His Hers Money

Our near term goal is to get some accounts set up to automatically save money as well as earn us a decent return on our investment. The key to saving money is to make it automatic. If you wait until you get your paycheck, pay all your bills and then see what’s left over you will very rarely ever move the money into a savings vehicle. If the money comes out automatically you will be forced to work with the remaining funds.

Recent New Investments:

His:
ING Savings Account $250 initial, $50 bi-monthly
TD Ameritrade: $50 a month w/ $100 bonus after 12 months (offer #701)
Prosper: In the process of confirming account
Lending Club: In the process of confirming account

Hers: (already has an ING account)
TD Ameritrade: $50 a month w/ $100 bonus after 12 months (offer #701)
Prosper: In the process of funding account ($100 to start)
Lending Club: In the process of funding account ($100 to start)

One key characteristic to note about these accounts is that with Prosper and Lending Club you do not have access to your money. They are investments where your full capital is locked up for 3 years. You receive a portion of it back every month as the loan is repaid. The ING account can be withdrawn from but it does take a couple business days to move the money.

It is important to have some sort of savings account that you have access to right away in case of emergency. I have mine with my credit union and I can go online and move the money to my checking account instantly.

What else are we missing? I know there are other offers out there that are worth taking advantage of. Please let us know!

As I have previously posted, I am a foodie at heart. Everyone knows that dining out on a daily basis will have a shrinking effect on your wallet and an expanding effect on your waist line. Our goal is to avoid both of these side effects as much as possible while still enjoying non-ramen meals. His takes his breakfast and lunch with him to work each day and I (hers) take my coffee and lunch with me to work each day which really helps.

Weekly grocery bills: 3/15/08 $47.74 Grocery Store & 3/15/08 $13.64 Costco

Breakfast for the week is bagels and cream cheese, cereal & apples.

Lunch is left over lasagna, left over chili or tuna sandwich.

Dinner Menu:

Sun: Loaded Baked potatoes with bacon, sour cream, cheese & broccoli

Mon: BBQ Chicken

Tues: Lamb Chops

Wed: Tacos with ground beef

Thurs: Penne Pasta with pesto

Fri: sushi (eating out)

Sat: Salmon Burgers

Each night we always add vegetables or a salad and a small side starch. So, you can see how two people can eat pretty well on a reasonable amount of money. We usually get sushi on Friday nights and a couple glasses of wine out at a local restaurant. Our bill this week was about $60 so combined with out grocery bills we usually stay within our $125 budget.

Stayed tuned next week when I try out a new idea I saw over on Dimples’ Divine Domain to cook an entire chicken in the crock pot! I never would have thought of it but I’m looking forward to trying it.

Well things are starting to look a little better around here. At least if you’re using any web browser except for IE6. For those of you that haven’t upgraded yet, there will be a few issues on this site because of the CSS code that I’m using. I’ve test in IE7, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. They all handle it well and I’m confidant that most of the people who will be visiting should get the correct look.

We’re not using much in the way of images so hopefully everything will load pretty quickly. However, if you are having any problems, please let me know and I’ll try to correct them.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Today I finally took the time to properly fill out the information for my profile on NetworthIQ. As you can see from either there or my badge to the right, I have a negative net worth. This is not surprising to me as I know that I have too much debt (especially credit cards) and that I have not bothered to start saving for retirement. That last part is obviously a mistake even though I should be getting a military pension starting at age 43. Hers and I actually had a tiff about this the other night. I was trying to figure out the current ‘value’ of my retirement to include in my net worth. She was insisting that until I was fully vested, that it was worth nothing.

I now have seen the light and realize that to be the case. Until I hit my 20 years of active federal service, I get nothing at age 43. Heck, I don’t even get the partial National Guard retirement at 60 unless I complete another 7 1/2 years. Obviously I was counting my chickens before they were hatched. My plan is to continue paying down my credit card debt and building my emergency fund. Once I have that rainy day money fully in place I will open a Roth IRA and start fully funding it. Yes I could pay down debt faster instead but the compound interest will finally start working for my retirement and my highest interest rate right now is still only 9.9% on my credit card from USAA.

Yes, this blog is supposed to be about saving money, not spending money and of course getting out of debt, but everyone knows it’s hard not to spend ANY money. For me it’s gourmet cooking items. I could justify it by saying that because I have cool kitchen/cooking gadgets I cook at home rather than eating out (which is true by the way) but it’s still money spent. Today I did get a little something for the kitchen. I got a small grater that can be used for zesting citruses or spices and also has a small slicer on it. A nifty tool that should really last forever and it wasn’t too expensive at $14.95 plus tax (no tip :)).

One different between her and him is what we like to spend our money on. I prefer gourmet chef gadgets, shoes and car. The car thing will be covered in a later post. Him is more the video games, golf stuff and computer things.

I have learned to limit my shoes greatly in the past year. Living in the Washington DC area we do a LOT of walking so comfortable shoes are really a must and the cute shoes have to be reserved for special occasions which don’t involve significant treks.

Today was an important day in the start of my becoming more secure financially. I opened a savings account with ING Direct. I was able to get the free $25 they offer for new accounts as well as get Hers a $10 bonus.

I’ve been needing to start an emergency fund for a while now and of course starting this blog provided a much-needed incentive. ING Direct offers good rates of course but a bigger reason for choosing them was that they are NOT my bank! That was a problem in the past when I would try to put money into savings on a regular basis. Access to it was far too easy and I would end up just transferring it right back into my checking when I wanted to buy something.

So I’m starting out with $275 ($250 + $25 bonus). Automatic deposits are set up for the 15th and end of the month so if I can stay the course and not touch the account, it should end up with $1775 by the end of the year. That’s not quite the 3 months of expenses that I would like it to be but I plan on being VERY aggressive in paying down my credit card debt.