Archive for the 'Spending' Category

Choices, Sunshine, Happiness

Published by
MiserlyMike
at April 30, 2008 in Emergency Fund, Karma, Personal Finance, Spending and Weekend Recap. 0 Comments

After three weeks back in Syracuse, NY, I’ve returned back to Florida, and I must say I love the weather here.  As nice as it was back in NY, we really don’t hold a candle to Florida.  Anyway enough of that.

I have been assessing my current financial situation and reflecting on the recent market activities and I am a little torn on what to do.  I currently have 3500 in cash in my Roth IRA from this year’s contribution.  I didn’t contribute the maximum, due to the recent loss of my job, though I probably could have.  I like to play it safe and keep that cushion.  I have available credit, other than my parents that I could really draw upon in case of emergency — and I like it that way.  Cash is king in my life, except for the largest of purchases;  tuition, mortgage, etc.

I have $2,500 remaining in my checking account, and another 1100 from my last paycheck.  I also collect $250 a week from unemployment.  This gives me a grand total of $4,600 by the end of april.  After bills and the like I’ll be down to roughly $3600.  If I live an extremely meager lifestyle, I should be able to sustain solely on my unemployment checks and keep around $3,000 in my checking account.  The choice I have to make is whether I want to continue this lifestyle, unemployed and living in the sunshine and doing as I please, or go back to work and make money again.

Ideally, I could do both.   To those that are, you live my dream.

Catching Up on my Wallet — Part Two

Published by
MiserlyMike
at August 17, 2007 in Budget, Emergency Fund, Personal Finance and Spending. 0 Comments

Yesterday I combed through the massive amount of purchases I have made in the last month. I was a little bit ( a lot bit ) depressed seeing my balances and where the money actually went.

Here is a breakdown of the graph generated by yodlee. These numbers are all very accurate and account for every single dime I spent in the past month and how it was spent.

Rent: $563.00 –Pretty self explanatory. Rent is $550 a month and I owed my roommate :10bux:

Travel: $475.21 –This is for two plane tickets, and the money spent in the airport on food and also my rental car.

Pets/PetCare: $467.50 –This one actually has nothing to do with pets. I had owed someone money and it was a one time payback. I categorized it under pets since I don’t actually have pets so I would remember what it was.

Automotive Expenses: $415.75 — The cost of having my brake line repaired and the diagnostic fee at the dealership.

Clothing: $372.31 — This is the cost of the suit and shirts I bought and also the two pairs of shorts I bought when I moved to Florida.

Entertainment: $322.75 — Sadly, this is how much money I spent at the bar…Looking to cut that number down quite a bit.=/

Electronics: $210.28 — HDD, phone, HD enclosure

Restaurants: $ 200.74 — Not bad I must say, this is lunch every day @ work and all the money I spent eating out.

Groceries: $128.27 – Again, doing okay in this category for a month.

Gasonline: $121.53 — Little below average since I didn’t have a car there for a bit.

From this I look at where my money actually goes and was a little disappointed with myself. $322 on bar tabs is quite the cost. That was only money spent in bars too, nothing else. I know I did have a little excess here this month because of the move and the wake and meeting new people, but still, that number needs to go way down. I am looking to keep it under $150.

Things that should trend toward $0 this month are automotive expenses, pets/petcare, and probably travel. These three things amounted to about $1350, which came out of mostly my emergency fund. They make this month look very bad on paper. With any luck, I won’t have any “emergencies” anytime soon.

Clothing was another $372 which also came mostly out of the emergency fund. I’d like to cut back to $0-50 for this upcoming month. I think I’ll need some new socks, maybe a pair of shoes.

The other things on the list were misc. expenses, gas, household items, haircuts, and books. I did very well on my casual spending this month.

Overall, In the past 30 days I spent $3421. 60. An astronomical number. If I subtract the bulk of my emergency expenses, and $300 in clothing costs, I get ~$1800 in expenses. This is a lot closer to what I want to be spending, but still a fair amount over. Under $1400 this month is the goal.

I’ll need to cut down on my entertainment costs and not buy anything this month. It is time to tighten my belt for the next few months. I have my sights on buying a motorcycle, so I really need to start putting some extra away for that. This should help save on the rising cost of gasoline and also the future repair costs on my car.

Emergency fund and Karma

Published by
MiserlyMike
at August 15, 2007 in Budget, Emergency Fund, Karma and Spending. 1 Comment

In my last post I mentioned there had been a death in the family that caused me to tap into my emergency fund once again. It ended up being a pretty deep tap when all was said and done. I had already tapped into my emergency fund to fix my vehicle and also rent a car and help my roommate out with some gas expenses. This time, I even had to withdraw from some of my liquid savings in order to cover all my expenses.

Let’s start with my flying fiasco first. Once again, my luck continues with flying and I had my flights on Thursday and Friday both canceled. On top of that my baggage was lost both on the way there and on the way back. I have since went back and complained to US Airways about my disasterous flying record and they have so far issued me a one way travel voucher for EACH trip that was interrupted. So now I’m waiting on my third travel voucher to be issued, hopefully this week. I will probably use them to go to Vegas with my brother for New Years. Sometimes it pays to complain.

Back to emergency funds. I spent a total of $400 on flights for the weekend. On top of that, I bought some new clothes. This was in part because they had lost my luggage and in part because I needed some new clothes (for work). Thanks to some thrifty shopping, I was able to pick up a suit (Pants, Jacket), a tie, and six dress shirts for under $300. The shirts will help boost my rather meager ration of three ill-fitting dress shirts that I wore to work. Now I have another rather nice suit, and some fitted dress shirts that make me look a hell of a lot more professional than before. The shirts were only $20 for fitted Stafford long sleeve button downs. On top of that I had two $15 off coupons. Normally the shirts alone probably would have totaled $250 and up on their own.

$700 right there that I was able to use from my emergency fund that allowed me to get to NY for my Grandmother’s funeral, and look pretty dang snazzy in the process. While in NY my four year old cell phone bit the dust. I’ve been putting off getting a new one for quite awhile now. It was literally falling apart. Taped and glued in multiple places. The screen was cracked. The battery didn’t stay in. When it did, it only held a charge for about 20 hours. The chargers were after market and regularly wore out or broke after a period of usage. It was in rough shape. On top of being functionally deficient it looked pretty crummy too.

I know that looks aren’t everything, but it wasn’t professional. It was difficult to take a call in a professional work environment with a ratty looking phone like that. Not that I need to have anything special, just something that doesn’t look like i literally fished it out of the trash bin.

I ended up purchasing the vx-8300. Not exactly new, not exactly old. It came with two chargers, two batteries, and an extended charge battery. On ebay it ended up costing me $96+$6 shipping for a total of $102. Even though I could have gotten an upgrade from Verizon for probably free, I decided not to, since my contract has been up for quite awhile now, and I feel much better not being locked into any obligation with them to continue their service.

I chalked these purchases all up in my “emergency expenditures”. Even though some of them probably weren’t true “emergencies”. This totaled to about $800 and change. Pretty hefty considering I just spend quite a bit getting the car situation straightened out.

On top of that I bought some books on Amazon and a laptop harddrive for my roommate. The books for 6 of them, ran me about $50. They were all professional development type books. Never Eat Alone, Who moved my cheese?, and so on. Now I just need to find the time to read them.

The hard drive I bought for my roommate to show my appreciation since the two of them have driven or picked me up from the airport 6 times, drove me to and from work for nearly two weeks, and just been all around great people for only knowing them for a few weeks.

Recently their laptop died and they have been griping about it for awhile. Since computers are sort of my forte I surprised them by ordering a hard drive ($40) off www.newegg.com and they came home to a working computer. I figure, if nothing else, a few bucks and some thoughtfulness can lead to a lot of good karma and probably a few friends in the process. A trade I’m willing to make any day.