money
Happy Days...Paid off Credit Card Debt
Mar 07 2008 05:28 PM Filed in: Personal
If you don't count my car loan, which I tend not to,
once todays payment on my credit card balance clears,
I am debt free. We got our bonus at work, and I put
the full amount to paying off that debt. Sucks I had
to spend it on that, but I'm happy to finally have it
paid off. I've been working at it for a while, and
now it's finally gone. This is great, especially with
the way the economy is going these days. No mortgage
and no credit card debt, pretty good state to be in
at the moment. The big thing will now be to make sure
I don't rack up that debt again, which should
hopefully be easy now that I've gotten my life down
to where I can pay all my monthly payments with 1
paycheck, so I always have money going into my
savings account.
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Budget
Jan 25 2008 05:32 PM Filed in: Personal
Since I left Kimberly I have been working to get
myself out of debt. When her and I split I had over
20k in debt. Now I am down to a couple thousand on
one credit card, which I will be paying off over the
next couple months. Once all of that is done I plan
on getting my finances in order and concentrating on
saving, investing and retirement. I figure the best
way to go about this is to come up with a budget. I
subscribe to a couple financial blogs, and recently
saw a link to an article about a budget called the
60% Budget. I looked it over and thought this might
be a good way to start going about coming up with a
budget for myself. The 60% Budget breaks down like
this
60% of your gross income should be dedicated to "Committed Expenses". These are
- Basic food and clothing needs
- Essential household expenses
- Insurance premiums
- Charitable contributions
- All bills
- All taxes
10% for "Retirement" expenses
- 401(k)
- IRA or Roth IRA
10% for "Longterm Savings"
- Investments, like stock, bonds, etc.
10% for "Short Term Savings or Irregular Expenses"
- Savings account
- Vacations
- Repairs
- New Applicances
10% for "Fun Money"
- Spend on anything you like.
I use a software program called iBank to track my Checking, Savings, Credit Cards, Investments, and it has a budget feature, so I am going to use this to start tracking all my expenditures to see if I can stick to this budget. It will be nice to have everything working well, so that my savings, investments and retirement funds have a consistent inflow. I may open a couple ING savings accounts, that way I can have one set up for Vacations, one for Emergencies and one for my regular savings, but I haven't decided.
60% of your gross income should be dedicated to "Committed Expenses". These are
- Basic food and clothing needs
- Essential household expenses
- Insurance premiums
- Charitable contributions
- All bills
- All taxes
10% for "Retirement" expenses
- 401(k)
- IRA or Roth IRA
10% for "Longterm Savings"
- Investments, like stock, bonds, etc.
10% for "Short Term Savings or Irregular Expenses"
- Savings account
- Vacations
- Repairs
- New Applicances
10% for "Fun Money"
- Spend on anything you like.
I use a software program called iBank to track my Checking, Savings, Credit Cards, Investments, and it has a budget feature, so I am going to use this to start tracking all my expenditures to see if I can stick to this budget. It will be nice to have everything working well, so that my savings, investments and retirement funds have a consistent inflow. I may open a couple ING savings accounts, that way I can have one set up for Vacations, one for Emergencies and one for my regular savings, but I haven't decided.