Personal Finance Update

So, you will recall that a month or so ago I shared some personal finance goals with you (my loyal 2 readers, Hi, Mom!) The prevailing goal was to start acting like a grown-up and pay attention to our money, where it goes and where it should stay put, etc.  We've been at it since mid April.  It's now the beginning of July (tomorrow is, anyway).  Today marks the start of the 5th pay cycle of the great Getting Together Our Sh*t of 2011.  How are we doing? We're doing okay.  I give us - me - a strong B.

Read on for the goals and more updating . . .
You may recall our goals:

1. Review insurance rates and coverage and adjust as necessary.
2. Purchase life insurance
3. Purchase disability insurance
4. Create living trust, scary legal what-if stuff.
5. Pay down credit card debt
6. Build 6-month emergency fund
7. Max out annual contribution amounts to a Roth IRA
8. Start college fund for baby girl
9. Start "tithing" charitable fund
10. Pay down law school debt faster 

The list now looks like this:

1. Review insurance rates and coverage and adjust as necessary.
2. Purchase life insurance
3. Purchase disability insurance
4. Create living trust, scary legal what-if stuff. [half-credit - we're actively working on this.]
5. Pay down credit card debt [actively working on it!]
6. Build 6-month emergency fund [actively working on it! Currently at about 35%]
7. Max out annual contribution amounts to a Roth IRA
8. Start college fund for baby girl
9. Start "tithing" charitable fund
10. Pay down law school debt faster [actively working on it a teensy bit]

So, you know, progress. Slowly but surely. Surely-ish, I could go on a shopping bender pretty much anytime.

How am I working on these goals?  Well, toward the saving and debt reduction goals, I engaged in a huge craigslist sell-off over the past few months and sold nearly $1000 work of stuff.  Crazy, right? If you read a lot of personal finance blogs, a frequent bit of advice that comes up is to increase income! There's only so much you can shed from the monthly fixed expenses. (I suppose truer dedication would be found if I saved the $180 on cable and Rob's unusable-as-a-phone $100 iPhone bill. That's a big chunk of change right there. But we're keeping them for now.)

The high number owes to the selling of several big ticket items like furniture and a camera lens.  Some no-longer-needed or never-used baby stuff went out as well.  I'd sell more, but there aren't that many big ticket things to hock.  There IS that damned elliptical machine (that I should have returned, MOM).  That's 500 bones I'd love back.  I may try to sell it soon. It's certainly not seeing any more use.

I made a bit of a money blunder, though, in using a lot of those sales to pay down credit card debt. But at 0%, I should've put it towards the emergency savings account so I could hit that goal sooner and THEN turn the big guns on the debt.  Still not a bad use of the money, per se, but it probably would've been smarter to play it differently. Lesson learned, though, and now all excess cash is focused on savings.

(As for that teensy bit on law school debt: paying off one of my loans freed a whooping $88 in the monthly budget which I'm now using to make bonus payments on the biggie loan. If my calculations are right, though, that small payment will knock like 5-6 years off repayment. Since the $88 already had a job, we don't miss it. Much.)

Except the frustrating part now is having to dip into that for unexpected expenses like new brakes for the car. I suppose you can't avoid that one as stopping is a crucial part of driving.  At least I won't be charging that money! It's paid and done with. The other big ticket dip will be to pay for the creation of the trust. I kind of hate paying another lawyer to do stuff, but I suppose a heart surgeon can't operate on himself so . . . .

The one area in which we're (I - probably shouldn't pint this on the husband) am failing, though, is really be more conscious with every dollar spent. We *should* be ending each pay period with money left in the bank, but that's not happening.  This is frustrating because in addition to all these other goals, we're saving for a big family trip to Disneyland in October and I want to pay cash for it. All of it. I don't want to be paying for it next March.

Like Nemo says, though, we'll just keep swimming, swimming . . . .