Someday A Goat

Two months until xmas

We have 2 months until Christmas -- 62 days to be exact! Have you started budgeting and planning for the holiday? We set aside our first small amount mid-month (only $20, but you have to start somewhere!). The $200 we have scheduled over the next two months won't cover all the gifts we plan on buying, but it's something. We started late this year, and in prior years, we always used the "extra" October paycheck from my husband's company (he's paid biweekly) to put aside Christmas present money. This year our budget is structured a bit differently, so we'll have to be creative in both present selection and carving some extra Christmas budget from everyday spending.

A small habit for a big car loan

With the cloud of layoffs looming at my job, I've been hesitant to throw every last penny at the car loan. Our second largest monthly bill after the mortgage, we've paid the balance down by about 22% in the first 11 months of the loan. We have miles to go and can't sprint through a marathon; with an interest rate of 1.9% on the loan, it makes more sense to focus on emergency savings.

If I'm honest, we could cut our spending -- no cable, no trips, no weddings, etc. -- to speed up the measly pace at which we're building an emergency fund and paying off the car. But we're pretty frugal already, and at this stage of our financial lives, living bare bones isn't a necessity. Balance, however, is.

In early March 2011, I found a way to achieve a little balance while making headway on the loan. Biweekly payments are a popular way to reduce mortgages and pay down principal, why couldn't I do the same with the car loan? We allocate certain bills to each paycheck (more on this habit), and the car loan comes from husband's paycheck. Since he's paid biweekly, with half a payment per check, the timing was already perfect, and we have no prepayment penalty clause.

Not only are we saving on interest and shortening the loan term, it's also an emergency backstop of sorts, feeding my need for security. Due to the way payments are allocated, additional or advance payments are applied to the next payment. So by making biweekly payments on a monthly loan for the last 8 months, we're more than a month ahead of schedule and closing in on 2 months of breathing room. Sure, I could direct the bank to apply any extra payment to the principal, which would save even more on total interest paid, but at 1.9%, I like the double whammy of breathing room for job loss and a shorter loan term with less interest than if we made normal payments.

Goodbye Wells Fargo

Our first joint checking account is now closed -- I feel like that has more significance than a simple financial transaction. Between the debit card fee and the strange $310 daily ATM limit, it was time. Honestly, I've loved one less account. Money is transferred faster, and things are generally simpler. We'll see if ING improves the deposit process soon as promised, and how we deal without brick and mortar locations.

I will say that I think banks are intentionally shedding accounts like ours -- free to the customer with a few restrictions, holding a small average balance with tiny savings account attached. Most of our money is elsewhere; I'm not surprised we're unprofitable for Wells Fargo.

I've stopped clipping coupons

My sales bag, full of unclipped coupon inserts.

I'm still saving big at the grocery store, but I've stopped spending 2 hours every Sunday clipping and sorting , then culling expired coupons. All that work had become more and more of a chore, and with the plethora of great sales/coupon match-up sites, the weekly project basically became unnecessary.

Match-up sites I love: I Heart Publix (she's Atlanta area, which is perfect for me), Coupon Mom, Money Saving Mom (Crystal runs much more than a deal blog these days)

Sales/coupon match-ups can now be drilled down to the regional level, and last month as I stared at a stack of 15+ coupon inserts that needed to be clipped, I realized that I could just stop. Stop clipping, stop sorting, stop spending so much time. I will still have to occasionally cull inserts and booklets that are way past expiration.

I'm still on my kick of changing how I save, and this change has worked beautifully. I might miss a sale here and there if I forget my running list of match-ups since I no longer have clipped coupons organized by category, but the time gained is amazing. I'm not even going to bother with organizing the inserts in a binder. They all just go in a bag that lives in my car, with loosies in the front pocket. I might save one of my three coupon organizers for printables, but those just go in with the loosies for the time being.

Along the same lines, I've started checking coupon previews before I head to the store to buy a double paper each week. Coupon inserts were pretty thin this summer, and a double paper now costs $3.50, so I make sure it's worth the purchase with about 3 minutes on the computer before I head out on Sunday. Yesterday, it wasn't worth it for me, so I have an extra $3.50 in the budget.

In the past 6 months, I've started to realize just how few coupons apply to products we buy. I don't think I'll ever give up on coupons entirely, but it's no longer the only way I save. Weekly sales, menu planning and strategic stockpiling go much further.

 

Rebooting

Upheaval has been the name of the game where I work. We lost 2 big accounts about 10 months ago -- not unexpected in advertising, but all the same, the outlook changed. All the uncertainty since then has demanded a reevaluation of career and life goals, and I want something different.

The only problem is which changes to make. Since I'm in my early 30s, time to dither is running short. I've taken the GMAT for grad school, but the unconventional ideas I find on Zen Habits and The Art of Non-Conformity make sense to me. I've been paid to edit and paid to write, but haven't taken a step toward freelancing. I'm seriously considering living overseas -- through grad school or foreign service.

Almost 5 years in my current position, and I wonder where the time went. Giving up a safe paycheck to freelance? My salary isn't that high, it's hardly secure, but unemployment is 10.1% here. Spend a ton of money on grad school, and face the prospect of number-crunching in a cube? I know I enjoy learning, but being a full-time student for 2 years is scary. What if I make it into the foreign service, and get sent somewhere awful? Another ad agency is just trading problems, although I have been applying and interviewing for other jobs.

Despite the nagging doubts, I'm making changes. Rebooting. Posting more here, and on my craft blog. Keeping design software skills current. Learning to code web sites. Writing, reaching out, and changing how I pass the hours in the evening. Taking the foreign service exam. Actually sending in grad school applications, even if I think it's a long shot. Maybe something awesome will happen.

There's a Chinese proverb that says that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Lately, every time I've felt that I'm behind, why not give up and just settle, I think about that quote.

It's hot in the sun, and I'm going to have to water my tiny tree seedling all the dang time, but if I don't take action today, there is no way I will be sitting in the shade in 20 years.

Amex and Wells Fargo changing terms

I read my statements and inserts each month, and this month I have two good reasons to continue to watch carefully.

Wells Fargo lowers daily ATM limit

First, Wells Fargo lowered our daily ATM limit to the very strange amount of $310 -- I'm not sure what it was before because we've had the account for so long. I do know it was at least $500. Why $310? Why not $300? Why lower it at all? We don't overdraft the account, and we have direct deposit. Our credit scores have skyrocketed in the past 4 years. However, I did switch my paycheck to ING Direct in the past 6 months, but husband's paycheck is still direct deposited to Wells Fargo. We closed both of our ancient individual checking accounts -- for the past 5 years, we've had a total of $32 between the two. There was no reason to close them until they added a monthly fee to one recently. I closed the other (mine) to simplify things. Perhaps one of these things triggered the lower daily ATM limit.

Honestly? I think it's because we only keep $310 in our linked Wells Fargo savings, which is the minimum balance plus $10. The interest rate on the savings account is so low, it's basically just an extra cushion for checking. All our "real" savings is at ING Direct and elsewhere. I would have preferred a higher minimum balance requirement on the checking or savings, and I'm strongly considering switching banks because of this change. I've calmed down some about the sale of ING Direct, so I'll see how things shake out there since Capital One has brick and mortar locations. A daily ATM limit of $310 is ridiculously low, and I can think of at least three situations in which we would need more cash in one ATM visit. Most particularly if we were traveling abroad, which we do frequently. Wachovia wasn't that great, and Wells Fargo has been worse.

CostCo Amex lowers restaurant reward

I adore my CostCo Amex rebate. I carry one less card, and you don't accrue points, or miles, or anything vague. It's cash, and each year when I get my rebate coupon, we take it to CostCo and they give us cash. Unfortunately, they notified me this week that the restaurant rebate was going to 2% (previously 3%). Still way better most rewards cards, but I'll be on the lookout for a slow leak in benefits. While it's a bummer, it's still one of the best reward cards out there.

Other sundry items

Five Cent Nickel has been talking a lot about Quicken and the Mac OS upgrade to Lion. Many old programs will become obsolete with the loss of Rosetta, but I have 12 years of data in Quicken and I'm so glad he's been talking about it. I have some older machines I could still use it on, but I really need to start thinking about what program to use moving forward. Mint's great and all, but I'm not keen on handing out bank passwords to ANY third party. I don't even have Quicken fetch my data, I enter it manually. I tried downloading transactions back in the early 2000s, but at that point everything was in all caps, the fixing of which took as much time as manual entry. Now, it helps me keep track of our finances and catch errors.

Sales and reducing the amount of time spent on coupons

Public interest in couponing, via shows like "Extreme Couponing," seems to have an inverse relationship with my interest in coupons and sales. I'm still using coupons, but not nearly as much. I don't clip as many, I miss sales, I don't know what changed, but something did. My couponing was pretty streamlined as it was, and since we eat few packaged foods, I've gotten into the habit of planning meals around store sales.

Looking through the sales on Sunday, I noted just a few sales at each store I track (Walgreens, Target, CVS, Kroger and Publix). But more than that, I realized that my shopping habits had changed. I do most of my shopping at Publix and Target, with an occasional trip to CVS. Kroger has good deals, but the locations near me are not great. Some of the best deals are of the Buy 10, save $5 variety, and I usually struggle to get enough stuff for the deal. Good deals at Walgreens are few and far between -- I can't always put register rewards to good use, and I feel like most sale are buy one, get one 50% off. With the high everyday price and low quantity of most of the stock, that's not a great deal. I would say that 65% of the time, sales I try to take advantage of are sold out by Monday. Even CVS, you have to spend a good deal to get the best return. We just don't consume that much, I'm rather surprised to discover.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to focus more on updating our price book, and less on sales and coupons. Then I'll be able to shop smarter every day.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still glance through the Walgreens ad, but my focus will be on Publix and Target. I'll still clip coupons, but fewer. I'm going to watch every minute I spend on coupons and sales. I timed it on Sunday, and the 15-minute increments racking up makes me uncomfortable.

Waiting 4 years to waste $31.74

We've been in the house almost 4 years, and the entire time I have dreamed about hanging plants on the front porch. Never have I been able to justify the cost of purely decorative plants, and shade-loving blooms aren't cheap. In a fit of madness a few weeks ago, I came home with $31.74 worth of lobelia with deep purple blossoms. Here's how it looks now:

Awesome, right? Let's just say adding daily watering on the front porch was apparently too much to ask of my chore list. I'm admitting defeat and feeling a little sad about the 4 years spent thinking about two plants that I didn't even want.

And because we've been on a spending tear, a huge roast was exactly what we needed from the grocery store this weekend. It's one of the most expensive pieces of meat we've bought, and I'm not sure how we ended up thinking it was a good idea, but the deed is done and I'm about to have a leftover roast beef sandwich. Plus we have a new oven that needed to be tested.

In one bright note for our budget, we did make a practical choice on a temporary fix. The sprayer on our somewhat new faucet has been slowly crapping out, and on Saturday, it was the only way to get water out of the faucet. Not exactly practical. We're going to order an industrial-strength sprayer with no plastic parts, but until then, the least expensive sprayer from Home Depot is just fine. It took a while to figure out how to swap just the sprayer, but it washed cherries.

Bye to my love, ING Direct

Opening an ING Direct account in January 2009 was one of the crucial steps in our debt journey. As a requirement of a bailout from the Dutch government (ING Direct's parent company is a Dutch bank), ING was required to start the process of selling ING Direct USA.

Yesterday it was announced that Capital One is purchasing U.S. operations of the huge online bank. I'm very nervous about this -- I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with ING Direct, and I have doubts about whether Capital One will provide the same level of service. Changes won't be too likely until closer to 2012, but I am already thinking about other options.

Our account there has gone from a simple emergency fund and stash account for credit card charges to serving most of our banking needs, and I just recently switched my direct deposit from our brick-and-mortar joint account to ING. The interest rate dropped consistently through 2010, but having subaccounts with one log-in really flowed with the way my brain thinks about money. What will I be looking for in an online bank if Capital One drastically changes things?

Sub-accounts -- we have them for all manner of categories -- emergency fund, credit card holding, pest control, insurance, travel, gifts, large home projects (deck, now gutters), house emergency account. We have 15, and could probably reduce it down, but not by much. I have one log-in and only have to deal with one 1099-INT at tax time. This set up boggles my mother and most of my friends, but works beautifully for us.

Interest rate -- current APY on our accounts is 1% -- not much, but far and away better than many brick and mortar banks, especially with no balance requirement.

Easy, free transfers -- in and out. I'm not going to pay to send money to another bank account or my Roth IRA.

Checking AND savings -- I didn't think we'd use the Electric Orange checking very often, but I was wrong. So much so that I recently switched my paycheck deposit at ING since I was transferring most of over anyhow. Most of our day-to-day spending is on credit card paid in full each month, so our brick-and-mortar bank statements have become blissfully short.

Robust online bill pay -- ING Direct has the best bill pay service out of our three banks, although Bank of America has always had good online bill pay. ING is very good at magically connecting with my billers, and it doesn't take 5 days for ING to process the payment if they don't need to mail a check. I've also used the service to put money in my sister-in-law's account, and to mail a paper check. Rock on.

No long transfer delays -- Instant transfers from ING Direct savings accounts to Electric Orange checking, and speedy transfers in and out. Puts my Wells Fargo account to shame.

Easily manage accounts -- I've had a zombie money market account at Bank of America, and Wells Fargo (as did Wachovia before it) cannot seem to keep my married name on our joint account. I have easily closed sub-accounts at ING, and every single interaction with them has been smooth and quick. Why this is difficult for other banks, I'm not sure.

Gas prices have me thinking about 2008

A gallon of regular gas in Georgia is near $4, and it feels like the crazy gas prices in summer 2008, but my reaction this time around is entirely different. In June of that year, our debts weighed heavily, and high gas prices threw our budget seriously out of whack. Faced with a huge budget hole, we finally started making necessary changes in spending and saving.

Nearly three years later, the price of gas doesn't fill me with terror. More money for gas means less money for financial goals we have been working toward, month after month, but our budget isn't destroyed. The last six months have been full of financial challenges bigger than most we have had in three years, but we are much better equipped to meet them. We have a small but growing cushion for emergencies, bill money is set aside long before due and we pay credit cards in full each month. Most of all, we have gained confidence that we can make ends meet, no matter the situation. That is powerful, both financially and emotionally. I can't even imagine how I'll feel when the car loan is paid off. 

We didn't do anything that special, the exact same advice is repeated all over the internet. All the same, here it is:

Cook at home

My husband gets a weekly lunch budget large enough to eat out every weekday, but he also shoulders cooking dinner almost every single night. We eat well, with lots of fresh in-season ingredients, and have one night out per week generally. Our oven (but not the range) is currently broken, so we've ruined a good streak of eating in consistently. Cooking from scratch can be incredibly cheap, but does require time and the willpower to clean. I am much more careful with our shopping budget, and we plan our meals every couple of days according to what we have on hand and what is on sale. 

Plan for irregular expenses

June 2008, I opened up an online savings account that offered easily created subaccounts. At first it was just efund, car insurance, termite bond -- I would put a tiny amount in each month and once the bill was due, I didn't have most of it, but I had some of it. The margin has improved over the years. We have added additional subaccounts like travel, but my favorite by far is credit card holding -- we transfer credit card spending every couple of days into a dedicated account, kind of like escrow.

Split budget tracking

Once in the mindset of splitting our budget into two, one for regular bills and one for spending, reducing expenses overall became much easier. Bills are relatively predictable, even with seasonal fluctuations for power and gas. We keep a good eye on energy usage, but these costs don't vary much after cutting out the fat. Tracking and reducing spending for the other category -- fuel, eating out, groceries, household goods, lunches and entertainment -- isn't so hard if the rest is on autopilot.