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On Saturday, I mentioned that I would be sitting down Sunday to crunch the numbers and pay off some debt. We did have some extra money, but something in the back of my mind told me to hold off. Something is telling me to contribute more to our savings account.
Maybe it’s the economy right now. Maybe it’s my job. Maybe it’s because I’m not feeling well. Who knows. All I know is that I want to have a bigger cushion in our savings account. That’s not a bad thing. It will slow down our debt reduction by a little bit but I’m okay with that. Paying off debt is important, but so is having some financial security. I think of our savings account as our financial blankie – it’s time to make it larger.
I have to thank everyone who used my link for the $25 bonus from Revolution Money Exchange. The bonuses I received from you and the extra money we were able to contribute beefed up our savings account by $425. It now stands at $3,629.
So far it looks like we will have some more extra money near the end of the month once payday rolls around. For right now, I think I’ll keep the gears switched and maybe try to get our savings to $4,000. That would sustain us for two months in a financial job-loss crisis.
Who knows? Maybe the debt bug will hit again and I’ll change my mind. 
What a week. We’ve had some good news and some bad news:
Good News
- Our health insurance bill is now due monthly ($400) instead of once every two months ($800).
- I won a $50 Amazon gift certificate.
- My son won a prize from his school and he was thrilled!
- Our fridge came back from the dead! We have been living with using a cooler for cold items. At first it was neat, but lately it has become a pain. I’m embarassed to say that I could not find the receipt so we decided we would call out a repairman anyways. Of course, I had to clean it real nice before then and when I was done I decided to plug it back in for giggles. Well, wouldn’t you know it…it’s working just fine. I have a feeling some ice was blocking the flow from the freezer to the fridge section so that’s why the fridge part wasn’t cold.
Bad News
- My husband came down with a severe case of strep throat and went to the doctors on Friday. The doctor’s exact words, “Your throat looks like crap!” With our copays the total bill (including medicine) came to about $35.
- This morning I woke up with a sore throat. I’m doing every home remedy that I can think of to try to ward off the strep. We’ll see tomorrow how I feel.
Overall, it has been a great week. Tomorrow I will be reviewing our finances to see if we can pay any more towards our debt right now. I pretty much figured we couldn’t, because we usually have an $800 health insurance payment due at the end of the month. But with it being billed monthly now, we might as well use some of that money I have been holding on to and put it towards our debt right now
Gas prices where we live are basically at $4.00/gallon. It doesn’t affect us too much because both my husband and I work at home. But we probably will try to get back into walking more this summer to run errands and go grocery shopping. We aren’t going as far as this Wisconsin man, though:
“The goal is to not use one drop of gas for 31 days,” [Brian] LaFave said, calling it his personal stand against the oil companies…
…LaFave started the effort May 11. He bikes to his third-shift job at Aldrich Chemical in Sheboygan Falls, a 9-mile commute.
“I did like a practice run … two days in a row to make sure I could do it,” he said. “I’m not in the greatest shape. The mornings are the worst. It feels like it takes forever. I get like a mile down the road and I want to die.”
[Via Yahoo.com]
His main motivation is to stick it to the oil companies. Our main motivation would be to save money and get a little healthier in the process. Can you image what biking 18 miles to and from work a day is going to do for this man? I’m really curious what is going to happen after 31 days. Maybe he’ll decide to keep going for longer.
This week has been a pretty good week when it comes to financial things. I received our health insurance bill and they finally are billing monthly instead of every two months. No more saving up to make a huge $800 payment! I just pay $400/month. It’s a lot easier to budget for.
Then, today, I received an email notifying me that I won a $50 Amazon gift card from Prime Time Money. PTMoney was celebrating his one year anniversary.
Thank you! Now I need to figure out what to get with it 
By the way, PTMoney has set-up a map of personal finance bloggers. If you are wondering if there are any pf bloggers near you, check it out!
Some of you have commented that you haven’t received your stimulus payment yet, even though you should have. I just saw this news clip and thought I would pass it on:
According to ABC News, about 15,000 stimulus payments were routed into the incorrect bank account due to a computer error. It didn’t give more detail than that.
If you should have received your payment but didn’t, there is a hotline number to call at the bottom of the stimulus payment info page at the IRS website.
EDIT (11:14 p.m.): Here’s a link to a Yahoo story that claims that the number is 1,500. It also notes that some households did not receive the $300 for a child refund.
We didn’t have a will. While we don’t have many assets to speak of at the moment, if something horrible should happen to us, the courts would decide where our son would be placed. He could even end up in foster care for a while until the courts make a decision. That makes me cringe. It’s not a fun thing to discuss, but we needed a will.
Back near Christmas, I received a gift certificate to Amazon.com, so I bought Suze Orman’s Will & Trust Kit (aff. link). It was backed by financial guru Suze Orman and it was at a price I liked (under $15) so I gave it a try.
The kit comes with a CD that works for Windows or Macs. Upon launching the program, an internet browser window is opened and you create your username and password. I’m not sure why you even need a CD because all of the information is done through the web browser. Looking back at Amazon, it said that it was the online version so I guess that could be why.
Going through the program is really easy. You are prompted for information and you enter it and each screen gives just the right amount of information in easy to understand terms so you understand what you are doing. There is also an option to hear Suze or her attorney discuss the different parts of the will but I ended up hitting mute on those. I’m more of a reader when it comes to things I don’t understand. Once everything is filled out, you view a draft version of your will with easy to click places to make changes. When you are finished, you download your will to PDF to print.
It took less than an hour and now I have a will, a durable power of attorney for healthcare, a financial power of attorney and a final instructions form (that indicates my wishes for a funeral, etc.). It was so very easy to do. A little depressing, but easy to do.
Things would have been more complicated if we had more assets and if I had things that I wanted to leave to specific individuals. For us, the wills are mainly for our son to make sure he is taken care of and no fights break out over his custody (although I doubt they would – but you never know). It feels good knowing that there is something in writing that indicates my final wishes.
At some point in the future, we will need to update our wills as our assets grow and our debt decreases. The great thing about the program is that you can easily go in and update certain sections of your will and leave everything intact (if you choose to save the information – you have the option). The only thing I’m not sure of is how well these would hold up in court. The program even gives full disclaimers before you print the final version of anything. But it is better than nothing and for $15 it didn’t break the bank. Of course, once our assets are larger we may want to consult with a lawyer. I feel the program did its job for our needs at this time.
The program also claims that it includes more than $2,500 worth of customized documents. I’m not sure on that dollar amount, but there are quite a few documents not necessarily related to your death but related to your finances. Under the Credit & Debt section, there are links to calculators to help you create an action plan to get out of debt as well as trimming your expenses. Most of the information there can be found by searching the internet, but it is nice to have it in one place.
One more thing on my to do list is done
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I logged into my Virtual Bank account today. My money is sitting there at 1.75% interest. What happened to the good ole days of 4%+ interest for online savings accounts?
It looks like ING Direct is still at 3% but I have to wonder for how long. Right now we don’t have that much money saved (just what you see to the right under savings account) but I still want to maximize what little we do earn.
A while ago I did move some of our money out of Virtual Bank and into ING. I guess I will go ahead and move a little bit more out of it, but not all of it. Sometimes I get uncomfortable having all of our eggs in one basket.
As a note, ING still has a great bonus going on where you can earn $25 if you open up a new savings account with at least $250. For more info, you can check out my page with ING Orange savings account referral links. Right now I am hosting some referrals for Phil.
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My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
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