HisHersMoney

Right now in our joint savings we only have $2119! That is embarrassing! We have the following accounts set up with ING: House Down Payment, Car Repairs/Down Payment, Joint Emergency Savings, Investment Savings & Vacation Savings.

It is reasonable to assume that the Vacation Account would occasionally be pretty empty as it is now because we just came back from a couple vacations. But the others really need some work! I just really combed through the budget and set up recurring deposits to the accounts in order to expedite our savings growth.

I have set it up to put $1,500 a month into our ING. We had set a goal of $22,800 for the year. Obviously we are not off to a great start! We also have a few other small savings vehicles, TD Ameritrade through the Suze Orman deal plus I”m currently putting a couple hundred a month back into my (Her’s) savings account to reimburse myself for the $7k I put down on the car. Obviously it will take 35 months to actually reimburse the amount, but every little bit helps

Her entered the marriage with about $19k total in savings. $7k of that Her put as a down payment on her BMW but there is currently about $12k in savings which Her regularly contributes to by putting any left over amount from her “allowance”.

Can we still make our goal of $22,800? I’m not sure but there is no reason why we can’t try!

It’s official, one of our cars is now paid off! We had a balance of around $4300 left on the loan which we just paid off when Her received her year end bonus. It felt so good to call up the bank and tell them to just deduct the remaining loan amount from the checking account and then to able to log back in online and see the loan simply gone from account listing!

We have an extended warranty on the vehicle which covers it bumper to bumper for the next 27 months so we plan on keeping it for at least that long!

What are we doing with the $455 a month that used to be used to pay the loan? It’s going in savings. We set up a sub account at ING called our New Car Fund. Hopefully by the time we need a new car we can either pay cash or at least put a nice down payment on it to minimize the loan.

Unfortunately we still owe about $35k on our other car loan so that one won’t be paid off for while, but we knew that when we bought the car last fall!

Well, we have officially scrubbed our budget as much as we can for the upcoming 2009 year. Our goal is to bulk up our cash savings account as much as possible. In order to do this we have decided to go to a cash system for our weekly grocery, incidentals and entertainment portion of the budget. We will take $150 out each week and that will be it, if we spend it all in one days then it will be 6 very dry days until next payday rolls around!

When reviewing our spending from 2008 we really didn’t over spend on any one thing, but it was the $12 here, $20 there etc that really just added up. By going to cash we are really going to have to make an actual decision every time we spend. It was so much easier to pull our the debit card knowing that there was money in the account to cover it.

We both get an allowance of $300 a month to do with what we want so if we really want to do something and our budgeted money is gone we can easily dip into our personal funds if we choose to but what we aren’t going to do is get more money out of the joint account!

Currently it looks like we should be able to save $1900 a month. I have gone into our ING account and set up automatic recurring deposits for these funds which are spread out between various sub-accounts.  This will give us $22,800 for the year.

What is our plan for this money?

1. Money for Christmas next year

2. Emergency Account

3. Vacation Account

4. New Car Account

5. House Down Payment Account

I am a huge ski fan and my favorite place to ski is Steamboat Colorado. We were trying to plan a trip in Jan / Feb time frame but were have a tough time finding the right dates that worked for both of us. THen we saw online that the resort was offering free lift tickets from THanksgiving to CHristmas when you booked your lodging through them.

We did some research and found a good deal on airfare $270 each from the Washington DC area right into Steamboat an found an ok hotel room for a week for about $500 so we went ahead and book a week in December. Including ground transportation and everything we came in at under $1200 for both of us for a week. The only additional expenses we will have are food, drink and ski rentals for Him. Luckily we have been saving into a vacation account at INGDirect so we will just transfer the money and book it!

Him has never been to Steamboat before so I hope he likes it!

Today is Black Friday which should mean some of the greatest retail deals of the year. I have to say I’m not overly impressed. I did find a great deal at my favorite clothing store Martin & Osa. An additional 30% off even on top of sale and clearance prices. I picked up a great cashmere and soy sweater. I have a blue one already and wear it both to work and out and about casually. It is so comfortable and fits great. Normally $70 and I got it today for $21. I also picked up a tee and two tanks to wear under my sweaters. Shipping was free so my total cost was about $35.

I looked around both online and in the flyers and really didn’t see anything else we needed or that was on the Christmas list that was a great deal. Him found a computer game that he wanted that was on sale for $10 with free shipping from Best Buy so we picked that up as a stocking stuffer.

I was surprised to see that a ski jacket that I bought from Sports Authority a couple of weeks ago was actually more expensive today even though it was on the cover of there Black Friday ad. Just goes to show that you really need to know your prices before shopping.

I saw on the tv this morning that they were giving a few holiday tips. Some of which were basic: wear comfortable shoes, duh. But a couple were good tips: If you find what you want buy it now and keep all of your reciepts so if the price comes down you can get a price adjustment.

I am basically done all of my xmas shopping and stayed pretty close to budget. Him and I budgeted $225 each for each other and I came within 10% so that works for me. We ordered some photo albums from MyPublisher online with some pictures of us to give to family which included engagement and wedding pictures so those will be going out to the parents and grandparents. We shopped ahead of time with them and got 50% off.

Other than that there are just a few small things I might need to pick up such as office gifts but nothing that will break the budget. We put away $25 every two weeks into our INGDirect savings account so the money was ready and waiting for us when it came time to shop!

As you had read before, we had set up a Smartypig account recently. I like the idea of it. I think the extra money from retail stores is really great for when you already have a specific item already in mind. However, if you change your mind or an emergency comes up, then you are stuck as the funds are not liquid.

Smartypig has stated that at some point they are going to allow you to EFT the funds back into the account from which you originally funded from. This was not the case when I went to close my account on 15 May. I was planning on getting Amazon gift cards as there is a speaker set that I’ve been saving for there. The process was easy and I was notified that any extra funds left over from the gift card purchase (they only allowed $25 increments) would be funded into an electronic Smartypig gift card that I could put towards my other savings goal.  That’s a nice feature.

My big complaint is that it supposedly will take 7-10 business days to get me a gift card! If they are indeed partnered with these companies, it should only take 1-2 business days to get the card in the mail to me. As of now I have not received the card. Now granted, we moved and the mail is forwarding so I will check the postmark when it comes but it’s disappointing.

In the future I’ll be forgoing Smartypig and just creating sub-accounts with ING. It will be slightly less return but it’s worth it for less headaches in using my money.