JBL's Personal Finance Blog

I've not posted here in four years!

My financial situation goes up and down. I struggle to maintain an ongoing savings plan and change my priorities regularly. I think the real challenge is that I don't have clearly defined life goals. I have goals for this month or this year or for the quarter, but the sort of guiding plans are difficult for me.

I work for the state and am vested in the defined benefit pension, and will soon be vested for retiree health insurance too (full insurance until I am eligible for Medicare, supplemental from that point forward). I have conventional and Roth IRAs but don't regularly contribute to them.

My partner and I own a two family house and rent out the first floor for about $900 per month. It's a big old house and I must admit that most of the rental income goes straight back into the house for maintenance, repair, and capital improvements. The upshot is that if we stay in the house long term, the rental income will pay the maintenance, taxes, and insurance when we finish paying the mortgage.

I had an inheritance and bought a one bedroom condo last Fall. That's rented now and brings in about $500 in income every month. I'm saving the income now to capitalize a maintenance and repair fund for the condo. I've owned condos in the past and realize that special assessments can come at any time and it's best to be prepared.

We keep our living expenses fairly low, we own one car and only drive it about 8000 miles a year; we don't take expensive vacations, just go visit friends and family. We keep things together but are not models of financial responsibility. We both have excellent credit.

So my first paycheck came in the mail yesterday from my new part time job. For one day of work I got a check for $96. This is wonderful. I always have trouble predicting what my take home income is going to be, and I had been estimating about $75 per day worked. That $20 difference was a wonderful surprise! I am heading over to the bank to deposit this check now.

In other news, the redecoration of the bedroom is coming along well and has cost substantially less than I thought it would. It is still a bit expensive.

For furniture we decided to use what we have already. I am painting a lot of it high gloss white and getting a piece of mirror cut to lay on the top of the dresser. I think it should look great and will be quite inexpensive.

I still need to do something about a rug and drapes for the huge windows, but I think I will save up and look around for a while to see what the best options are.

I have not posted on this blog in ages!

Things have been going well. Got all remaining revolving debt paid off this past summer, but unfortunately needed to replace my old (18 year old) car and we bought a dog and had to get it shots and spayed and replaced the mattress, etc. So my savings is almost gone. I got a very part time job, just one day a week, and it is a longish commute. I am going to take the commuter bus to save on wear and tear on the car, gas, and parking. Since I live off my income from my "real job" I can save the entire paycheck from the part time job. I anticipate 250-300 a month to savings, in addition to the 300 I put there already each month.

Should help replenish everything!

To boost my savings and ease budgeting, I have directed most of my income into savings and a dedicated checking account to use to pay fixed reccurring expenses throughout the year. This has left me pretty cash poor. I just realized that I have about $9 balance in my regular checking account and I need to buy coffee. So I transferred $20 in from my other non-long-term savings account so I can get out $10 in spending money to buy some coffee and have a few dollars available. Thank god I get paid on Thursday. I think I need to tweak the budget a bit because I seem to be ending up broke every other week. I think what happened that got me off track was fixing up the bathroom. I painted it last month and had budgeted $75 but I actually spent $110. It was money well spent and the bathroom came out great but it has put me in a bit of a hole.

My credit union dropped the interest rate for the second quarter. It was paying 5% last quarter, but this is now down to 4.25%. I realize that this is still a good rate, but it is unfortunate all the same. Too bad.

I walk to work every day, and usually do a lot of my errands on foot as well. This helps cut down (pretty dramatically) on my transportation costs and gets me some exercize, which is great. I started walking shortly after I quit smoking almost a year ago. Aside from walking to get somewhere, I also regularly take long walks just for the heck of it. Helps me clear my mind and get some air. Also costs nothing except for shoes. since I walk a lot I buy expensive walking shoes. I was wearing out cheap shoes in just a month or so!