. Besides, under two bucks for a pint of awesome? Pretty darn good in my opinion, plus I can say that the produce is all local.

Next up is a batch of Four Berry Jam. I’ll be blueberry and raspberry picking at Blueberry Bay Farm and I have an accidental (thanks neighbors!) blackberry bush that is brimming with berries.

After that, when the tomatoes come in, I’ll be experimenting with salsa and spaghetti sauce. We use both frequently so it will be great to build up a little store of homemade goodies. I even grabbed a packet of pickling spice to make my own pickles! All of the produce for this experiment will be essentially free, only the cost of time out in the garden to harvest.

I couldn’t have done this without research and expert advice. A big thanks to Blake over at Pick Your Own for building an excellent resource for anyone that wants to find a PYO farm, and exceptional illustrated directions for home canning! If you would like to give home canning a try, start there!

Holy guacamole, it’s been over a year since my last post! A lot has happened in a year so let me take a minute to catch you up on my financial adventures.

#1 I am finishing up my graduate studies at SNHU for my Master’s of Science in Accounting & Finance. When I began my graduate journey, I figured it would be just like undergrad, but a little more intense. What a misconception! In a few short weeks, I will be DONE, and a plethora of opportunities and decisions about my career await.

#2 I got a pretty substantial raise and promotion at my full-time job. I’m still living on the budget I had before the raise and putting the surplus to pay off my credit card. I accomplished my previously stated goal of being under $10k on my credit card this year, and at this rate, it will be paid off in two years.

#3 I bought a MINI Cooper! Yes, it was somewhat of an impulse buy. Yes, my Altima was in perfectly good condition and could have served me another few years. But dammit, I’ve wanted a MINI for as long as I could drive and they had exactly the one I wanted. PS saving a TON of money on gas with 36 MPG!

#4 I’ve addressed, and taken action about my hoarding tendencies. I’ve started following The Fly Lady to build good cleaning habits. This has improved not only my home but my mental health. Having daily missions and my to do list already decided for me has gone miles for my well-being and energy level. Fly Lady also includes a segment about finance on her website, it’s worth checking out.

That’s it for now my lovelies, please leave a comment about what you’d like me to discuss next! I have lots of ideas but could use a little direction

It seems as though I’ve fallen off the planet. Not only has my tendency to write about finance matters dwindled, so has my own personal finance motivation.

Let’s face it, this stuff isn’t glamorous. You don’t get home at the end of a long day and think to yourself “I can’t wait to check my checking account and see what bills are due”. No, you put it off, or do it while killing time at work. There are bits and pieces here and there. A bill in your bag, and a pay stub in your lunch sack. It is mundane, and while you know it is important, you find every rationalization to put it off, or ignore it all together.

This is the situation I faced, and decided to do something a little different.

For a while, I tried Mint.com. It’s a great resource to keep track of everything money related, if it works with your bank. Unfortunately, Citizens bank doesn’t play nice with Mint, and since this is where I do most of my banking, I gave up with Mint. I have not deleted my account in the hopes that it will one day work with Citizens. It also sends me reminders about certain things, like finance charges. You can tweak the settings however you like, the finance charge reminder is my personal kick in the pants to get me fired up about my war on debt.

So I get a monthly reminder about how much interest I’m paying to my credit card. This number makes me sick. I can’t deduct this number on my taxes like with mortgage interest. Finance charges are helping my credit card company get richer while I get poorer, no fair! Now I need a better way to keep track of how much I owe, and something to keep me on track with my debt pay down plan. I whipped myself up a spreadsheet, because that’s what I do. I printed it out and taped it right in front of my desk. No more do I wonder how much I owe, or where to put that little extra income from doing friend’s taxes. All of my consumer debt is over $14,000, my goal is to get that number under $10,000 by the end of the year. My goal and my progress are staring me in the face every time I sit at my desk, I can’t forget or ignore it anymore!

The other trick I’m trying is putting all my bills on my calendar. When the bill comes in, I physically write the amount on the day it is due. For some reason lately, I just haven’t had a good gasp on when bills are due and how much they are. Late fees are my nemesis, and this tactic seems to be helping me have a better handle on the household bills.

If you’re like me and you read a bunch of other personal finance blogs, you’ve already read a ton of articles that say how important an emergency fund is. Yes, having money stashed away is really great when your water heater decides to go, or your car dies, but no one ever tells you how much should be in there. Not knowing how much to save really makes it difficult to make it your goal to save. It was for me anyway.

In a perfect world, this number would be the same for everyone, but alas, the days of utopia are not here yet. Here’s my perspective on the whole idea.

First off, make your saving automatic. If you have to go through the trouble of going to the bank to deposit the money in a special account, it won’t happen. Either sign up for direct deposit, or make an automatic scheduled transfer through your bank. I started out with $20 a week going into my ING account, it was painless and the money just seemed to grow magically. Then Rob started contributing $25 a week with an automatic transfer through his bank and I get giddy whenever I check the account now.

If you don’t have anything saved yet, make $1000 your initial goal. $1000 can cover most small emergencies life can throw at you. Or at least get you through until you figure out what to do next. If you stash $20 a week away, it will take you just under a year to save up $1000. To boost this along, put any unexpected money into your emergency fund. For example, if you have a yard sale or sell some of your stuff on eBay, put the profits in your fund. Or if you get a holiday bonus at work, take a little to splurge with and stash the rest away.

Now, it might sound counter intuitive to tell you to put that money into savings when you have this mountain of debt looming over you. I would agree with you if I didn’t learn first hand how great it feels to pay CASH when my A/C broke during the heat wave of 2009. In the past, I would have just written a check out of my credit card and continued the cycle of debt. I felt so good NOT putting more on my credit card, I became even more motivated to fund my savings account and replace the few hundred dollars I had taken. My debt plan is still on track and the only discomfort I felt was the 100 degree heat in my house.

After a while, your goal will be reached and you’ll have this pile of money sitting in the bank, tempting you. To conquer this temptation, I set up a “CD ladder”. Once you have $1500 in there, put $500 in a 12 month CD. This leaves your $1000 cushion available for emergencies, and $500 working a little harder for your patience. You can still get to it if something major happens, and I would much rather pay an early withdrawal fee than rack up interest charges on my credit card. With my particular plan, I put away about $100 a month, so every six months, I open a new CD for $500. So far, so good!

And now the answer to the ultimate question! How much should your end goal be? That really depends on you, but I do have one hard and fast rule to consider. Save up X month’s worth of your total expenses. For some this should be three months, for others it should be more like six month’s worth. Of course, if you lost your income completely, you would cut back even more and you could stretch your budget. Most importantly, celebrate your milestones! Once you get to your $1000 mark, take some time to reflect on how far you’ve come. One month’s worth of expenses deserves a little splurge, and so on. Keep at it!

After my divorce, the first bit of extra money I got went to open a savings account. From birth, I had always been a saver and had something stashed somewhere. That went away when I got married for whatever stupid reason, and it stressed me out! Once I got back on my feet, I thought the days of living on credit cards were gone. Everything was rationalized with “it will get paid off when I sell the house”. At least at that point I was only charging my home improvement expenses, and not groceries. Well, the sale of the house fell through, and I had to get my finances under control. This is what I did, and still much of my plan today.

In the beginning, times were very tight, so I used all the resources I had available to me. I went to my mom’s a couple times a week for dinner to save on groceries. I let people that I had bought drinks for in the past, buy me drinks when I went out, or I was the designated driver. I sold a bunch of stuff in yard sales, which proved more lucrative than I ever imagined and it got a bunch of clutter out of my house. I got a roommate {Hi Leah} to help with the cost of the house. When preparing the house to sell, we did as many projects as we could ourselves, and borrowed tools and labor from friends.

I effectively refinanced the house with a real mortgage. Previously, I had taken out home equity loans and saved for my property taxes and insurance myself. Let me tell you, coming up with $1500-$2000 {depending on the year and how much I paid the previous term} every six months is no tranquil task. Doing this reduced my interest rate two full points, and my monthly payment $200. It was the first time I ever walked out of a closing and didn’t feel like I had made horrific mistake. Oh yes, I had done this many times before, something like six times in seven years, I was a pro at refinancing! Also, I didn’t take out anything extra, just paid off the existing mortgage so that was that.

Next I combined my credit cards into one big one. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but at the time I was barely making minimum payments on the accounts I had. The company that I had been with the longest sent me some balance transfer checks, so I took advantage of the 0% rate for a year to get my balance paid down faster. This would not have been possible if that account was already maxed out, but since I have been a customer for so long they give me an enormous line of credit. I closed the other accounts to remove temptation, I didn’t care how it affected my credit at that point, my mortgage was already processed.

Being a homeowner, I knew I needed to stash away money for home repairs because it is my experience that when you have to call a repairman after hours, they don’t take credit cards. I also didn’t want to add anything to my existing debt when I could easily pay for something cash with a little forethought. It started with $10 out of my paycheck into my shiny new ING account. Because it takes a few days for any transfers to go through, this was the perfect option for my “just in case” fund. My other savings account was tied to my checking account, and way too easy with instant transfers.

Now that Robbie’s part of the household, he contributes to the “just in case” fund also. I try to only check the balance every so often, and when I do, I get giddy because it grows so quickly! Recently our central A/C broke and we had to call a repairman. For once, it was nice to not scramble for cash to pay the man.