Well, we just finished our first month of tracking expenses.  We’re not going to be spending money for the rest of the day, so I decided to post the results for this month.  It’s interesting to note that we’re on track to have one of the lowest credit card bills we’ve had in the last 12 months – directly related to tracking finances I’m sure. 

I am not tallying taxes in my reports.  For income, I’m looking at after-tax numbers, and our real-estate tax is included in our mortgage as escrow.  But everything else is here, rounded to the nearest dollar.

After-tax income: $5165

EXPENSES:

• mortgage: $1260
• groceries: $676
• Discover card: $492
• car insurance (4 months, 2 cars): $253
• health/dental insurance: $303
• life insurance: $66
• dermatology bill: $200
• healthcare (walgreens, etc.): $44
• entertainment/hobbies: $54
• dining out: $79
• clothes/shoes: $84
• donations: $45
• water/sewer: $54
• electricity: $96
• vonage phone: $31
• cable tv: $16
• car maintenance: $32
• car registration/emissions tests: $210
• gasoline: $53
• alcohol: $12
• clothes to resell: $33
• gifts: $31
• household: $28
• petcare: $48
• misc: $8

SAVINGS:

• additional mortgage payment: $81
• emergency fund (ING): $100
• HSA contribution: $200
• IRA contribution: $200
• employee 457 retirement plan (no match): $648

So our total income was $5165, and our total expenses came to $4209.  That left $956 for savings, plus a little extra left over from July, so our total savings for the month came to $1229.  My goal is that we save at least $1000/month, so we did well there this month. 

I’m really glad that I started tracking our expenses.  It’s nice to be able to see everything in black and white (no red!) and know exactly where our money is going.  Already looking forward to seeing which expense numbers we can lower in September.

We watched the first half of Blood Diamond last night, planning to finish it tonight.  It’s horrifying to watch a movie like that, because even though you tell yourself that the people getting shot and hacked to pieces are just actors, you know it’s based on real life.  I was living in Africa in 1999, and would hear news of the Sierre Leone conflict on Radio Free Africa.  But seeing it in technicolor makes it all the more real. 

As we were watching the movie, I kept glancing down at my ring and feeling ever so glad that I am wearing a ring that was made in a lab in the US by highly skilled technicians working under OSHA standards.  Even though the movie points out that only 15% of the world’s dimonds come from “conflict” areas, there are an awful lot more that come from “non-conflict” areas in Africa where the diamonds may not be traded for weapons to fight a civil war, but the working conditions aren’t so spiffy. 

I need a drumroll here…. I just mailed the very last check for our Discover Bill.  $491 – the last of the debt we incurred to get our business going a few years ago.  Happy days! We still owe some money to a doctor, but I don’t really consider that a debt, since we have the money to pay the bill in full tomorrow if the doctor’s office would shape up.  Other than that, our only debt is our mortgage.  Yipeeeeee!

There were times in the last three years when the weight of our debt felt unbearable.  But when it would start to get me down, I would pull out my yellow legal pad and stare at the numbers, focusing on how far we had come, rather than the distance still to travel.  We had a good amount of luck on our side – no disasters struck during our debt payoff time.  And we were also very determined and focused on our goal, month after month, even when today seemed so far away that we couldn’t even imagine it. 

Now that we’re out of debt, we’re working to make sure that we don’t ever have to go there again.  We’re building up our HSA so that we’ll be able to pay our deductible if we ever have a medical emergency (our health insurance policy has a $3000 deductible, and nothing is covered before the deductible), and we’re also working on our emergency fund. 

We have no plans to change the way we live now that our non-mortgage debt is gone.  Instead, we’re going to focus on building up our HSA and paying off our HELOC – the smaller of our two mortgages.  Our main mortgage is currently at $138,800 with a fixed interest rate of 6%.  But our HELOC (which we got because we only had 5% to put down on our house when we bought it, and the HELOC made up the difference) is at 8.35% right now, with a balance of $27,500. 

The way we look at it, paying off the HELOC gives us a guaranteed return of 8.35% on our money.  Nowhere else guarantees that - our ING account pays less than 5%.  So we’re going to start taking the money we had been using for debt repayment over the last few years, and start putting it towards our HELOC.  We paid off about $40,000 in debt in three years, so we figure we should be able to pay off the HELOC in two years. 

Our car expenses are nuts this month – it looks as if we have a car payment when I look at Microsoft Money!  We paid our car insurance for the rest of the year this month, and we had to pay our annual registration fee for both cars this month.  Both of them needed emissions testing (required every two years here) which costs $25 per car.  Ouch.  At least our cars are older, so the registration is pretty cheap (about $26 each). 

Yesterday we took one of our cars to my parents’ house so my dad could look at it, since we had noticed a minor oil leak.  He traced it to the rocker cover gasket, and showed us what would be involved with reparing it (taking out half the engine).  Since the leak is very small (our oil level hasn’t gone down at all in the last month since we noticed the problem), we decided to just put a little piece of cardboard under the car in the garage and call it good.  We changed the oil while we were at it, and went with synthetic oil.  We debated that one for a while… synthetic is more expensive, although we found some on sale for under $5/qt.  But you don’ t change it as often, which means that there’s less waste oil to deal with (better for the environment) and the cost probably balances out too. 

We took my mom’s car to a nearby town to buy the oil and filter, since ours was up on ramps with parts taken out of it when we decided to do the oil change.  Since we borrowed her car, we put gas in it – about $20 to fill it up.  The oil and filter cost us $32, so our day came in at $52, plus the gas we put in our own car when we got home last night.  Overall, we got a good deal.  We got an oil change with synthetic oil (not cheap at service stations) and we got to hang out with my parents for the day. 

We watched Maxed Out last weekend.  They did a good job of portraying the credit card companies as money-hungry and predatory, which theyare.  The movie tended to show the consumers as victims of the credit industry, with stories of ailing,uneducated, down-on-their-luck people who have been snagged in the web that the credit industry spins.  I did feel bad for the people in the movie, especially the poor family who was convinced to refinance their government subsidized home loan into a high-interest private loan, and was facing losing their home. 

But we need to stop pointing the finger so much at the credit card industry.  They’re in it for the money – they’re not charitable, or concerned with the welfare of the people.  We’re not talking about Habitat for Humanity or the Salvation Army here.  They’re money-grubbers, and yet they thrive because people are willing to go into debt.  In some situations, the debt isn’t a matter of choice – medical bills are a perfect example, especially for people who can only afford a high deductible insurance policy.  And yet hospitals and doctor’s offices will often agree to very low payment plans with no interest.  These are not the loans where people are paying 30% interest and $45 late fees. 

The credit mess in this country has come about over the last generation – our parents and grandparents did not have this problem.  If you peeked into my mother’s closet in 1970, you would not have seen 25 pairs of shoes and 8 feet of clothes hanging so close together that they had to be pushed aside to see what was there. 

We’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that much of what we want is necessary in order to be happy, when actually the opposite is true.  I have heard the statistics about how a good number of bankruptcies are filed because of medical bills, but I have to wonder how many people filing bankruptcy truly know the difference between a want and a need?

The movie vilifies the new tightened bankruptcy laws.  And yet if we really stop and think about it, shouldn’t bankruptcy be hard to get?  The movie deems it a “second chance” but what it really means is that a person is cheating someone out of money owed.  If you get a service or a product, you have an obligation to pay for it.  I see bankruptcy as stealing.  I’m sure that there are going to be people laying into me for that comment, but that’s how I feel.  Being on a payment plan for 35 years to pay off debt that you knowingly incurred is a pain in the ass, but it’s more honorable than walking away.  There are tons of blogs written by people who have gotten themselves into tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and they are digging out, little by little, month by month.  Does it suck?  Of course, but it’s the right thing to do. 

Yes, there needs to be more regulation in the credit industry in terms of caps on interest rates and late fees, but people need to take more responsibility for the messes they get into.  Just because the credit card company offers you a card, doesn’t mean you have to max it out.

I have a friend whose sister is about to declare bankruptcy.  She and her husband are splitting up, and she is behind on all her payments.  They refinanced their house so many times (and took out extra cash every time) that their mortgage payment is almost $2000/month on a house valued at under $200,000.  They’re upside down on their house and cars, and have a good deal of credit card debt.  My friend was hanging out with her sister in a little mountain town for the weekend when her sister told her all of this.  The next day, they were walking along the main street in town and the sister went into a tourist shop and bought cowboy boots for herself ($100) and shirts and hats for all three of her kids (about $60 total).  My friend was amazed at this, and asked her sister what in the world she was doing spending all that money if she was in so much trouble already.  Her response?  “it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to file for bankruptcy anyway so it will all get written off.”

Earlier this summer, my husband had a dermatology procedure done in a local office.  We had picked that office because they offered the best price – we knew nothing about them beforehand. 

Over the last few months, we’ve gone back and forth with them about the bill.  Basically, they quoted about $300 plus pathology over the phone when my husband explained what he needed.  We’ve long since paid the pathology bill ($85), but the bill for the whole procedure is still unresolved.  The billing person that we worked with was great – but she’s in a different office and is just contracted for the billing.  Her hands were pretty much tied, although she did manage to wrangle a small discount for us.  When we actually talked with the office manager of the dermatology practice, I was horrified by the fact that anyone like this can get a job that involves dealing with the public.  She was rude and condescending, and the idea of apologizing never even occured to her.  Both my husband and I talked with her, and were equally shocked by her behavior.  She actually hung up on my husband when he was trying to explain our position – I was in the room listening, and heard him talking in a calm voice and being continually cut off by her interrupting him. 

Both my husband and I are pretty easy-going people.  We are not quick to anger, we don’t send restaurant meals back if they’re not exactly what we ordered, we don’t get angry with airline ticket agents if our flight is cancelled or delayed.  We’ve both been in jobs that require a high level of customer service skills for almost 10 years; we’re very careful to treat others the way we would like to be treated, and tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.  But this woman was horrid. 

We basically came to the conclusion that the person who quoted $300 over the phone was pulling the number out of the air.  There is no way in the world she was basing her estimate on any of the actual billing codes that the doctor uses.  And yet before we had the procedure done, the only way we could get prices was to call around and trust the office staff to give us numbers that were at least loosely based on real billing codes.  We feel cheated with this whole thing.  We would never have had the procedure done if we had gotten an estimate even close to what they charged us, and yet after it’s done, we’re stuck with the bill, like it or not. 

We filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau a couple weeks ago, and the BBB has told us that they’ve forwarded the complaint on to the doctor’s office.  Our insurance agency is a member of the BBB (and we’ve never had a complaint in 5 years of business), so we’re familiar with the procedure.  If the doctor’s office does not respond to the notice from the BBB, they end up with an “unresolved complaint” notation on their file.  So far they have not responded, and I’m not really surprised.  Throughout this entire mess, they’ve made it clear that their only priority is making money – once that’s done, they have no need for basic civility, ethical business practices, or customer service.  The sad part is that since they’re on the network for several big insurance companies, they know that they will still get business from people who just find them on a provider directory.

I talked with the billing lady about installment payments, and she said that it would be fine to make payments – she even told me that a lot of people only pay $50/month.  There is no interest charged on outstanding bills as long as a payment is made each month.  We’ve paid $200 so far, and I intend to pay $100/month until it’s paid off.  There is no way that I’m cleaning out our HSA right now to pay these aholes.

The funny thing is that we have the money in the HSA to pay the whole bill.  Even after all this time and as badly as they’ve behaved for the last 2 months, if they were to call us today and apologize for their ridiculous quoting method (ie, pulling numbers out of the air) and the way that they’ve treated our very ligitimate concerns, we would pay the whole bill tomorrow.  When we submitted our complaint with the BBB, we decided that if they made any effort at all to compromise with us and offer a genuine apology, we would pay the bill in full.  But since they have ignored us and ignored the BBB, they will be floating a 0% loan to us for over a year.  They earned their own bad karma. 

We spent a crapload of money this past weekend.  I didn’t like having to put everything into Microsoft Money to track our expenses, but then again, it’s not like we were out buying shoes and purses. 

On Friday night, we went to a play with my brother and his girlfriend and her mother.  My brother’s gf had scored the tickets for all of us through her work, so we got in for free.  Before the play, we went to a local burrito place (sort of like Qdoba, but it’s a local-flavor classic instead of a chain).  Since our play tickets were free, we paid for dinner before anyone could protest.  It cost $38, which pushed our dining out spending up to $57 for the month, but I’m glad we paid for their dinners, and I’m glad we’re all on the same page when it comes to finding great food on a budget ($38 – including tip - for five adults is a pretty good deal).

On Saturday, I worked at the library, and then we went for a bike ride in the evening.  Afterwards, we went to the grocery store and spent $90 on groceries.  We were just buying the stuff we don’t get at Costco, since that was our plan for Sunday.

On Sunday, we slept in and then went mountain biking.  It was our first real mountain bike ride together since my husband hurt his kneein May.  We had been riding for about 15 minutes when a fast-moving summer storm rolled over the mountain.  The lightening was blinding and the thunder was so loud it made the ground shake.  We made it back to the car in record time, soaked and muddy but not fried, which was good.  We sat in the car for about 10 minutes until the storm passed and the sun came out, and then we gave it another try.  Second time was a charm, and we had a great ride.  Other than the gas to get to the mtn, it was free entertainment for half a day.   

We cleaned up with wet wipes in the car and headed to Costco, where we bought $309 worth of groceries and $33 worth of household stuff.  We had to rearrange our pantry to fit everything in, but we shouldn’t have to go grocery shopping until October.  We get our produce delivered every week, and we have everything else we need to last a good long time.  Of course our grocery spending for August isn’t pretty : $673.  But if we got snowed in for a month we’d be just fine (unlikely in August, but you never know). 

I’ve always known that our grocery spending is higher than average, but I’m ok with that.  Most of our categories – auto, gas, entertainment, dining out, clothing, etc. – are lower than average, and I really believe that groceries should be a significant chunk of any budget.  I’d much rather drive my 1991 Honda and eat organic, unprocessed food than drive a sweet car with a a $350/month payment and eat hotdogs and ramen.  The last time I had a cold was June of 2005.  For my husband it’s been even longer.  I firmly believe that the food we eat plays a major role in our health, and I have no plans to lower our grocery bill.  I had to add that disclaimer, since I just finished adding nearly $500 from this weekend to our monthly spending report…

Last week, I was pondering the ins and outs of a new position at the librarywhere I work.  I went to work on Thursday after deciding that I would go ahead and apply for the job.  But then we had a bit of a human resources earthquake that day, and I’ve changed my mind.  Here’s how it went:

As soon as I got to work, I had an email from the supervisor in the department with the job opening, saying that she’s leaving the library this fall.  Penny is nice enough – she’s really shy and quiet, and I don’t know her well, but I’ve never had any reason to dislike her, and I knew that I could work for her if I were to get the job.  But if she’s leaving, that means that Alisha will get her job – it’s pretty much a given.  Alisha is the second in command in that department, and she’s my least favorite person in the whole library.  She’s grumpy and seems to have a chip on her shoulder a good deal of the time.  I absolutely do not want to work for her.  Maybe for $50/hr – but not for $18. 

So with this news, I was glad that I had not yet submitted my application.  I went to talk to my supervisor about it later in the day.  I adore Janice.  She’s a fantastic boss, and all of us in the circulation department love her – and we work our butts off for her, because she makes us want to (and because as hard as we’re all working, we know that she’s working harder).  I asked for a minute of her time, and she said that she needed to talk with me aswell.  She said that she’s decided to retire next month.  She’s been at the library since 1978 – ever since I was born.  I cannot picture the library continuing to function without her, but of course it will. 

An hour later, one of my friends at the circ desk confided in me that she’s going to apply for the job I had been eyeing.  I hadn’t thought that anyone else I work with was interested, but Amy is.  She’s been at the library for 6 years, and was a contender for the lead circ position earlier this year.  She’s an obvious choice over me for the open job, with much more library experience than I have. 

When Janice leaves next month, my friend Nora will become the circ manager.  She’s one of my favorite people at work, and she will do a wonderful job as the manager.  I will enjoy working for her as much as I enjoy working for Janice.  If I were to get the other job (assuming Amy doesn’t apply, because if she does, she’s a shoe-in), I would be working for Alisha, and that would just suck. 

It’s interesting that all of this is happening now.  Our library is a pretty stable place.  In the three years I’ve worked there, we’ve had three people quit, plus two shelvers who graduated from high school and went off to college – we had known when they started that they would be leaving in two years.  Now all in one week we had one person leave (vacating the position I was considering) and two long-term supervisors announcing their resignation.  Must be something in the water. 

One of the people who commented on my post last week told about passing on a job in order to stay in one with a boss and coworkers he loved.  But then the boss left and was replacedwith a really bad one, and the job went downhill from there.  I guess in my case it’s happened before I even applied.  I shudder to think about getting the other job and then finding out six months later that Penny’s leaving and Alisha is my new boss.  Thank goodness it happened now!  I will happily continue in my current job, sad to see my supervisor leaving but glad to know that her replacement is someone I will be happy to work with.  Life is good. 

I have a dilema.  The library where I work 32 hrs/week has just opened a job at another desk.  It’s one of the only non-circulation positions that does not require an MLS, so I am eligible with my bachelor’s degree.  The pay is between $15 and $22/hr, depending on the experience the candidate has.  I currently earn $12/hr at the circulation desk.

The dilema is that I love the people I work with at circulation.  We’re like a group of sisters with a couple mothers thrown in, and we have a fantastic time together.  No matter who’s on the schedule, you know it’ll be a good day.  In the three years I’ve worked at the library, I’ve made a point to get to know everyone in all the departments, and the circulation desk is by far the most fun-loving group of employees.  I know everyone at the department I’m considering, and get along with all of them, but try as I might, I have never been able to build much of a rapport with the two supervisors – I’m not sure if anyone has. One of them actually referred to me as “just a shelver” a few years ago when she was introducing me to a new employee.  One is polite but very shy, and just doesn’t talk much at all.  The other is talkative, but not the most pleasant person I’ve come across.

The other employees in that department are fine, and I know I would get along with everyone there, since I already see them every day and we know each other.  It just wouldn’t be the same as working with the circulation staff. 

I estimate that I would probably earn about $18/hr if I got the job, given my library experience.  That would be almost a $10,000/year raise.  I would work pretty much the same hours, and get the same benefits. 

So, is it worth it?  That’s the question I’m debating with myself.  $10,000/year would be sweet.  It would fully fund both our Roth IRAs.  And I would still enjoy my job, since I love working in the library.  But it wouldn’t be as much fun as the circulation desk, and I’m wondering how much “fun” is worth when it comes to a job.

What would you do?

Last Sunday, I had to work a 4 hour shift at the library, but I was off by 5pm.  I rode my bike the one mile to our house, and was loving what a beautiful afternoon it was.  We ate dinner on our front porch, and then decided to go for a bike ride together.

Normally, my husband and I spend most of our free time in the summer mountain biking.  We have to drive at least 30 minutes to get to the nearest good mountain bike trails, and some of the ones we like are nearly an hour away (we don’t go to those very often though).  We like really challenging trails – the steeper and rockier, the better.  But when my husband hurt his kneein May on his unicycle, it put a bit of a damper on our mountain bike season.  His knee is pretty much back to normal now, but he’s been actively rehabilitating it for 3 months.  He can walk and bike just fine, but he’s still a little nervous about needing to come off the bike or unicycle in a hurry and put that foot down on uneven terrain.  He’s afraid that he could undo all the work he’s done to get the knee healed. 

So all summer long, we’ve been going for bike rides on the urban trails near our house.  We’ve both been missing the mountain biking, but we’ve gotten to the point where we really enjoy our trail biking.  At first we were just doing it as a rehabilitation for his knee, and for something to do.  But then I started thinking about how much easier it is to actually go for the rides around here.  We just get on our bikes and ride from our garage to the trail.  There’s no loading bikes on the car, no extra hour spent in the car getting to and from the trail, no gas to buy.  And the trails really are beautiful.  They go past lakes and open spaces with lots of wildlife.  We’ve seen some beautiful sunsets, since we always go in the evening.  On Sunday, we took a detour through some beautiful neighborhoods that we had never seen before, and found a section of trail that went for miles and miles – we didn’t even know it existed, and we’ve lived here for 5 years!

We’re both still looking forward to the day when he can ride in the mountains again, but for now, we’ve found a new form of entertainment that’s free, fun, and good for us.  Since we spent the whole evening on Sunday riding our bikes, there was no time to spend any money – so it’s a perfect budget-friendly activity.