Less loans and paying off more debt

Thank goodness we are not going to have to use any of our emergency savings for pastry school. The girlfriend had some stock that her grandmother gave her. It should cover the part that the student loans didn't take care of. She basically will just be loaning herself the money with the intentions of building that savings back up after knocking out her loans. We will be meeting with a financial lady to figure out what we need to do to sell the stock and to go over what funds my IRA is in. Apparently my bank put me in B shares and they aren't that good. We are going to just look over things and see if it would be beneficial to move it around and how much that would cost if it would be worth it.

At my job we are waiting to hear what our raise percentage is going to be. One thing that sucks about working for the gov't is the lack of good raises. We just had a study done by a firm that determined we were underpaid and now they are trying to figure out what kind of raise we will get. I am not holding my breath for anything over 4%, but it sure would be awesome to get more.

June is quickly approaching. In June I plan on putting 1,000 bucks toward getting Jeep paid off. I will have a 400+ car insurance bill to pay and I will be turning another year older. On June 22 I will have lived 26 years. Yup....turning the big 2-6! ;)

Ups and Downs

The girlfriend got most of her pastry school costs taken care of through loans. We still have 4,700 to come up with. She has one more person to check with and then our options are:

-put half of that on a credit card with 6% interest and take half out of emergency fund
-put off pastry school (this would not make anyone a happy camper) so, we will see.

Of course we would start shooting 2500 on the credit card first thing and then build back up the emergency fund. It just sucks...but something has to work out.


In GOOD news...
I rode my bike to work! I live 5 miles away and most of that is downhill on the ride in, so we will see how happy about this at about 5 this evening.

We are taking things day by day here. Sometimes it seems like things are just moving along so slow.

Making corrections and going to pastry school!

Turns out that I don't need to switch insurance companies. I have been with State Farm for 9 years now and there is a good reason! After we raised the deductibles everything came out to be about the same as Geico. It was a little more, but my renters insurance is also included. Now, no wrecks.

Also, I mentioned before about being -8,0000 some for my net worth. I was wrong...it actually is a positive 8,000 something. Awesomeness. I like that a bit better. Gotta keep building it up, though!

We are coming into a little hard stretch for a few months. The ever so loverly girlfriend will be going to patissiere school to become a Pastry Chef. Dreams will come true. She will start working as she goes to school, but all of that will go towards paying off her loans. We will have about a 6 month or longer stretch with pretty much just my paycheck. So, we may be staying in more and finding more cheap things to do, but we will have the best desserts around and the girlfriend will be in baking heaven! :)

Here's to happiness - Cheers!

I just saved a lot of money switching to Geico!

I hope this is what I will be chanting in about a month.

I looked at different rates online yesterday. I still need to call my current provider to see if they can do anything better for me. I also have questions about what the heck the PIP thing is and how much I would need.

I pay about 630 or so every 6 months...now, I still need to see what it would be if I knock it up to a 1000 deductible.

Here is what I am thinking:

Bodily Injury: 100,000/300,000
Property damage: 100,000
MED: 0
Personal Injury Protection(PIP) 2,500
Uninsured Motorist BI: 100,000/300,000
Uninsured Motorist Property: 100,000
comprehensive: 1,000 deductible (eek!)
Collision: 1,000 deductible (eek!)
Roadside: No (I currently have it, but should get AAA instead)
Rental: $20??? I keep going back and forth!

Total: 393.00

The same package ended up being about 422.50 with Progressive.

Now, I do have my renters insurance through my current company and it ended up being free because of the multiple policy bit. So, that will be an extra 100 a year or so, but I would still get great savings.

I am scared that as soon as I change my deductible to 1,000 something is going to happen and I will be S.O.L. I guess that is just what emergency funds are for.

I had to face it.

I shouldn't have student loan debt. My school was paid for from scholarships and my parents paid for my housing. I got involved in a bad relationship and was used and while I take responsibility...I was still very heavily coerced into taking out these loans...and I have nothing to show for it. While that relationship has long been over, the financial scars are very visible. I try not to get too bitter about it. I have learned a lot and perhaps if it wasn't for going through all of that, I wouldn't have forced myself to get a handle on my finances at such a young age. Better to go through it earlier than later, I suppose.

SOO... all that was to say that I have finally put ALL of my accounts in Quicken.
I will post a graphic tomorrow, I didn't think ahead.
The accounts I have are:
Checking, Savings, HSBC, E-Trade, 403b, IRA, Car Loan, Student Loan

The grand total comes out to be -8,000 something.

It'll be ok. I am the one in control of myself, now.

It was reading through the ENTIRE blog of Our Money that encouraged me

Climbing all sorts of hills.

My goal of biking to work is getting closer and closer to a reality. One of my main hills is becoming easier and easier to climb.

On money news...I rolled my 401k a while back, but didn't really know what funds it was in, etc. I looked at my papers over the weekend and half of it is in the Growth Fund of America B and the other half in (oh crap...I forgot) something like Capital Fund B. I looked up more about them and I guess this is pretty good. I will just keep an eye on it every now and again.

Mother's Day and brother's b-day gifts will cost me about 50 dollars. Other than this I am just trying to keep things steady. Oh, but then we have the memorial day tubing trip. I won't be able to save as much as last month, but I will keep on track.

Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and keep working.

How did I do in April? numbers.

Well, pretty good for my first pretty serious month of cutting spending. The main areas I am tracking here are eating out, entertainment, grocery, and gas. These are areas which I have more control over than any other spending areas. I don't shop too much , so my Misc category is usually anywhere from 25-50 dollars. I started tracking spending in Jan. Here is how it breaks down from Feb-April

Feb.
Gas-139
Eating Out- 330.00
Entertainment-234.71
Groceries-204.46
-this month's eating out and entertainment were quite high due to valentine's day

March
Gas-80
Eating Out-105
Entertainment-43
Grocieries-151
-this month is a little off due to being on vacation for a week...those expenses went under "vacation"

April
Gas-143
Eating Out-103
Entertainment-78
Groceries-103

-so..taking everything into account I think we did a good job this month!

I guess I need to start tracking my savings increases

-end of March I have

HSBC- $2,417.82
E-trade- $1000
Credit Union- $1,116.43
------------------------
$4534.25