Slowly rebuilding savings

On another blog I talked about rebuilding my savings. It's a very slow process that's for sure. Right now the majority of my "cash" resides in my house savings account. I did have a cd but I had to use that to repay for the work I had done on my car last year.

As far as regular savings, I have almost none. Like literally none. Now I'm starting to save a small amount each pay. Once the summer is over I think I will be able to save a lot more than I'm saving now.

By the end of the year I hope to have a minimum of one month of my salary saved. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere!

I'm going to snowflake my bills away

I have 2 credit card bills that just won't seem to go away. Minimum payments are not helping even though the balances are pretty low. I've decided to just snowflake them away. Since I can make as many payments as I want to every month, I'll just send whatever extra money I get when I get it.

Usually I save between $5-20 dollars from my lunch money. If I bring my lunch every day and stick to my plan, I save the top amount. Random purchases, especially snacks, brings me closer to the lower amount. Whatever is left once the pay period is over will be evenly split between my savings account and my credit cards.

I would love to have these two paid off by July and get started on my larger bill. Unfortunately I have a lot of debt to snowflake away. But as long as I stick to my plans, I should be ok.

Dealing with effects of today's economy

I recently read an article about a company that was laying off a significant number of workers. As part of their settlement package, they would be offered almost a 12 months of pay.

That seems like a lot but in this economy they would still be on the edge. Especially since jobs are so hard to come by. Sometimes that means making drastic changes to ones lifestyle. That's where a company that specializes in debt relief comes in. And you have a variety of options including debt consolidation, debt settlement, a consumer proposal and finally, as a last option, bankruptcy.

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My savings are adding up

It can be a task saving money. It's hard to do and easy to get discouraged. One thing that I do is make my money inaccessible. I put it in the most obscure, out of the way bank that I can find. Then I'm not too tempted to go and get it out. I have one credit union where I don't even have a debit card. Now admittedly, I only have $250 in that account but it's a start right? Especially since that's my Ebay money. No sales means no savings for that particular account.

The hardest thing for me is to just keep it going. To get to that magical, mythical 3-6 months emergency fund is going to take a while. I do know that slow and steady wins the race but it gets really hard to deprive yourself of things and have the fortitude to slip that money into your savings account.

I know in the end I'll be glad that I stuck to my plan, but I can't wait to get there!

2011 is here and it's time for new goals

I did not make any of my goals for last year. I almost made my savings goals but then I had a death in the family and I had to totally wipe out my savings and add to my credit card debt. I do have some money coming in that I can use to pay myself back for the money that I spent last year. Unfortunately this year's expenses have already started to come in and I'm going to have trouble meeting my savings goals.

If I don't find a new job soon, I'll have to take on a 2nd job to bring in some extra cash.

This economy is really troubling

It's troubling because it seems to be getting worse. The dollar is losing value and that's even more worrisome. There are a lot of personal finance experts that are hedging their bets against the dollar. One of the ways they are suggesting is to buy precious metals like gold and silver. Gold seems to be at a all time high and keeps going higher. However silver is a much safer bet right now especially ingots which are commonly referred to as bullion.

Above ground stockpiles of bullion are low while world demand exceeds production. While silver selling at a discount, demand is climbing and experts expect the prices to really jump. Who wouldn't want to profit from silver like everyone did from gold?

All you have to do is contact Monex and let them do the buying for you. It's time the little guy hedges his bets like he big guys have been doing for year.

Why is my paycheck already gone?

Especially when you consider that I don't get paid until tomorrow? This really stinks, it truly does. I definitely need to make more money because my "me" money is gone way before payday. I realize that this week had a holiday in it, but I didn't do anything or go anywhere. All of the excess money was from the week before last.

My finances are a sorry state of affairs.

I own more stock than I thought I did

I knew how much I owned of 2 companies. I'm trying to increase my position in the 3rd company and I sent money to my stock account at least every other month. I thought I only had 55 shares of the company in the account. When I got my year end statement I had 59 shares. It's not a lot more but hey every additional share brings me closer to my goal of at least 1 round lot of each stock.

I take good news wherever I can get it.

I'm glad I just got paid

Because I am out of cash. I never spend my paycheck until the weekend after payday. If I'm out of cash on payday, then it's tough cookies until Saturday. I don't know why I've set myself up that way, I just did.

At least I have some extra cash now. I hate not having any money at all in my pocket.

Broke on payday

That just gets on my nerves. I got paid today and since I have a fairly strict budget, I'm already broke. Luckily I have other income that comes in during the month. I use part of that as my just in case money. I use the majority of it to pay for school.

I just got a better job making more money and I'm already looking towards the next great thing.

Raising my 401k and my small raise

Last week I wrote I just increased my 401k percentage. In that post I talked about my raise and my 401k increase.

I feel that I should clarify what I said. I didn't get a small raise. I got a pretty nice raise actually. However, I took the job paying more money in order to pay for school. I won't see any of that money since it's going straight to tuition. My regular expenses also went up which the raise will cover. That includes my rent, my garage for my car and my cell phone bill.

Then I raised my 401k percentage. Once I'm done with school, I'll raise the 401k by a few more percentage points. I'll also take a look at my first paycheck at my new salary. If I have more money than I anticipate, I'll divert it to the 401k. I know most people would take care of their retirement account first, but school is more important right now. I don't get financial aid or student loans. I'm paying cash for school. Some of the classes are reimbursed and some are not. So I need all of the cash I can get to cover tuition.

I'll be done with school in either December of this year or April of next year. Once that happens, my 401k will become my number one priority.

All that glitters

Must be gold. I was watching the Travel Channel and they had a program on a ship wreck that had been salvaged. Among the items recovered were jewelry, ingots and gold bars. The gold bars were solid and heavy. Those bars are from the 1500's and they are worth much more today than they were then. That's the beauty of gold, it retains it's value and even increases exponentially.

Financial advisers often say that they best way to preserve your wealth is through diversification. Gold offers a great way to diversify your portfolio. You can buy gold in coin or ingot form and keep it yourself. Or buy bullion or bars from a company like Monex and their depository will hold it for you. No matter which way you decide to buy it, gold offers a great way to diversity your portfolio.

Can I afford it?

No, I probably can't. Lolol. I'm watching a rerun of the Suze Orman show where she does the "Can I afford it" segment. Basically you call in, tell her your finances and she tells you whether you can buy the item you want or not.

It's a real eye-opener seeing how much money people have and what they want to buy. One family called in with almost 8k monthly take home income. But they only have 7k in savings. Savings include cash, cds, mutual funds and stock. They have no retirement savings right now and they're in their early 30's. They make a ton of money and hardly have any savings. I have more in savings than they do and I make way less than them. They wanted to buy 1/2 share of a lake house. They were denied because they didn't have enough in savings.

I'm floored that they don't even have 1 month of their salary in savings. That's living on the edge in my opinion. Of course their expenses could be really low but even if their expenses are half of their income, they still have less than 2 months worth of expenses.

Tracking your net worth

Do you track your net worth? Do you post it on the internet? I do on my other blog. I actually messed up this quarter. I added the amount I paid my loan for the quarter instead of subtracting it. It was almost a $500 dollar difference. Right now my net worth is pretty low, but I'm working on it.

What about you? Are you happy with where your net worth stands right now?

I almost bounced a check

I only balance my checkbook once every 2 or 3 weeks. I save up all of my receipts and write everything at once. Well tuition was due 3 days before payday. And I had a bill due and withdrew lunch money from the mac machine. Luckily, the bill took 3 days to clear. If it had cleared the same day, I would have gotten hit with a bounced check fee.

I know I need to balance my checkbook more often but after looking at numbers all day at work, I don't even want to think about balancing anything else.

The checkbook is done

Yeah it was a mess. It took me an hour and a half to balance everything. Did I mention I have 3 checkbooks to balance? That's why it takes so long. Add to that the fact that all of my money is goes into separate categories and that's why it takes so long.

I'm glad it's done and I don't have to balance them again for another 2 weeks.

I need to keep better track of spending

In my previous post I talked about overspending. I need to start keeping better track of the money I'm spending. I need to start charging everything on my credit card. That way all of my expenses will be in one place and I'll have an itemized statement.

I found the idea of charging everything on my credit card on the GoldStarCredit website. I visit a lot of finance websites. It helps to see different perspectives on money matters. There's different sections of the website to visit. I can find out all about personal loans, mortgages, automobile loans, or debt help.

The automobile loans section will come in handy. I'm looking to buy a car in the next 6 months and I need to figure out what type of financing options I have. I want to keep the interest rate down and I also want a short financing term. I can look around the site to see what company will offer me the best deal. Every bit of money I can save will really help.

I've overspent and I don't know how

I was looking at my account and I have a couple of hundred dollars less than I thought I did in my account. I don't know what I did what the money either. I have to sit down and really take a hard look at my account to figure it out. I don't know if I spent it on clothes, food or what.

This is driving me crazy. I hate when my money doesn't add up.

I need to get my budget under control

Most of my budgeted amounts are in line. But my biggest budget-buster is food. I think that holds true for a lot of people. I don't remotely cook so I eat most of my meals at work. At home I have easy things like pasta or rice and beans. I still spend about 10% too much each pay period. Paying for school leaves me no extra money so I need to get this under control sooner rather than later.

Exploring all of my investment options

There are a lot of options out there for investing money. I have cash, stocks and mutual funds already. I'm looking to add several more components though. I would like to add some bonds and some gold bullion. Why gold you ask? Well one reason is that it comes in many different forms. You can get gold in ingot or bullion form or as gold coins.

I love the look of gold ingots. However, these are investments not the kind that you wear. I'm leaning more towards gold coins though. Coins are available through companies like Monex. You can buy coins in a variety of sizes. Generally as an ounce, half-ounce, a quarter ounce, and a tenth of an ounce.

And if I don't want to take possession of the coins, I can have them stored at a bank or depository. But I like to be in total control of all of my investments. I'm sure I would have them in my storage box. I don't like other people holding onto my money or assets if I can help it.