Hurray for used things! For once I’m not talking about baby stuff. Recently we’ve saved a metric crap ton of money thanks to my people being awesome about giving us their cast offs.
First off, my parents brought down their old Rav4 to give to us when they came to visit Maggie. They knew they weren’t going to get much on a trade in for it, so they figured ‘why the heck not’ and gifted it to us. We did have to pay some taxes and fees on it (and $30 a month in insurance) but it’s well worth the price to have a second car for emergencies. Best of all, we know it’s in fabulous shape because my parents are obsessive about taking care of their vehicles.
Secondly, good ol’ Mom and Dad packed the car up with my old bedroom furniture, which they had refinished. It was chilling in their house and not getting used a whole lot. The whole set is solid oak and the current cost of a single piece of furniture of that quality was more expensive than getting the whole set (bed, two dressers, mirror, 2 nightstands) refinished. Now we have furniture for the guest room and it will be Maggie’s furniture when she eventually transitions out of the nursery. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Geek.
And finally, my mom sanded down, replaced the trim on and repainted the old dresser that our roommate gave us. He didn’t want it because it was his ex-wife’s and she certainly wasn’t going to claim it (or any of the other crap she left behind which spent months in our basement). It came out really well, but I don’t have pictures yet because it’s still chilling in our garage until our friend comes over to get it up the stairs.
So yeah. We owe a lot to my parent and their generosity.
Have you ever gotten an awesome hand-me-down?
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No, I’m not talking about the gigantic butt I’ve developed since the start of this pregnancy.
How much extra float do you keep in your bank accounts?
I’m a big believer in the fudge factor. Murphy is kind of a jerk and whether it’s a transaction posting too slowly, someone cashing a check 6 months after you cut it, some fuzzy math, a transaction going through twice or just plain having a brain fart on how much is in your account, at some point there’s bound to be a screw up that could force you into overdraft.
If you’re not living absolutely hand to mouth, I’d make sure there was at least an extra $200 chilling in your checking account that should NEVER be spent. We keep more than that, but that’s because most of our transactions through the bank accounts are things like the mortgage or loan payments that tend to be bigger transactions.
To give you an example of how you could get smacked if you don’t have enough cushion, let’s say you’re going on vacation and you don’t like credit cards, so you pay for your hotel room with a debit card. Many chains will put a hold larger than your room charge on there to make sure you can pay off any incidentals or charges to the room. If there isn’t extra fudge room in your account, you could find yourself unable to use your card for anything else if you’re tightly budgeted.
A similar example would be if a cashier screwed up a debit transaction and had to refund or cancel it. In Canada, it would just be voided immediately and life would move on. In America, you money is now in limbo and you could be stuck for days or weeks where the money is held until the transaction falls off. Not so bad if it was a coffee and pastry, but it could be devastating on a big ticket items.
Getting smacked with an overdraft fee is one of the dumbest financial mistakes people make. While sometimes it’s possible to get them to waive it if it’s your first mistake or if it’s truly not your fault (like the canceled transaction), in this day in age it’s likely the bank won’t really care and you’ll be stuck with a ridiculous fee.
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When it comes to making financial changes, are you better at making the big changes or the little ones?
Mr. and I have opposite talents here, which can clash if one of us tries to make decisions in the other’s domain. I am definitely better at micro-managing the household expenses, but Mr is much better at dealing wrapping his head around the big numbers of things like our mortgage. Not that I would run out and buy a Porsche or Mr doesn’t know what a coupon is, but we definitely work better if we utilize our talents on separate issues.
For example, I drink A LOT of milk, and Mr harps on me for buying the second gallon and the fact that I leave about an ounce of yucky, crumby milk in the bottom of my bowl when I eat cereal. I actually calculated it out once, and I’m wasting about $.50 in milk a week. Meanwhile, he managed to completely miss the fact that his insistence on meat at every meal and refusal to eat any vegetarian options (beans, tofu, etc.) tacks on an extra $10-15 a week.
On the other hand, I get frustrated that we can’t buy some of the big household and baby items we need without waiting until the next month, but Mr has our credit card bills (everything goes on them and they’re paid off every month) down to an exact science. I know I’d end up over budget on some months.
Are you better at one or the other? Do you split financial management if you have a significant other?
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I have whatever the internet equivalent of nesting is. I just can’t get any theme to look right. And to top things off, I lost my copy of PhotoShop when my hard drive died. I could ‘acquire’ it again easily, but I try to keep things legal round these parts.
On the other hand, I don’t seem to be struck by the nesting instinct in real life. We finally got the nursery painting/carpeted, but the dresser is sitting in my garage waiting to be sanded and repainted. It was our former roommate’s ex-wife’s, but she left it behind when she ran off. Her loss, our gain. I did manage to sort out all the hand-me-downs by size and get them into storage, though. Thanks to all my cousin’s having girls first, out kiddo is going to be the best dressed tot in town. I think Mr. and I bought a grand total of two outfits, yet kiddo has more clothes than I do.
Okay, so it's not this bad yet.
The rest of the rest of the house is just an epic disaster. The guest bedroom is filled with baby paraphernalia (most of which I don’t even understand) and the junk that was in the nursery. Mr is still moving into his office, so there are boxes and boxes of files and assorted other crap in my living room. I’m in the middle of a very complex costume for this weekend (which I might not even get to wear now) so the back room and my studio are a mess.
And the mess really doesn’t bother me. It probably should, but I think my brain finally overloaded from trying to get all the other stuff done for baby and I’ve reach a sort of clutter-tastic zen. Well, that and I’m so huge that bending over to pick anything up is a massive effort.
Oh well.
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When it rains it freakin’ pours.
I just got a call that my grandfather had a major heart attack last night. He’s currently in Rochester, NY.
FIL just had major neck surgery this week and is in NJ.
SIL is hit 37 weeks and could go into labor any day now in NY.
We just got smacked with 5″ of snow, and we’re likely to get more on Friday.
Somehow we’ve got to figure out how to get to grandfather and FIL without messing up Mr’s work schedule or getting stuck in the snow.
Oh yeah, and I’m 34 weeks pregnant for those of you who don’t know. My Dr. doesn’t want me taking public transportation by myself for fear of me ending up stranded someplace without proper access to good food or enough water.
So….yeah. This totally sucks.
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So we FINALLY got our papers from Wells Fargo, which means we can do our taxes (hurray!)
This year, being our first year on the mortgage, we paid a whopping $17,500 in interest and $3,550 on the principle. How sad is that? And, we were sending extra $100-200 every month to pay down the principle.
The only saving grace is that we’ll be able to claim the interest on our taxes, which means we’ll have a pretty big refund this year. Logically, I know that having a large refund means we’ve pretty much been giving the government an interest free loan, but I kinda like the sweet surprise of a big refund. Then again, I think this is the year we have to start paying back our interest free loan from the government 2008 ‘tax credit’.
I’ve been mentally ‘spending’ our refund (don’t try to pretend you don’t do it too). I think that we’ll put aside $1,000 for unexpected baby expenses, another $1,000 for a kitchen table/chairs (and whatever we don’t spend goes into savings), and throw the rest at our car loan.
Technically, putting the money back into our mortgage would save us more money in the long run (especially since the mortgage is so new), but putting the money towards the car loan will free up $300 in funds every month for immediate cashflow. Admittedly, the former car payment will probably then go towards paying down principle anyway, but I prefer having more liquid assets at the moment since we don’t really know how to budget for Baby Geek yet.
So, if you’re getting a refund, what do you plan to do with it?
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As much as I don’t like shilling for my own benefit, I must say that I really do honestly love Swagbucks.
I’m not the type to do most of their ‘social media’ type earning and I don’t bother to search out their swag codes so I tend to earn fairly slowly, but I still make about $15 in Amazon.com
You don’t have to choose Amazon cards as payment, but I find them pretty utilitarian when it comes to getting what I want and you earn them faster than, say, cash. You can also get actual goods, but like those prizes you tried to earn by selling the most magazines/wrapping paper/whatever as a kid, anything worth getting would usually take forever to earn.
In any case, Swagbucks is on my mind because I’m about to hit $35 and combined with my Amazon referral earnings, I’ll have enough to buy myself a new game (hurray for free SuperSaver shipping). I’m thinking Final Fantasy XIII
Decisions, decisions.
*Yup, you guessed it, they’re referral links.
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Come, February 11th, there will be a ‘new’ car in our household, thanks to my parents. A 1997 Rav4 in excellent condition, to be exact.
Our first thought was a long the lines of “SWEET!”, but now that we’ve been really thinking about, we’re not even sure whether we’re going to put it on the road right away. Some people may think we’re crazy since we’re currently a one car family, but having a second car isn’t necessarily a good option for everyone.
Sure, there aren’t payments on it (technically I’ll be paying my parents a token amount so it’s not a ‘gift’, but they’ll give us the money back later) but there’s a lot of other expenses that go along with car ownership. There’s the taxes on it, title and registration fees, insurance, inspections, not to mention the more regular costs of maintenance and gas. Altogether, it looks like we’d be paying between $50-75 a month to keep this girl on the road.
Now, $50 hardly seems like much for a second vehicle, but again, there’s more to consider. After some careful planning, both Mr. and I work from home, which means neither of us needs a vehicle for commuting, except for 2 days every bi-week (any 2 days) when Mr. has to go in for an hour. This leaves the car available the other 330 hours a bi-week for errands or whatever else I need to do.
There’s also the matter of safety. While the older Rav4′s are hardly death traps, they do have a tendency to roll and less of the modern safety features that the Matrix has. If I were going to drive with mini-me, I would be taking the Matrix. Unfortunately, that would leave Mr. with the Rav4. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the passenger compartment of one of the early Rav4′s, but they are tiny and Mr, well, isn’t. He absolutely hates driving it because he ends up with massive leg cramps.
Basically, the only time the Rav4 will be truly useful for us is those 6 hours of commuting and work every bi-week.
I think we’re going to end up registering the Rav4 anyway, just for a few months to see if it’s really worth it to us. Having the second car would allow me to get a part-time job once mini-me is partially weaned and I start pumping, but that won’t happen for at least 6 months or so. It would also allow me to take the Matrix for my conventions and not leave Mr. stranded, but, again, that won’t be happening for at least 6 months.
I thought having a second car would be awesome, but now I’m definitely not so sure.
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Thanks to all the extra expenses that came up this month: car repair, travel, refinancing costs, baby stuff, we’re in budget crackdown mode for the next few weeks. It’s nowhere near emergency status (that’s what the emergency fund is for) but there’s no sense in spending more money when we don’t have to, especially with mini-me due to make an appearance in 7 weeks.
Unfortunately, this means chopping down our discretionary spending, which I hate to do. Well, no one likes to cut down the little luxuries in their life, but when you’re pregnant and feeling like ass, sometimes that milkshake at 6 am is what keeps you going.
So what are the first things that hit the chopping block when you need to pull those purse strings tight?
For us it’s:
- Eating Out – We really only go out to eat 2 times a month, but we almost always go to a sit down restaurant (I can’t stand fast food)
so we end up taking a $30-40 hit each time after taxes and a tip. That’s $80 shaved off the monthly budget right there. - Grocery Treats – I’ve developed a hell of a sweet tooth since I got pregnant. When we’re in crackdown mode, I try to satisfy it with things like fruit or small hard candies, which can save about $20 a month.
- Furniture – This sounds like an odd one, but anyone who has moved from a small apartment to a big house can attest that it seems like you are forever buying furniture. We still have 4 empty rooms (kitchen, dining room and two bedrooms) and we like to build up our household items piece by piece. We were supposed to get a kitchen table before mini-me arrived, but it looks like we’ll be waiting on that. $100-400 saved.
I’d say something about dropping a car, or cable, or phone line, but we already do that. Now that we’re no longer living in Arlington, it’s just not feasible to have no car, we’re already down to our most basic phone plans, and we haven’t had cable in over a year. We could cancel our Netflix and Gamefly, but considering that’s Mr’s only source of entertainment for the moment, that would just be cruel.
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Just got the call that the installers are coming at 8am, so I don’t think I’m going to actually get to write a post today. These are the second to last floors to be replaced (one last bedroom and the vinyl in the bathroom to go), and it means I can finally get all this baby stuff into the nursery and out of everywhere else! (I’ll tell the story of how we got a discount on this carpet later).
In any case, enjoy this picture of my pregnant butt in a Penguin Mario costume.
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