LittleMsMom's Personal Finance Blog

This morning I am getting ready to leave the house, I am leaving a bit early because I need to stop and gas on the way to work.

As I am putting my sons folder in his back pack; I notice the blue hippo webkinz inside (it is show and share day), and a crumpled orange slip. I look at the slip and what is it, a slip from the teacher with a tick mark on it. Which means he got talked to again yesterday about needing to get to the task at hand. The bottom of the note has writing- My husbands name and my name, misspelled but there.

This leads to a long discussion about forgery. My son cant write cursive so it was not even close. I left the forgery on the note and signed above. We talked to him and we are not going to hide the fact he tried to pull a fast one, not a very good fast one but one none the less.

Do you ever feel like sabatoging yourself? See that sidebar over there with the money I have saved to get us through my husbands ELECTED unemployment until a new full time job opens in Septemebr. I soooooooo want to take that money and fund a Roth IRA for last year. I have been running my retirement number and need to start maxing the Roth yearly. I put nothing in for last year and am oh so tempted to then when money gets tight the hubster will either have to get a job or I will be forced to get creative with spending. I wonder if funding the roth IRA was why I have not filed my taxes yet!

What would you do????

Yesterday I cleaned...I set my telephone to chime at 6:30pm since we would be done with dinner and just doing whatever.

I had the hubster sign the dental form, which I faxed this morning! Wahoo I am adding that to my passive income - extra income page because it is saving $45 per month for 6 months.

I then completed the order form for his checks, he will mail today!

I then set the microwave timer for fifteen minutes and cleaned!! I got one box packed up that was in the livingroom and put away some gift bags. Then I went downstairs and mopped the floor in the family room. It was not so bad because once I started I really did not feel like I had to stop. It is getting started.

I plan to set my phone for 6:30pm again today and I will clean for 15 minutes, if I want to stop after 15 minutes I will stop but if I want to keep going I will. Today I need to fold and put away the clean laundry! I might stop after 15 minutes because I hate laundry!

When I was done cleaning I was thinking of this blog because it was where I got the 15 minute suggestion and so I started going through my mypoints, and the two pay for reading ads email accounts. I had like 600 waiting for my in my polls/email earning email account so I need to do some more tonight.

Okay I now I am putting the cart before the horse. I just like to plan ahead instead of looking back and saying I should have done that. The Story is if we sell the house for what the insurance value is then my share of the profit would be $38,719.20. We could get more but then we could get less. But better to plan lots of good things and make a few happen and be left with future saving goals then to not plan and to SPEND.

The amount referenced takes into effect the off the top deduction of money going to our sons college fund. See when I first went back to work after having our son my aunt babysat for us for FREE; the deal was we would use the money to save for our sons future, sons college, pay off our debt or save for a house down payment.

We had NO debt so we saved as much of the saved amount as we could part of it for our son and part for the house down payment. Once we got to the house closing we barrowed that money from our son since technically she did say house down payment.

Well now that the house is being sold and we are going to rent for a while, the first cut of the profits goes to repaying the Aunty Daycare saved $ into a college 529 account.

Then the remainder will be split between the husbter and I. My share should be $38,719.20.

I am planning:
$5000 Roth IRA Me
$6000 CD for Braces for SON
$5000 Money for 529 (want to pay in full now a 4yr community college cost then let ride until college so the gains are basically the cost of college increases)
$18,000 Emergency Fund
??? $4719.20 ???

If you were debt free and came across this Money how would you spend it.

Yep, forgot to have the hubster sign the dental form. Oh well it just has to be done by the 20th of the month. I just want to get it done now so I can count it as done. Plus if I dilly dally too long it will cost me $45 per month to drag my feet. $45 per month is the water/waste bill.

I also forgot to complete to order form for the checks for his new Checking account.

I just like to get home and relax. So it did not get done. I am SOOOOOO burnt out it is not even funny. I NEED for the house to get cleaned up, yeah like it is going to clean itself.

The house has to get clean so we can call the RE agent to sell our house so we can get the mortgage payment from hanging over our heads. Also need to sell stuff and clean stuff to list it BUT I feel it needs to be clean so I have some where to work to list things. Catch 22 huh.

Right now I dont want to do any cleaning because the house is a huge mess, everything is on the main floor and a huge pile of mess because the basement is being worked on, all that mess stresses me out then I dont want to clean.

wrote a check for the hubster to cash to deposit into his checking account for spending money.

He got his spending money, gas money and $10 so I can order him some checks for his new account. (To Do - Order Checks)

Giving him the gas money is working Awesome. He said it is no big deal on the amount of gas money he is getting as he is telling his buddies if they want rides they have to pony up money for gas. Funny how before, when he used up all his gas he just asked for more $, now IF he is frugle at the end of the month any extra gas money could be spending money. So Win Win, he is no longer giving his buddies free unlimited rides and I can budget a certain amount for gas money. I was going to give him more this month but when I asked about how much driving he had ahead of him for the month he said the same (went into the speach about telling his friends they would have to contribute gas $), so no reason to give him more if he did not say last month was tight.

Gave Son a check for lunch for the 1st through the 15th. He tends to like to add ala carte items and run out of $, so if I am only paying until the next payday I can keep a better eye on that. And IF the extra spending continues I am going to start looking into ways to send him healthy cold lunchs for less than $1.50 per day. I have done the math before and I always came out spending more per lunch.

Completed the form needed to remove StepDaughter #1 from dental plan. I need to have Hubster sign it tonight so I can fax it tomorrow. The rate is about to spike so we are removing #1 but leaving StepDaughter #2 on for 6 more months as she is in the middle of braces treatment. Removing #1 will save $46 per month; as the cost to insure just #2 is about to be what we were paying for both before.

The last time the hubster was unemployed for a while I hated it because he just sat in front of his computer and the TV all day long. This time it is not so bad, he is getting house stuff done, he is cooking, and since we have no TV he is actually getting alot of stuff done. We will see if that changes once the family room is set back up.

I really like the NO Tv, it is helpful for the entire family. It is such a Time Waster.

Last night my husband said he wanted to start a more active role in bill paying. You have no idea what a weight this is off my shoulders.

Once the house is sold we are going to sit down and try things differently. His idea is we would each get paid into our own accounts and then split the bills and pay them as they come sitting down on Saturday to do this.

I have agreed whole heartedly to this because once we do this I will not feel like I am holding the burden. My husband will have his extra money to Free spiritly spend and I will have my extra money to save for our sons college fund and whatever other savings I need to feel financial secure.

Right now his income is not enough to pay for half the bills, that is why I am waiting until after the house is sold. Right now I am handling everything and at the end I work extra hard to fill in the slack. Well once we are renting and the bills go down he will get whatever extra is in his account and if it is not enough like he feel it is not enough now then he will have to pick up his own slack.

Now that I know I am swimming to a goal instead of just endlessly swimming to keep my head above water, I have a new burst of energy to do what I need to do to make sure I get picked to stay on at my job.

On March 1st, since it is the start of a new month I will start tracking food spending. This I hope will allow me to get a real look at what we are spending on food.

I also want to track gasoline usage.

I am hoping that this weekend we will be able to do some furnature movement which will mean that I can clean up the house. When we reset up the office or family room I want to make an area to work so I can start posting items for sale on our towns free online classified listing.

Taxes!! I also want to sit down once the office or family room is set up and gather up all the tax forms and file our taxes.

See we textured and painted the ceilings in our basement and everything that was in the basement is piled in the livingroom upstairs and it is a nightmare. This weekend we hope to caulk the seams, paint the seams then clean up from the mess (Paper, painter plastic) wash floors and move furnature.

We are hoping to put our house on the market, Sell it, then rent an apartment for less and save the difference.

Lots of things to do this weekend and then hopefully start March 1st tracking expenses!

Hi I am trying to cut costs so I can work on financial security. Our take home income MAY drop this Dec due to a lay off so I am trying to be proactive. Right now I am just looking to have a solid budget and trim a little so the saving can go to an Emergency Fund. And later if the layoff happens will make more drastic changes closer to Dec.

Here is my budget could you help look it over and see if there is anything you would look into changing.

Expenses: Monthly
House:
Mortgage $1,060.00
Electric & Gas $126.50 *
Water/Waste $56.90 *
Phone $29.17
Cell $100.00 #
Internet $38.11

Dental - Premium $44.68
Sons Meds $50.00
Daycare $239.00
Child Support $679.00

Car:
Gas $180.00
Insurance $33.16 *
Tags $17.00 *

Misc:
School lunch $30.00 (Edited from $50)
School Snack $6.66-> $15 EVERY 9 WEEKS
Food $450.00 #
Cleaner/tolietry/Paper$10.00 #
Gifts $60.00 *
Clothes $20.00 *
Toys/Fun $20.00 *
Spending $ Husband $100.00
Husband Life ins $38.00
My Life Ins $36.50
College Fund $225.00

$3,647.68 (-$20)

House Repairs
Misc
Dental Cost Share

I was going to explain areas but decided not to make excuses and just let you attack it. But I will put * next to Averages and # next to estimates.

Take Home : $4160.02

Mortgage is Mortgage plus taxes & insurance as loan type requires an escrow account

(Changes) I cut the School breakfasts 2/25/2010 out of the budget. My husband is back home now so I dont have to drop my son off for breakfast at school in order to make it to work on time. This was actually more than $20 because he was buying extra al-carte items but my budget was base price.

Hi I really enjoy reading the blogs and hope to post and get some great feed back from the savingadvice blog members.