Well, it has certainly been a while. I wanted to wait until I had something to post about.

We have been doing good this last year and managed to save around $18,000. We should be looking at getting a house withing the next year or year and a half. We have a wedding coming up in October and have planned a low budget wedding that will include tons of fun. :)

My girl has a great, steady job in copy editing. We have started a Roth IRA and have a quarterly CD rotation going on to help us save for the house.

Now we need to focus on going to a lawyer and getting all of our documents in order to protect ourselves from the government and our families, get some extra life insurance, keep on saving, getting me some short term disability insurance, and more with the saving.

Cheers to the new year and hoping we can meet our goals.

Things are starting to move along

Vehicle is paid off. Savings is increasing. The lull in posts was mainly because all we could be doing for the past few months was save. save. save.

1. Jeep is paid off as of January

2. Savings has increased to $8000 total

3. Side jobs are bringing in about 800 a month for the time being.

4. Retirement accounts are slowing growing with now a total of $14,000

5. As of the Jeep being paid off, my month savings contribution has increased to $1,200 not counting any extra income from side jobs

5. The girlfriend will be pulling in a steady paycheck for the next 5 months or so. (now, most of this money will go to her paying off debt, but some will go to our savings )

I hate Bank of America

I signed up with Bank of America to get the free 100 bucks for opening the checking/savings account. I wanted to try them out and see how I liked them. First of all they said I didn't enter the code for that promotion. I know I did. I saved the page to my desktop. That was the only reason I opened that account. I remember reading all of the small print as I was filling it out. Fine....so, I will close it. Most banks will send you a check for the remainder of what is in the account. No, they tell me to bring it to 0 and then close it. I go to transfer the money to my other bank account. It said it would be a 3.00 fee, so I cancel it. Somehow the transaction still goes through will meanwhile I already processed a transaction for the exact amount that was in my account. So, the process that I CANCELLED still goes through and bounces. Granted no money went anywhere from that bounced transaction, but they charge me 19 dollars. I call and ask them about this. They are rude and proceed to tell me that there is nothing they can do. Ok, I suck it up and make a transaction to transfer 10 bucks into that account so that I can close it. Well, now another transaction supposedly bounced. This time NO transactions are even listed in my tranfers. This one is a 33.00 fee. I call and ask what that is...that no transaction was scheduled to come out of my savings account. They don't know and said they would send me a letter in 5-7 business days. ??? This is a savings account. I never had any transactions coming out of it. I don't understand and they always say that there is NOTHING they can do about it. I am so mad. I never bounce anything and now I have to pay THEM 52 dollars just to get out of this account???!!!

My Christmas Shopping

This is a list of my purchases or intended purchases

Bought:

Niece -$15 -Trouble (the game) and some fancy markers.
I got this cheap using a $10 of $10 or more promotion with google

Nephew1 -$5 - 2 videos
I got this cheap using a $10 of $10 or more promotion with google plus a discount code for PBS and they were offering $1 shipping

Nephew2-$15- kid's shirt from Threadless.com - they were having a $10 dollar sale (half off!)

Brother -$40- Gift card to Bass Pro Shop

Sister-in-law - I don't know!

Mother -$0- sonicare electric toothbrush that I got to either try out myself or give to someone else and report back on their reactions.

Dad -$5 - Bought his domain name and built him a website for his business

Grandparents1 - $17 - Fruit cake and macaroons from the baker my gf works at - 20% discount

Grandparents2 - $17 - Fruit cake and macaroons from the baker my gf works at - 20% discount

The girlfriend - She reads this! No way am I telling!

Don't buy stuff you can't afford

This is just awesome!!!!

What Now ?

I received a call from a headhunter two days ago. Here are my issues (well, some)...I had the preliminary screening interview yesterday and now they are going to set me up with an interview with the company.

Now, yes...the job I have now does not pay as much as I would like, but it is great experience. I do web application development and we get to keep up with new technologies, etc. For my first year here I was the only developer. Now, I have a Jr. Programmer under me. That has to be good, right? This is also a very stable job. I was planning on brining up the compensation, etc. with my boss on my year review. The review is in a few weeks.

Now, if this other company would want me...starting out I wouldn't be as high up of a programmer as I am now, but they said they have plenty of opportunity to move up. I just need a little more experience with that particular language first. This is a bit less stable of an environment, but the company has been around for 17 years. The instability is more in the tech market...I think things will be fine for at least a few years.

Ok, the money question. I have been asking myself. How much would I need to leave this job? I am thinking around $10,000 more a year. Then I think...well, I should stick it out here for another year and then I will have that much more experience and will have completed a few big projects...which could help me get more later.

Wow, it really helps to type all of this out. I am still a bit up in the air...but it seems that maybe sticking with my lower paying job may be better for now. I can hope for a bigger raise next year?...I guess...

Debt going down and Efund going up

Slowly but surely. I have 2,500 dollars left to pay on my Jeep. Me being quiet doesn't mean I haven't been working hard. The past few months I have been paying $1,000 a month towards that debt. Soon it will be gone and I will move to putting $1200 a month into our savings. This will go towards our emergency fund and our house fund.

We already have roughly $7,000 in our emergency fund. I would like to have 15,000 for our emergency fund. This would cover a job loss for a few months.

I would also like us to have $25,000-30,000 down on a house. My partner will be out of school and brining in more income soon. Maybe we can sock away a little more. For now I will say we are looking at around 2.5 years. I hope houses don't go up too much more :(

I keep going back and forth on buying sooner and financing more or buying later and having house prices go up and up. Austin will be sure to go up in prices. Who knows.

The dog is coming along well in her training. I could not be happier with that whole situation.

Well, this is the state of my state. Over and out.