It’s been way too long, and I owe you guys an update.

-Mr. Money got a job! He is the chef of a restaurant again, working noon to midnights, but he has benefits! It is awesome.  We are so, so thankful.  We were able to spend Thanksgiving with my family and my sister came to spend Christmas with us so that was nice.

-Penny celebrated her first birthday last month.  I cannot believe my baby is a year old!  She is now walking and babbling and busy being cute.

-I’m hoping we get a tax refund this year.  Hopefully with my lack of income and us having Penny will help.  I’m confused on how many exemptions Mr. Money should claim, so I’m trying to figure that out.

I have so many things I’d like to blog about, but it is so hard to find time when caring for a baby basically by myself.  I’m so thankful that Penny is such a joy to be with.  We spend  a lot of time at home playing with toys and hanging out.

I’ll try my hardest to update again soon! Thank you all for the support!

2012 is already here, and I’m a little behind on our financial and life goals.  I’m a little uncertain about what I should aim for, as we’re going to have a brand new baby and will have to adjust to the new expenses and life with a child.  My goals this year will be attainable (I hope!) and I am crossing my fingers for the best year ever.  It certainly will be interesting and a lot different than past years!  Here are some of the goals I’d like for us to accomplish:

1. Set up a savings account for the baby. The baby has not even been born yet and already has a stash of money.  I’m going to open a custodian savings account for the benefit of the baby.  I will also have to research 529 plans in case that’s the way we want to go.  I’m thinking it would be easier just to open the UTMA (Uniform Transfer to Minors) account and wait until the money accumulates and then go from there.  We’ll see.

2.  Figure out life insurance. I had life insurance through my employer, but I’m not too sure what’s happening with it since I’m leaving the bank.  That’s something that we really need to address, especially with the new baby coming.

3. Change beneficiaries. I’ve got various family members listed as beneficiaries on our retirement plans and life insurance, but I would like to change it to the baby.

4. Make more money blogging/working from home.  I’d like to be able to contribute financially to our household as much as I can.  In addition to blogging and writing, I can shoot photography if I have time.  Of course, this all depends on the baby, as that’s my first priority.  I’d like to stay at home for at least the first three years of the baby’s life, and it would be awesome if I could make enough money freelancing to do so.

5. Stay debt free.  This was on last year’s goals as well, but I think it’s important enough to stay on this year’s.  I will have to say, if there was a good reason that we needed to borrow money, I probably would do it.  I don’t think debt is the worst thing in the world as long as you’re responsible and borrow money for the right reasons.  Mr. Money’s not going to get the 2012 Mustang he wanted for instance, but if we needed to take out a loan, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  I’m going to do my best to avoid it, though!

6. Finish up all house projects that need to be done.  We need to repaint the cement on our porches, paint the shed, figure out what to do with the dining room flooring, and redo our master bath.  I’m going to do as much as I can to make the house look really good this year.  We’ve done a lot, but I feel like there’s still so much more to do.  These projects shouldn’t cost a ton of money.

7. Learn to relax and not worry so darn much.  One of my best friends gave me some great advice when it comes to money.  What’s the point of having a ton of cash in the bank if you are miserable?  I’m not going to worry about saving every penny where I can like I used to.  I want to be happy.

What are your 2012 goals?

Right now my cell phone is a five year old pink Motorola Razr. I bought it new five years ago and it’s served me well. However, the battery life is awful and sometimes it will tell me I am roaming when I go to answer it. So annoying! I’ve been considering buying an iPhone, but the monthly cost has been deterring me. Right now, I pay $38 a month for my cell phone bill. That includes all the taxes and fees, so I’m super happy with that! I get a 20% discount off my bill since my employer participates in a special program. I only use my cell phone for talking on the phone, and no text messaging or internet. I do have an iPod touch that I use at home to play games, but that’s about it.

My husband recently got a new iPhone from his employer and they also pay the bill for him, which is nice. I’ve played around with his phone and I really like its features, especially the texting and the fact that you can get on the internet from pretty much everywhere. On the other hand, that’s also a downfall because I feel if I had an iPhone I’d probably always be tethered to it and getting online to waste time. I don’t know if I can justify buying a brand new phone for that reason.

I’ve considered going with Verizon’s iPhone since I currently am a customer and have been for almost 10 years. I don’t have problems with my service, and the representatives are always great when I call. I’ve also considered switching to AT&T and trying out their service since you can talk on the phone and be on the internet at the same time and with Verizon you can’t.

Part of me really wants a cool new phone and to be brought into this century. But the other part of me is trying to figure out how necessary it is and if it’s worth the extra monthly cost. I’m estimating a new phone plus new plan to run about $100 a month. We are saving money each month because I’m not paying for my husband’s cell phone any more. That is nice.

I guess my decision comes down to this: can I really justify spending extra money each month for my new iPhone? It is something I can afford, but is it that important that I actually commit to a two year contract of paying for the phone service? And do I switch from Verizon to AT&T so that I can be able to talk on the phone and surf the net at the same time? I guess if I’m going to upgrade my cell phone, I want to be able to take advantage of all the features available. I don’t want to go with Verizon and then regret not being able to talk and surf at the same time.

Do you have an iPhone or smart phone? What cell phone provider and phone do you recommend?

The other day I asked the question: “How much money do you make?“.  That post got a lot of responses from many people who were comfortable sharing how much their annual salaries are.  I think overall more people were comfortable sharing their finances with other people than not.  I thought it would be fun for anyone that wanted to share their salary to do so here.  I’m going to allow anonymous comments so that no one has to be public with their money if they don’t want to be.  And for the people that don’t feel comfortable with everyone knowing their business, they can comment anonymously and share without revealing their identity.

I’ll have to approve comments manually, so if you do comment with anonymous it most likely will go into moderation and I’ll be sure to approve it as soon as I can.  If you want to play along, please comment with:

-Your annual base salary.
-What state or area of the country you live in.
-Your job title or position and a short description if it’s unclear.

I think it will be neat to see how salaries vary from positions and areas of the country.  I know that some salaries may sound high or low at first, so please keep in mind that someone who makes $70,000 and lives in Washington DC may experience the same standard of living as someone who makes $45,000 and lives in Indianapolis.  Obviously these are numbers that I pulled out of my head and aren’t completely accurate, so don’t hold me to them.

Let the fun and games begin!

We are already over three months into 2011, and I can’t believe it.  A quarter of the year is over already!  That’s nuts.  I thought I’d do a review of how our 2011 goals are going so far.

1. Keep up with the clutter and declutter 365 items from our house this year. We’re doing well on this challenge so far.  I’d say we are more than halfway there, and I’m very excited for that! It feels good to get rid of things.  Coincidentally, the Veterans of America pickup service was scheduled to come to our house today but never showed up. Humph. I’m not too happy about it because now I have a pile of crap sitting on my front porch that now I have to deal with.

2. Pay at least $3,000 down on the principal of our mortgage. So far we’ve paid $961.94 towards the principal of the mortgage.  We’re almost 1/3 of the way there, so I’d say we’re on track to meet this goal.  If we aren’t on track by the end of the year, I will just go ahead and make a lump sum payment on the mortgage to get it accomplished.

3. Travel to somewhere fun and exciting. We haven’t gone anywhere so far this year, and that makes me sad   I love traveling, but with Mr. Money’s job we haven’t been able to get away together.  Since December, we haven’t even had one full day off together!  I know it could always be worse though.

4. Get knocked up. Obviously this hasn’t happened yet, and I’m pretty sad about it but we’re doing all we can to make it happen right now, so I guess that’s a positive?

5. Live on one salary. This is one goal we’ve been successfully knocking out of the park! I decided to have my direct deposit routed to our ING savings account, and that’s worked out very well. I’ve freaked out a few times if our main checking account falls below like $300, but I know that we’ve got money if we absolutely need it so I need to relax on that. I guess I thought we’d be saving more money than we are by living on one income, but with health insurance, taxes, 401k contributions, and other deductions from my paycheck it is really not that much money.

6. Make more money from side hustles. I’ve made some cloth wipes to sell to cloth diapering mamas, but haven’t listed them on etsy. I’ve also knit some longies too but haven’t listed them. Looks like I need to work on this more! My blog income has been pretty steady so hopefully that will increase more soon!

7. Stay debt free! This has happened. Yay!  Of course, if we buy a new stove, I’ll probably finance that on our Home Depot credit card as long as I can get 0% APR on the card.  I’ll pay it off before we get charged any interest, so no big deal.

I’m thinking 2011 will be a pretty good year for us financially.  I hope that we accomplish all these goals, plus more!

How’s 2011 treating you so far?

Every year we set financial goals for us.  Here are the goals I set for 2010, and here are the 2009 financial goals.  Personally I think this year was a pretty good year for us financially, and I am very thankful for that.  Here’s a recap of the goals I set and whether or not we accomplished them.

1. Mortgage- This year I’d like to pay off at least $3,500 off the principal of my mortgage.  Last year I aimed for making one extra payment a year and that didn’t work out.

Fail.  We paid off $2500 in principal on the mortgage this year.  This is definitely more than we would have paid off if we had just made regular payments.  About halfway through the year, I decided that I would make at least one $100 extra principal only payment on the mortgage each month.  While it’s not a lot, it still helps.  I like seeing the balance of the mortgage go down faster than normal!  Unfortunately, the mortgage that we refinanced to has a prepayment penalty of 1%.  We knew this going into it, and since we didn’t pay any closing costs we decided it was fine.  Closing costs on a conventional mortgage would have been much more than the 1% penalty.

2. Retirement- I want to bump my contribution up to 10%.  Right now I contribute 8% and I want to put more in for 2010!

Fail. I actually kept the contribution the same.  I think the percentage goal didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.  I’m thinking that for 2011 I may come up with a certain dollar amount to increase my 401k amount by and go with that.  In 2011, I may also add a goal to contribute to a Roth IRA for Mr. Money as well, which will be in dollars.  I think that will help out a lot!

3. Car Loan- I want to PAY OFF the car this year!  I know this is definitely attainable, and I hope I can do it in the first quarter!  When I pay this off, we will be completely debt free!  Woo!

Success! In October, we ended up being debt free (minus the mortgage) with the car loan payoff! It is so awesome to not have to worry about making a car payment each month, and knowing that we can live on less.  It’s a great feeling!  Over the past few years, we’ve worked extremely hard focusing on paying off student loans, credit cards, and even the car loan.  Being debt free is awesome! Now to chip away at the mortgage…

4. Budget- Come up with a good budget and actually stick with it!

Success! My budget may not work for everyone, but it does for us, and I’m happy with that.  Why mess with it if it’s not broken?

5. Savings- Keep tossing money into savings accounts!

Success! Over the course of the year, I’ve been able to contribute extra money that I’ve earned, bonuses from Mr. Money, and some freelance income into savings.  It’s nice to have it just in case we need it.  In 2011, I’m going to set concrete goals for savings amounts for specific things we want to do.

We obviously didn’t accomplish every goal we set, but overall I’m happy with our success.  I’m looking forward to 2011!

I decided today that I was going to calculate my net worth because I had never done so. I was surprisingly astonished when I received a net worth of $37,337! This took into consideration myself and my husband’s information, but I was really expecting to be in the red!

To explain our financial situation a little deeper, I am still in my early 20s and my husband is in his early 30s. We both make a decent income for the area of the country we live in. In fact, we earn almost twice more than the median average household income for our state. We own our own house, have a first and second mortgage, both have Roth IRAs, I have a 401K, and we’ve got a nice chunk of savings kept in a high yield savings account at ING. We both work full time as managers in our respective fields, I work in finance, and he works in the food industry.

I was pretty shocked to see the number come up that was displayed. We’ve had a little bit of a financial crisis lately, with a tree falling on our house, tearing a hole in our roof, and totaling one of our vehicles. We’re going to have that extra expense of the deductible on our home owner’s insurance and we’re going to have to buy a new vehicle in a year or so. Luckily a family member sold us her car for something we could afford so we don’t have a car payment right now.

Throughout my life I have lived frugally. It all stemmed from the lessons my mother has taught me. I remember working my first job training horses, where my Grandpa would give me $50 or so when he sold the horse because I helped out. I always saved that money, and was glad I did. We don’t buy fancy cars or spend money on expensive clothes or electronics. We live well below our means, and to tell you the truth, I love it. I love being as close to debt free as I can. Hopefully in 10 years or so we will be completely debt free. I think one of the keys to long term wealth is not generating more debt than you can handle. For instance, don’t go out and buy a new plasma TV if yours works fine. You don’t have to have the nicest things to “keep up with the Joneses”.

I am going to try to “bank on myself”, where next time I need a loan, say for a car, I’ve got that money saved up so I don’t have to get a loan. I’m going to set up a pre authorized transfer of at least $350 a month (same as a car payment) so that I can pay cash for the vehicle of my choice when the time comes, or at least have a good amount to put down on a vehicle so my loan amount isn’t outrageous.

This was a really interesting exercise and I strongly encourage you to do it as well. You may be as surprised as me to find out your real net worth!

So sometime last month I made a call to Verizon to add text messaging onto our cell phone plan.  We didn’t have any type of text messaging plan so every time we sent or received a text message we were getting charged 20 cents.  For example, when I texted Mr. Money and he sent one back we’d be getting charged 80 cents. 20 for me sending, 20 for him receiving, and vice versa.  Total rip off, right? That’s why I thought a plan would be worth the money.

I talked with a very friendly representative who informed me that for just $10 a month I can get unlimited mobile to mobile messaging with Verizon phones, plus 500 text messages to other providers.  I told her to sign me up.  The month goes by, I’m happily texting my hubby, friends, sister, etc.  On Friday when I came home, in my inbox was my Verizon bill.  $100.20.  My previous bill was only $70.39.  My bill jumped almost $30 in one month!  Of course I freaked out, pulled up the history to see what was costing so much, and that’s when I realized what was going on.  The $10 a month only includes my line.

Yep, I had been sending Mr. Money all kinds of text messages thinking it is not costing either of us anything because the lovely rep with Verizon didn’t inform me that the $10 plan I thought would cover both lines didn’t.  I made sure to ask her a few times if I decided I didn’t want the $10 a month plan if I could drop it at any time and she did say that is true.

I’m not sure what I should do now.  I’m thinking about calling Verizon to see if they will do anything about the charges ($9.60 on Mr. Money’s line alone).  I’ve been a customer for seven years.  My contract is up with them, meaning I could switch to a new cell phone provider if I chose.  I’m thinking about looking into another service provider.  At the very least I think I am going to call and drop the text messaging plan on my phone and block texting on both.  That’s something we can live without.  I can see where Verizon would say it’s my fault because I didn’t ask, but at the same time I feel the rep should have explained it a little more thoroughly.

What do you think I should do?  

I spent last week with my whole family at a cottage in Michigan. All 19 of us spent the week in a three bedroom cottage with one bathroom. Thankfully, we all love each other and get along pretty well, so things worked out. We cooked every meal at the cottage and spent most of the day on the lake in paddleboats and kayaks. It was an amazing time just spending time together and reconnecting. It also made me want to move back there even worse, but that’s something that’s been on my mind for quite some time.

photo credit: dougtone

While I was there, my one aunt made a comment that I “should be taking college courses at night” to try to further my education. This is the same aunt that was telling me to go to school to be a CPA awhile back. I remarked that I have a different career path in mind than that. She made it seem like I was not as good as everyone else in her family because I am not making over $60,000 a year. Her nephew is going to school to be a surgeon and someone else just graduated college and is making $70,000 a year and just got married and bought a beautiful house. Needless to say, her little comment hurt more than she will probably ever know.

Does she think that I wouldn’t love to make $70,000 a year? Who wouldn’t?! There are times every day where I think that I’ll never be “successful” because my husband and I will probably never make tons of money. I feel like a loser. I worry about so many different things related to money. I think if I had my MBA that I’d have a better job and make more money and be happier. I feel like I’m not living up to my potential.

It just pisses me off that she tries to force her beliefs on me and in turn makes me feel like I’m a loser. The thing is, if I went to school to get my MBA that probably would be a waste of time and money for myself right now. I want to have kids and stay at home. What good would that MBA do for me?

I hate how money is a status symbol. I hate how people measure success in how much money one makes, or how many things they possess. It just makes me angry. Is that because I’m not super rich and probably never will be? I’m not sure. I would love to be on the other side, making the money and having all the things that would be fun to have. I just need to learn to accept my life how it is and make the best with what I have. My husband and I are happy with what we’ve created, and that is the most important point.

Could you ever make enough money? Do you ever feel like everyone else makes more money than you?

I’ve always heard the saying “Nobody likes your kids as much as you” which basically means that when they are acting up in a public place, you may think it’s tolerable, but others may just want to choke them. I was thinking about it though, and that truly applies to pretty much everything! Nobody cares about your money as much as you, and nobody cares about your debt as much as you either.

Nobody cares about your money as much as you

Think about it- retailers aren’t out handing out coupons at the register to help you save money; you’ve got to seek them out yourself. If you don’t protect your money, no one’s going to do it for you. Surely a financial adviser can tell you which funds they think are best for you, but if you don’t feel comfortable with it, then don’t do it. It’s your future, not theirs. They haven’t worked as hard as you have to earn your money.

Nobody cares about your debt as much as you

When you’re deep in debt, it can be overwhelming and all consuming. It can be the only thing that you think about for days on end. You may worry about how you will pay your bills and stay afloat. Debt sucks, and that’s all there is to it. You’ve also got to realize that no one cares about your debt as much as you. Your friends may or may not know that you are deep in debt. It doesn’t affect your relationship with them, so they aren’t going to care about your debt as much.

Nobody cares about anything of yours more than you

I once was told that if someone died, their job could replace them pretty quickly with another person, but the family would grieve forever at the loss of their family member. Don’t spend too much time working, because chances are you’ll regret not spending time with your family versus spending that extra two hours at work.

Spend your money wisely, pay off your debt, and cherish time with people you love. That’s a recipe for happiness.

What else do you think nobody cares about more than you?