Personal Update

Hello there, my fellow penny pinchers!

As some of you might have noticed - I have been neglecting my monthly net worth updates. This is for the sheer, and inexcusable, fact that I have been extraordinarily busy. You see...

I HAVE BEEN PROMOTED!

While, as wonderful as this opportunity has been, it has also put a strain on my personal time and with that, my blog. There are plus sides to everything, however. In this particular situation that means: more money! I have received a lovely raise with my promotion and I see nothing but dropping debt numbers from here on out!

Net Worth Tracker - February 2015 (+ $847.86)

Cash - $300.00

Now that looks MUCH better than last month! Woohoo! I I took $100.00 out of my second paycheck in Feb to make up for the $25.00 per paycheck that I am supposed to be adding. I also added $175.00 out of my tax returns! Yay! Now that we are on track with these accounts and I am seeing some growth, the following months are going to be much more comfortable. I was having a problem with deciding if I should just heavily invest all of my extra cash in my debts so see a better pay off in the long run or if I should focus more on saving and pay off the minimum. Now I think I feel better about throwing all of my extra cash into my debts. :)

Investment - $616.98

My 5% funding to my 401k added and extra $76.35 to this account this month. Nice little increase, I should say. Still trying to add up those hours so that my company will match me. But that comes with time. 

My IRA didn't change any. Again, I haven't added anything to this in years, so I only see a couple of cents here and there. But it's nice to have even $500.00 hanging out in there. 

Challenge Savings - $47.27

Nice little chunk added here as well! Whoop!

Virtual Change - $8.99 (rolling over that change on debit purchases!)

Budget Savings - $18.12 (Next month, I am going to see if I can shave off even more from my bills. 

Dollars and Coins - $00.23 (didn't use a lot of cash this month.)

Nissan Sentra - $11,242.00

Same this month as last, hopefully this will make it easier to hit my "paying my car loan down to what the car is worth" goal. 

Savings Funds - $304.40

Digit - $27.22 (digit is working like a beast over here. I'm having a love/hate relationship with it right now. More love than hate, but only because I don't use my checking often, if ever, so it's easy to see what they are taking and what I have to replace to keep my checking growing)

WF Rewards - $8.94 (never really expect much growth here. But I did a lot of spending with my credit card this month and at 1% cash back this isn't back at all)

Walmart Savings Catcher, Paypal and Suntrust Savings - No changes. Cause I was back and did add anything. Or shop at Walmart :/

TOTAL: $416.82

Now that a pretty number. I love it when the numbers end up in green!!

LIABILITIES 

Ew. I still hate this part.

Credit Cards - $1,376.44 (Negative)

Oops. Well, you win some and you loose some. I did manage to pay off $161.38 to my Target card, which is nice to see in green. But also, I spent $355.08 at Zales on my mom. I had already made a $75.00 payment by the time this spreadsheet came up, so I left it at $280.08. 

Loans - $25,835.98 (Negative)

YES! This is the one that I am the happiest about. I managed to chunk away a total of $596.10!! I am happily noticing that as my car loan amount dwindles ever so slightly over the months, that my principle pays are getting slightly higher. This month $209.05 when to the principle which is pretty damn nifty, in my opinion. Getting it down to $11,000.00 is looking a little bit easier every day. I also pay a whopping $404.25 to my personal loan. This is my main objective, I want this PAID OFF!

Total Net Worth - $14,701.77 (Negative)

That's a $847.86 difference! In the positive, mind you! Now that is truly exciting, I just have to gush. But also, my tax return was a huge help in this, so I can take all of the credit. But there was a lot of discipline on my part. Believe you me!

Net Worth Tracker - January 2015 (+ $127.54)

This is my corrected and updated net worth for January. Still in the negative, but apparently not so far in the negative as I thought. I double checked the numbers and made a nifty little excel sheet. So these are the correct and (well, a month ago) current numbers for my net worth. :)

Cash - $25.00
Everyone has to start somewhere and this is where I had to start. Almost no cash, new job and lots o' debt. My plan for these accounts (checking and savings) is to add $25.00 from each of my paychecks to my checking and hopefully watch it accrue over the course of the year. My savings plan is to "buy" all of my gift cards that I received for Christmas from myself. The total stands at $420.00 total right now. I can't use the gift are until I have "bought" it. It's kind of a neat little system. I save and I still don't have to pay for things I need. On top of this, I plan to put at least 15% of my gross income into this account before the years end.

Investment - $538.66
As far as my IRA is concerned, I haven't deposited anything in this since early 2014. Not good. But I was ill-informed about the account in a whole and now that I have a tiny bit of a better understanding on this guy. I know where I need to go from here.

401k? This guy is brand new. I have never had a 401k before but since I was just promoted to full-time at my current employer, I was automatically opted into their retirement program. I start off with the 5% that the company requires to receive a match but then realized that I would receive a match until I hit my 1,000 hours of full-time status. At this point, I was missing the 5% so I just let it do it's thing. It does make me feel better about not being able to physically put away as much in my savings, I don't see it, don't miss it.


Challenge Savings - $19.93
This is where my crazy money OCD comes into play. I had an extra savings account just sitting there for reasons I could no longer remember. So I wanted to find a way to stash some cash. I had been reading some challenges that J.Money over at Budgets Are Sexy has been posting and I got inspired. I had always been a little jealous of a Bank of America's save the change roll-over savings accounts, but I loved my bank so I decided to make my own (roll-over savings). Here is key to better understand what all of the random letters mean. >_<

VC - Virtual Change (change that I transfer over from debit transactions)
BS - Budget Savings (when my bill is less than my budget)
Dollars and Coins - loose change and dollar bills that I collect thru out the month and deposit.

Nissan Sentra - $11,242.00
This is more than what I originally guesstimated, which is nice. But we will have to see what the actual dealership says because of the accident. Which I am still super peeved about. :(

Savings Funds - $268.24
This is just my initial balance for the year. I'm not going to count it as a win just yet. Let's see how they build.

LIABILITIES 
Ew. I hate this part.

Credit Cards - $1,211.38 (Negative)
UGH! I really, really hate this part. But these are just initial balances for this year. I was bad and took out a Zales credit card in February, but I added it to here just for reference. (I got something for my mom for mother day. So.... worth it!) I also took out a carecredit card for my animals to go to the vet. This was necessary, they are my babies.

Loans - $26,432.08
These steadily go down and have been for months. I will start making regular payments to my student loan in June. So we will start seeing a nice difference here within the next couple of months.


Total Net Worth - $15,549.63 (Negative)
Sigh - not happy. But I was presently surprised to find that it was less than what I originally had in mind. I'm so excited to see how this number creeps to the positive in the coming months and (let's be realistic) years.

Net Worth Tracker - January 2015

This is something that I have been wanting to do for some time now. I have always had an idea and even an obsession with my finances but since putting Project DebtStomp into effect on the first of the year, I have already seen a turn around in my general moral. As of right now, I don't have an excel spreadsheet to show numbers on numbers - I know, I know. Shame on me. But this addition will be coming soon. So until then, here is the break down for January 2015:

ASSETS

• Checking: $00.00
• Savings: $25.00
• IRA: $500.26
• 401k: $38.40
• Digit: $00.00
• WSC: $15.38
• WF Rewards: $28.34

• Challange Savings:  $19.93 (Total)
• Virtual Change: $16.22
• Budget Savings: $00.00
• Physical Change: (below)
• Dollars: $1.00
• Coins: $2.71

• Nissan Sentra (kbb): $10,167.00

TOTAL ASSETS: $10,794.31

Sneaky Ways to Snatch my Savings

I am all about finding sneaky ways to hide my money from myself. Not only do I utilize Mint.com and PersonalCapitol.com apps on my devices but I have also found some nest ways to stash my cash.

PayPal

I love this so much just for the fact that it's out of sight, out of mind. I deposit $25 into it from each paycheck and never have to worry about it. Also, when I get into a bind, I have to think long and hard if I actually want to withdraw anything from it because it takes 3-5 days to actually have the funds deposited into my account.

Digit

This is alway a cool little gadget that helps you save. It tracks your spending habits and upcoming bills. After some thorough calculations, it decides how much to take out. Plus they cover any overdraft fees (caused by Digit) because they are so confident in their system. Plus, the people that run it are some of the coolest and nicest guys around. You can also withdraw whenever you want with no fees. If you want to try it our yourself, click Here

Walmart Savings Catcher

This thing is awesome. There is no guarantee that you are going to save anything, but if you do, it feels so good! I have just been letting mine accumulate and will withdraw it at the end of the year. There is several payment methods to choose from as well.  You don't have to get your cash back on a gift card if you don't want.

Wells Fargo Rewards

This is from my credit card and one of the main reason why I keep it. It only kicks back 1% of your purchases, but that adds up. Normally, whenever you rack up $25 they would deposit it into whatever account you chose. I had this turned off and I am just letting it accumulate through out the year. I am going to take the cash and convert it into forgiven currency for my next trip.

What's going on with my accounts?

I am notorious for wanting to have dozens of bank accounts for dozens of things. In my spring cleaning effort this year, I did away with at least four different accounts and honestly, I feel a whole lot better because of it. So here is a break down of what I have going on right now. 

Checking
I finally have just one checking account. No more funny business here. Other than the mandatory 10 debit purchases I have to make a month to keep the thing free. I only use this for bills. I have been leaving an extra $25 from every paycheck in here in hopes of watching it accumulate over the years. 

Savings
I don’t do nearly as much contributing to this account as I should. But as soon as I accomplish some goals from DebtStomp, I am hoping to start contributing at least $100 from each paycheck here. But for now, all that’s in it is the money I have deposited for gift cards that I have “bought” from myself. 

Challenge Savings
I have to watch this guy constantly. Any left over change from debit purchases gets deposited in here (which is a beautiful system, might I add). I collect my loose change and dollar bills throughout the month and roll them to deposit at the end of the month. A break down of this will be on my networth tracker. I also deposit the extra margin from my bills into here as well.
Example:
Budget for Car Loan: $300
Actual Car Loan: $298.49
That extra $1.51 is then put into this account. Monthly this gives me an extra $18.12. Not bad! 

IRA
I didn’t have much guidance when I set this one up. So I haven’t been contributing like I should. I am hoping to get it over that $2000 mark by next year and convert it into a Roth IRA. Ultimately the goal is to max it out yearly. 

Company Matched 401k
As of right now I am contributing the 5% that my company requires for them to match it but from he looks of it, they won’t actually be contributing anything until I hit my 1,000 hours of full time status. I have thought about it a lot and I have not really missing that %5 so I am just going to let it do it’s thing. Then come August, I should be seeing some company contributions. 

Now that’s not that bad! I’m actually impressed with how simple and effective this system is. Very much pleased with the outcome thus far this year.

Goals - Project DebtStomp 2015

Having goals is super important when it comes to tracking finances. If you don’t know what you are looking for, then why are you looking? 

So, for Project DebtStomp 2015, these are my immediate goals: 

1. Pay off personal loan by June.
This is a debt total of $3,437.52 that accrued from a family friend paying part of my way to England/Scotland this past summer. I have already chunked away a couple of hundred off of this total. The new actual total is $2,901.07 

2. Pay off credit card by May. 

This should be one of the easiest things to pay off. It’s my smallest debt and even between two cards my debt doesn’t surpass $2,000. I pushed it a little with my “go-to” credit card this month, I had been making decent enough payments that my bank decided to up my limit. So, instead of the original $700, I had $1,200 to work with. These will be getting paid off with tax returns!
Wells Fargo Credit: $906.07
Target Credit Card: $561.38 

3. Pay my car loan down to $10,000 by December.
This one is going to be tricky. As of right now, the total loan balance is at $14,992.51. According to my calculations, in order to effectively achieve this goal by the deadline, I will have to throw an extra $283.20 per month starting in March. This means roughly $141.60 per paycheck seeing as I get paid bi-monthly now. I am also planning to cushion this with the money that I should be getting from my settlement check due to the car accident (not my fault) that I was in last November. But I have no way of even guesstimating how much that will be or when I will get it. 

4. Pay off 1/4 of my student loan by December.
This is probably my most unattainable goal seeing as I don’t have it set to flow into motion until June and I only gave myself six months to pay off 1/4 of my $8,399.45 student loan which I was foolish with and one of my loans has been accruing interest heavily for the past year. Silly mistake that I won’t be making again, that is for sure! The total amount for this goal is $2099.86 to be paid off in no less than six month which averages out to about $349.98 a month! Yikes! 

I always have several savings goals that I am trying to accomplish as well. The first six months of 2015, I’m not going to be seeing a lot of progress in these departments, but as my debts get smaller and ultimately dissipate entirely, I am hoping to see a huge turn around as I begin to manage my money properly.
These goals consist of: 

1. Max out my IRA by February 2016

I gave myself until February of next year for this goal, just for the sheer fact that I have already filed my taxes this year and unfortunately haven’t added any funds to this since last year. 

2. Put any extra money I get into my Savings.
This mean cash, checks or gift cards that I get for any miscellaneous holiday from my family. My family likes to give me gift cards the most so that I am forced to buy myself things that I normally wouldn’t and don’t spend the cash on bills. How thoughtful. So, I developed a system to force myself to save that money. I can’t use a gift card until I have “bought” from myself. For example, say I received a $100 gift card for Christmas to Target. I will not go to Target and use the gift card until I have deposited the exact amount of the total worth of he gift card into my savings account. I save money AND don’t actually have to pay for the things I need. Double win! 

3. Keep up with my Challenge Savings.
I have also enlisted myself in a Challenge of sorts. Inspired by a post by J. Money from budgetsaresexy.com (my most favorite finance nerd blog), I have set up an account (savings, duh!) and this is where I deposit any extra change that is left over from debit purchases, loose physical change (and $1 bills) that is saved, counted, rolled and then deposited at the end of the month and any left over margin from my bill budgets. 

4. Contribute 5% of my paycheck into my 401k.
This is probably the easiest savings technique to keep up with. I literally don’t have to do anything. I never see it leave and I don’t miss it once it’s gone. Conveniently, my company uses Wells Fargo for our 401k’s so there is no swapping between different banks to check in. It’s all right one the app.