I've never sat down and determined what the dollar amount for 4-6 months of savings was; I've mostly been in a position in which savings was not a serious possibility, due to expenses and debt compared to income. Now that I'm working and finally have a paycheck that's stable for awhile, and have all the deductions applied, I know what my takehome pay will be; up until now it has fluctuated due to additions and changes to my deductions.
It took awhile because the pension fund is automatic so was a deduction on my first paycheck, as was parking, the amount for which changed immediately; these were followed by my benefits payments once I was eligible. Because there was a problem with a fax machine, my deferred compensation was added later, as was my healthcare savings plan as I didn't go into that for last year. Now that I know how much money is left for me to spend, it seems like it should be plenty to pay my basic bills; the trick is going to be maintaining my austerity program and getting the other stuff taken care of.
Housing, utilities, loans, cellphone, insurance, gas, groceries and haircuts are the typical expenses. I spend about $100 on gas monthly at the current rates; however, my grocery bills fluctuate and I don't pay close attention. My first objective will be to keep track of how much I spend at the grocery store and how I spend it.
I haven't been paying as much attention to coupons lately and need to be more diligent about that. Grocery prices seem to have gone up lately, but my store still has two for one meat coupons, which is good. Last week they had a lot of produce coupons, but for items I don't use or wouldn't use two of quickly enough that they wouldn't be wasted.
Showing posts with label savings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label savings. Show all posts
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Saving Money
Last year I bucked the trend and spent my government stimulus check, albeit to pay off an existing debt. But that's one less monthly payment I have to make so it was well worth it.
This year, in addition to having to pay for glasses, contacts and a contact lens fitting, I have other medical bills to pay. I do have a healthcare savings plan, but underestimated the amount of money I would use; it's a use or lose benefit which I've never used when offered previously. I put what seemed like enough money to pay for glasses in the account and it isn't enough. Which is fine; this is just another way of using pre-tax dollars. I'm waiting for my debit card, which will have $250 free dollars from my employer on it in addition to my payroll deductions. The additional money would carry over, but there's no reason for me not to spend it on medical expenses since I have plenty of them.
While I'm saving for retirement through paycheck deductions, I need to increase my savings which is difficult. Right now I'm so focused on getting rid of the random bills that I've incurred recently that I'm not nearly as concerned as I should be about saving money. They say you should have the equivalent of 4-6 months expenses in savings. At the rate I'm going, that'll take me forever to achieve. Especially since I want to reduce my debt.
What I need to do is sit down and create a budget for myself and figure out if there's a way for me to achieve my goals of a) cleaning up my new, annoying medical debt; b) not carrying a balance on a credit card in order to do so; c) reducing my overall debt and d) increasing my savings.
My federal student loans are at a fixed rate and are unfortunately are the highest interest rate I have; however, the rate is much lower than the one I had for my undergrad loans. When I consolidated it seemed better to get a fixed rate loan because the rate I got was the lowest ever at that time. Now it isn't.
My other loans are really at a negligible rate of interest, differing by about .25 from one another; they both just recalibrated and got lower. I could decide that with such a low rate of interest I'd be better off not worrrying about paying extra on either of these loans and merely pay off my other debt as quickly of possible and put more in savings until the interest rates on these loans goes up again. That might be the most practical thing to do instead of worrying about getting the smaller one paid off sooner; the same payment at a lower interest rate will reduce principal by a slightly higher amount each month.
This year, in addition to having to pay for glasses, contacts and a contact lens fitting, I have other medical bills to pay. I do have a healthcare savings plan, but underestimated the amount of money I would use; it's a use or lose benefit which I've never used when offered previously. I put what seemed like enough money to pay for glasses in the account and it isn't enough. Which is fine; this is just another way of using pre-tax dollars. I'm waiting for my debit card, which will have $250 free dollars from my employer on it in addition to my payroll deductions. The additional money would carry over, but there's no reason for me not to spend it on medical expenses since I have plenty of them.
While I'm saving for retirement through paycheck deductions, I need to increase my savings which is difficult. Right now I'm so focused on getting rid of the random bills that I've incurred recently that I'm not nearly as concerned as I should be about saving money. They say you should have the equivalent of 4-6 months expenses in savings. At the rate I'm going, that'll take me forever to achieve. Especially since I want to reduce my debt.
What I need to do is sit down and create a budget for myself and figure out if there's a way for me to achieve my goals of a) cleaning up my new, annoying medical debt; b) not carrying a balance on a credit card in order to do so; c) reducing my overall debt and d) increasing my savings.
My federal student loans are at a fixed rate and are unfortunately are the highest interest rate I have; however, the rate is much lower than the one I had for my undergrad loans. When I consolidated it seemed better to get a fixed rate loan because the rate I got was the lowest ever at that time. Now it isn't.
My other loans are really at a negligible rate of interest, differing by about .25 from one another; they both just recalibrated and got lower. I could decide that with such a low rate of interest I'd be better off not worrrying about paying extra on either of these loans and merely pay off my other debt as quickly of possible and put more in savings until the interest rates on these loans goes up again. That might be the most practical thing to do instead of worrying about getting the smaller one paid off sooner; the same payment at a lower interest rate will reduce principal by a slightly higher amount each month.
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