Goal Update for July (and June, since I missed it!)
I'm not quite sure why, but I never did a goal post in June. Weird. I'm here with one for July, albeit a little late.
My May update is here and if you'd like to see the original post, just click here.
Cereal Avoidance
We're doing fairly well with this despite the warm weather. Zoe and I have been eating copious amounts of granola (which is really delicious topped with strawberries or blueberries) and the other kids have been mostly eating bagels or toast. Thanks to the abundant summer produce that's now available, we've also been eating cantaloupe, berries, and other fruits with our breakfast.
We're still eat eating some cereal, but it's definitely not an every day thing like it used to be.
Quicken
I've had success on this front in the last month. I simplified and organized my files a bit, and I've been managing to stay on top of them.
Summer Savings
If you remember, I hadn't saved up as much as I'd planned (this money was to make up for my lower summertime piano teaching income). However, I'm pleased to report that we didn't even need to tap into that account in June, and we won't need to in July either. I'm kinda thinking we'll be fine in August too, which is delightful news. So, that means I've got $423 extra in savings. I might put that into a camera lens fund. 😉
Emergency Fund
Speaking of savings, our emergency fund efforts have paid off in a big way. According to my calculations, by the end of this month we should have 5 months worth of expenses saved up. (In case you missed it, a few months back, I calculated how much money we'd need to live on if we both lost our jobs, and I figured that by living very frugally, we could get by on $2400 a month. So, that's how I calculate how far our savings would take us.)
I'm really, really happy about this. Back in January, I was hoping to maybe get three month's worth of expenses saved by the end of the year, and thankfully, we've exceeded that goal already.
Since we're doing so well with this goal, I'm going to relax a bit with my grocery budget and bump it back up to $100 a week. I probably will still aim for $80, but it'll be nice to have a bit more wiggle room.
For the entirety of our marriage, we've always wanted to have a good emergency savings, but we kept having emergencies (like the death of a heat pump) that depleted our fund once we had a couple thousand saved. This is the first time we've actually managed to get nicely sized fund going, so this is uncharted territory for us!
I suppose that my husband and I will need to have a chat about where we want to go from here. I'm guessing that we'll keep adding to our emergency fund until we have 6 month's worth of expenses, and I know that after that one of our goals will be to save up enough money to buy our next car with cash. We'll see, though...you never know when an emergency will come along and deplete our savings!
Unbelievable! about your emergency savings. I am so motivated now to get more cash into ours. Thanks for the post. My hang up will be curriculum for homeschooling this year. We have one daughter in High School now and one in the Junior High level, the costs are a bit higher for texts and labs. Any ideas other than ebay and booksharing? I have cash set aside, but am still mildly panicking? 🙂 Blessings!
Congratulations on achieving goals!
Have you read Michelle Singletary from the Washington Post, or the Motley Fool? Singetary offers basic - as in fundamental - advice and practical suggestoins about how to be financially sound and financially literate. The Motley Fool's website is now overcrowded but skip it, go directly to the Personal Finance tab for a nice little - and free - tutorial in personal finance. (Skip "Mint Personal Finance," which is just trying to sell you something.)
Each has the same recommendation for you. Now that you've made your emergency fund you need a "life happens" fund. The emergency fund is for bad things you can't predict, like losing your job. The life happens fund is for bad things you know will happen but you don't know when. Major car repairs and dead heat pumps are "life happens" events. The goal is to have both on hand, using the life happens when, well, life happens and not touching your emergency fund unless you have an actual, unpredictable emergency.
My I offer a recommendation? I don't hear you saying "No" so... Increase your emergency fund monthly allotment to $2600 and save 4 months' worth = $10,400. Then start your life happens fund. I'm big into having enough savings so in your shoes I'd put the excess emergency funds ($1600 if my calculations are correct) and the $423 into the life happens fund. That gives you a lovely $2000 cushion to start with. If the camera lens is something that increases your earning potential (and not just a little, mind you), then use the $423 for a lens and the $1600 for your life happens fund. OK, financial lecture over.
You're always doing laundry because you have 4 kids and hang your drying.
Stacie, check out http://www.half.com. I got all my kids' books for this year at that site. It's like Ebay without the auction hassle. LOVE it.
William, I haven't posted about it yet, but we do set aside money each month for home repairs and car repairs. Our car repair fund has about $1000 in it, and our home repair fund (which we just started up) has $100 in it (we put $100 in each month). Those savings are completely separate from our emergency fund. So, I guess we sort of have a life happens fund! It's just called something else.
Happily (or not?) the heat pump here at this house died a few years ago and we bought a new one, so we're pretty sure it won't go up again while we live here. lol
Eventually, once we reach some shorter term goals like the car savings, we'd definitely like to make some progress on paying our mortgage off early. It looks as though my husband's income will be going up somewhat significantly in a year or two, and if that happens, we'll be able to accomplish a lot more of our goals more quickly.
Whatever happens, we'll just keep plugging along with our frugal living.
Thanks For the tip Kristin! I'll be checking it out!
Kudos!
Love half.com!
fabulous!! it feels SOOO good to save!! we're recently married, i am trying to find a teaching job (fresh out of college and the schools are holding back this year!)- we're totally in a frugal living lifestyle.... but we're doing good. we're only frugal because we don't count what we have in our emergency fund- how man 23/24 yr olds have an emergency fund?! 🙂
You're doing great!! 🙂
Good job on the emergency fund! I know it's not easy building one but it feels good once you have it. Keep up the good work (up to 6 months worth of expenses, at least). 🙂