HisHersMoney

After reading about the Debt Snowflaking process over on I’ve Paid for This Twice Already I decided to give it a try. If you look on my ABOUT page you will see a simple break down of my current debts. I basically have some student load debt and my car loan. My car loan is manageable with a payment of $455 and a balance of about $8100 currently. My student loans, while manageable, are really just getting on my nerves!

I really had every intention of getting them paid off within ten years of graduating. That ten years is pretty much up now, and they’re not paid off. One of them is my portion of my grad school. My company paid the difference ( I still have to finish my thesis and pay $3300 upon it’s submittal, but I have that money in savings) which really helped out.

I still have about $5500 left in undergraduate loan debt. I basically want this debt gone NOW! Even though my graduate school loan has the highest interest at 11% and I’ve paid it down from $9000 to $5700 it just wasn’t giving me the emotional satisfaction I really need in my debt repayment process.

I’ve really never made any huge effort to pay extra on my student loans before now so I have a little catching up to do. I attacked the two smallest ones which we both just under $1000 each. In the past few months I’ve been making extra payments on both of them and now I only owe $310 on one of them and $385 on the other. I see no reason why both of these can’t be paid off next month since my regular payment would be around $100 each anyways. I know it will be a great feeling to just finish both of them up.

So, what is my personal recommendation? Pay your lowest debt off first to get the feeling of accomplishment and then re-evaluate from there. I think I will work on my highest interest one once these two small ones are done to reduce my interest.

I (HERS) unfortunately have to find a new financial advisor. I have been with the same guy since 2002 and I have really enjoyed working with him. Unfortunately he has received a promotion up to a leadership position within his company and won’t be directly working with clients any more. Great for him, not so great for me.

The whole thing really came as a shock to me and I really wasn’t prepared to make such a change. I am not looking to change firms at this point but I do need to find a new advisor within the company. I got an email and voicemail from the assigned replacement saying hello and introducing himself but I really wasn’t getting a great feeling from him. FIrst of all it sounded like it was just a given that I wanted him to manage my retirement without any questions asked. The last thing I want in a financial advisor is to feel like I’m talking to a used car salesman!

So, I emailed him back and said I would be more than happy to interview him and consider him as a candidate but I would also be interviewing others as well. I said he could come to my office to speak with me if he was interested. It’s amazing how his attitude changed! So, he will be coming to my office to speak with me on Thursday morning.

I’ll let everyone know how it goes!

I (HERS) am usually the non-spender in the relationship. I don’t surf around the internet and buy “things”, I don’t troll the malls and I’m certainly not one to hang out at Best Buy. Lately though, I have had a number of things pop up that have really started to add up.

*Hair “Stuff”: Shampoo, conditioner, hair masque, etc. It seems that both of us ran out of everything all at once. It takes both of us quite a long time to go through the entire bottle since HIM has short hair and I only wash my hair every other day but it was still about $45 for everything.

*Target: Body wash, deodorant, kitty litter…… seriously, does it ever end???

*Grocery Store: Meats. This week we had to buy meats because we literally had none in the freezer. We bought a couple porterhouse steaks which were on sale for $4.99/lb and chicken breasts at $1.99/lb. We only buy the steaks when they go on sale at the higher end grocery store in town. The quality is so much better and the sale prices are really fair.

*Beer: HIM is watching the NHL playoffs and tonight is a big game night so we decided to pick up some beers to have around the house.

Sometimes, it seems like we are out of everything all at once. With the extra “stuff” we needed we spent about $150. It was more than I would have liked to spend but it’s still cheaper than going out and ordering a couple of nice steaks and have a few beers!

(I will let HIM post about the parking costs he has recently been experiencing as it seems my parking mitigation strategy is not working as I planned)

Just wanted to take the time to link up the top 5 referrers to our little blog in the first month that we’ve been posting. I have to say that the community of personal finance bloggers is very tight-knit and friendly and it’s been a pleasure participating with all of you. Hers and I will continue to try and improve our content and writing.

Top 5 Referrers Last 4 Weeks:

• Dimples’ Divine Domain
• wereindebt
• Beachgirl’s Budget Blog
• We Need To Be Debt Free
• The Finwikian

I really enjoy cooking, but sometimes after a long and/or hard day at work I’m really not in the mood to cook so I suggest we eat out. It’s really the idea of sitting down, relaxing and visiting with Him and not having to do any of the prep, cooking of cleanup. We used to go out for wings on Monday night. There was a group of us that all gathered, had a couple of $2 brewery beers and ate our super cheap wings. For the two of us our bill was usually about $15 before tip. Well, the group has some what disbanded due to the disappearance of the wing deal and it seems that the wings just really weren’t worth almost 4 times as much as they were charging before. It was nice to eat out and never have to worry about the bill since it was so cheap.

After reading through our local DC paper I noticed that there were a ton of places that offered discounted food on certain nights during the week. If you live in the DC area here’s a few good options that we like. (Always check ahead of time as deals can change)

Crystal City Sport Pub: We like Friday happy hour half price appetizers and beer specials as well as Monday night half price burgers.

Eleventh St Lounge: Wed night half price prime rib (I heard this may be changing to Thursday night so verify first)

Mr. Days: $2 beers and $2 appetizers and burgers on Wednesday.

For more upscale options you can’t beat the deals at McCormick & Schmicks and The Front Page.

I’m personally not a fan of eating at 5pm so if we want to take advantage of any of these deals we try to head over there with just enough time to get our order in before the time expires (usually 7pm) that way we get our food a little after 7 which is more in line with my eating time.

Whether you take advantage of happy hour or weekly specials we have found it’s usually cheaper to eat out during the week. We tend to order less food and drinks. We went out for sushi tonight, while there wasn’t any deal going on out bill was only $20 because it was more just a quick meal out rather than an evening affair.

Apparently SmartyPig is taking the time to listen to its’ customers and the blogging community. Their marketing team and even their co-founder are participating in discussions on various blogs on how to improve their service. Apparently the latest build of their website will include the ability to withdraw funds through ACH. This is great news and was the only real drawback to the site that I could see.

That allows users to save for bigger and better things. Say a newlywed couple want to start saving for a house down payment? Well instead of doing the traditional registration for household items, they could just refer friends and family to deposit into their SmartyPig account in order to help them reach their goal!

For myself, I’ll probably take advantage of the extra 5% that you receive for withdrawing to a store gift card since I’m saving for gifts anyway. The links below are generated directly from SmartyPig to give you an idea on what it looks like to show others your savings progress.

Last night, Hers and I took in a baseball game at the new home of the Washington Nationals, appropriately named Nationals Park. Luckily she gets free tickets as her place of employment has 8 seats reserved for employees throughout the season. This is good because the seats themselves (in the club level) would end up being pretty darned pricey judging from the carpeted interior where the food vendors and beer is located.

It’s never cheap when you go to a professional sporting event these days. Quite frankly they end up being about as bad as the movie theater, holding their guests captive. Just like any good consumers, we bought a program, a foam finger, and had dinner at the park. The damage just for my dinner alone was $20 for one beer (domestic), a chili-cheese hotdog, and chili-cheese fries. Now I’ll grant you that the food was GREAT, but it was from Ben’s Chili Bowl which is a D.C. institution and I could have gotten the same food I’m betting for half that price at another location.

So here are some tips for your next trip to the ballpark:

• Eat BEFORE you head to the game. Enjoy just a snack at the game
• Take public transportation to the game. This of course is so that you can also drink cheaply before the game if you must have a few brewskis.
• If you want to support your team, fine. Just purchase team apparel AWAY from the ballpark
• If there is a ‘cool’ hangout at the game where you don’t need special tickets to get to, purchase the cheapest tickets available and go there! At Nationals Park, it’s got to be the Red Loft bar in center field. It’s a great view, they’ve got other sports on TV while the game is on, and it’s just a great atmosphere.

Hey who doesn’t love free money? For a limited time, Revolution Money Exchange is offering a free $25 to anybody who signs up for a free account before April 15th. Their website seems pretty straight-forward. It’s basically paypal with a web 2.0 front-end. I just signed up using a link from Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity and they’ve already credited my account. Now I just have to wait for the bank account verification process. If you’re looking to get some $$$ and help a new blogger out, sign up using the link below to send some referral greenbacks my way.

Everyone knows that the costs of everyday items has gone up. Filling up the car is beyond discussion, it has gone up so far that it’s not even worth talking about any more. Luckily I don’t drive too far so I just try to minimize my driving and deal with it.

Groceries have increased but it’s harder to put your finger on the exact cost increase. I don’t buy the exact same thing every week, sometimes things are on sale and other times they’re not and I don’t compare my receipts to check the exact price change. Today we were doing a little grocery shopping after work, “just a few items”. Of course there is no such thing as just a few items, especially if HE is with me. Seriously, he’s like a kid in a candy store grabbing things off the shelf and tossing them in the cart. So, the total bill was about $73 which seems to be about normal for us right now.

So that was stop number one. Our next stop was at the Class Six. If you are familiar with military bases the Class Six is basically the liquour store and has pretty good prices. This is were I definitely saw the effect of rising costs. Occasionally I will treat myself to a bottle of Grey Goose Poire (Pear). I really like it but it’s pricey so it’s not an every day occurrence. Today I wasn’t planning on purchasing any but as I walked down the isle I noticed that the price has gone form $23.99 to $30.00 and that’s just in the last six months! What’s a girl to do?????

We obviously aren’t working with a grocery budget. But right now it seems to be ok. If we spend a little too much we just have to cut out eating out that week. A small price to pay and either way we are eating well.

I came across an excellent article by Paul Michael at Wisebread this morning. It asks the question “What will you do when gas hits $4 a gallon?” and responds with “I’ll pay it just like everyone else.”

And you know what? He’s exactly right. For probably 90% of this country, we’ll just suck it up, drink a latte or two less a week, and live our lives as we had been. Let’s face it, most people are not willing to fundamentally change their lives unless gas say doubles or triples from even where it’s at right now. People these days can’t live without gas, electricity, and the internet. They are staples of our everyday life.

Paul also linked a YouTube video that I found fascinating and left me wondering how long if ever that we’ll see something good come from this man’s invention?