Alright, here's June's net worth! Not much here now, but I'm workin' on it! The house value is probably off, because it's based on the appraisal 12/07, when I bought it. But it's the closest number I have right now, so we're going to run with that :) Also, I don't think I'm "supposed" to include my car in the equation, but I could sell it tomorrow and get at least the $2000, and I wouldn't be out a car because I have a scooter I use. I have no idea the worth of that guy, but I'm not selling it anytime soon so it doesn't matter!

Assets
home value (estimation)	103000
car	2000
401k/roth	7600
cash (emerg-o-fund)	1020
total	113620
Liabilities
student loan	9000
mortgage	96,175
total	105175
NET WORTH	$8445!

there are so many pf blogs in existence! and some of them are so pretty. it makes me feel like i have a daunting task ahead of me, especially since I don't know how to spruce mine up much in regards to adding any pictures or anything.

just my desperate call out for the day! I should think I'll be happier having my money goals de-fuzzed (bc right now they're pretty hazy) than having a journal that's totally beautiful!

WHOA, FLOOD!! Thank the heavens that it stopped raining and has dried up a bit here, no more flooding around town, although it has yet to return to normal flood heights.

That definitely got me thinking about having more emergency money around. I have some friends staying with me right now who got flooded out, and don't know when they'll be able to return home. Luckily they're on the second floor so their stuff will be ok, but who knows if they can stay there or if there will be mold and other icky, hazardous problems.

At any rate, if I were unable to get necessary items out of my house before something happened to it, I'd have to pay for those things. Now add on any deductibles I might need to pay to repair the house, as well as food while I'm unable to cook mine.... eek, I'm out of money!

So the long and short is that I think I should have more money saved up. I was considering upping my Roth 401k contribution to 11% (from 3% right now, in addition to the 11% that's being put in now to a regular 401k), which would leave me about 90/week for eating out, gas, and entertainment, which should be plenty. I'm thinking it might be better for me to instead limit myself (nay, empower myself - can't make it seem negative to save money!) to those $90 and then make sure the rest goes to the emergency fund. I know people say you should have 3-6 months' worth, but unless my boyfriend were to die, I lose my credit cards, and am unable to work all at the same time, I think I'll be ok with about 2 months worth. At that point, I'll up the Roth, while still slowly adding to the emergofund slowly.

Since it's important to have goals to work toward, I'm making a promise to post a visual representation of this emergency fund within one week. One! :)

I have probably about $800 extra coming on tomorrow's paycheck, and I've no idea what to do with it! Rather, I've got a lot of ideas, but don't know which is best.

1. Use $105 to pay for the IIA INS-22 test. This actually has some potential for return. I will be reimbursed upon completion of the test for the $105, but if I pass with a score above 70 (something I better do anyway, for my own inner over-achiever's sake) I'll also get a $200 bonus a few paychecks later. This seems like something I should do for the money, but also because it shows initiative and will look good if I post for sup intern later.

2. Put it in my laughably small emergency fund. My goal is to have at least 3 but closer to 6 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund. If I weren't working for a while, I can shut off internet (the horrors!!), cell phone, and cut way back on energy usage, so I wouldn't need as much per month as my normal monthly expenses currently are. If it's an emergency of the likes of trees falling on my house or my basement flooding or something, I'd rather have more money to put towards that. The $1000 I have in the fund now is also earmarked for annual expenses when they come up. That will be changing a little though as I am actually going to PLAN for those ahead of time now, and setting 1/12 of the annual costs aside each month. I have a problem with just waiting until my car insurance is due, then putting it on my credit card, then just paying that. I'd rather have the money waiting in the wings to just pay for it outright and be done until the next payment.

Biggest problem I have right now with my emergency fund is that it's in a savings account that earns 2.25% APY, and I think it could do better elsewhere, I'm just not sure where yet.

3. Keep it in my checking account. I have an account that earns 5.5% APY, which is great, but I'm afraid if it's in there, it'll slowly dwindle to nothing. One of the things I have to do to keep that interest rate is use my debit card 12 times/month. If it weren't for that, I'd just use the account more as a savings account, and just take out $400/month for groceries and gas. I'm still trying to figure out a way to limit my spending in those two areas but still be able to get to the 12 required debits.

4. Put it towards my student loan with the highest interest rate, which is at 6.8% currently. I like this idea, although I wish that I were able to pay off more of the loan (like, pay it off completely!). I know this will help out in the long run, and it'll be so awesome to not have to pay for any loans except my mortgage. It just doesn't have a very big emotional impact to do pay down this loan partially, vs the other options listed above.

Ah, quien lo sabe? nadie lo sabe....

I've seen myself comfort-shopping sometimes, and I probably learned it from my mom, but it's a habit I'm trying to break, and I think if I sit down and focus on my own finances like I do hers, I should be golden. I think probably the easiest way to budget EVERYTHING in is to just give myself an allowance, say $100/week, that covers food, gas, and entertainment. That way I can go blow it all on one thing if I want, but I don't have the rest of my checking account as a safety net later in the week. Hopefully this will make me a little leerier about buying random things. I've already started the "do I REALLY need this??" self-interrogation while at Target, and I barely go to the mall (aside from it being full of useless junk, it's full of useless people, too. blech)
Lowe's though, that's a tough one for me, and whenever I'm shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart, non-grocery items seem to make their way into the cart. Usually it's stuff for around the house, but I bet I could cut those back a little with no ill effect.

Still working on the whole net-worth thing.... I wish I was better at Excel, or at least that it made prettier graphs and charts.

In other news, I have about $50 available until Thursday. Can't wait for payday!

I recently took control of my mom's finances. She has a, shall we say, poor history of making payments on time, and was living pretty much paycheck to paycheck while falling further behind in her financial obligations. Various creditors were making regular phone calls and there was probably a "past-due" notice in the mail at least twice a week.

The hardest part for her is that she shops a lot. I think it fills a psychological need for her, especially because she's always on a quest for The Perfect Purse or The Perfect Notebook. I've looked into Debtors Anonymous, but there aren't any local chapters, and I'm not ready to talk to her about it yet. I don't even know if that's really something that fits her situation. What I was ready to do, though, is get her back on track, creditors paid off, and monthly payments made on time. She told me that she's very happy I'm in charge of this stuff and that she's surprised she has extra money because usually she would go spend her paycheck first, THEN look at who needed to be paid. Parents, sheesh....

So far, we've paid down an impressive list of 9 various creditors (outstanding medical bills, property taxes, tickets, and a final bill from a phone service we canceled for her), totaling about $800. Still left is a $1610 bill to be paid, and I'm thinking of just sending them the extra money at the end of the month, to slowly whittle that away. They don't charge interest or late fees, so it's a somewhat low priority right now compared to making sure the other monthly things that DO charge fees and interest are paid.

She no longer has the mortgage company calling every day looking for their money, because they're current. We were also able to lower her cell phone plan to cut about twenty bucks a month out, as well as disconnecting the home phone and internet that rarely got used. Most the rest of the monthly bills are things we can't reduce or remove, like car and house payments, insurance, and the like.

She also has been cleaning out her house, which I think has a big psychological benefit to it, as well as monetary. She's taking the things she doesn't need anymore to a consignment shop where she'll hopefully get a decent amount of money back from them. Everything else goes to the trash or to charity, and slowly but surely she's getting the house looking good. Eventually I'll have to go get all my extra crap out of my old bedroom, but that's one task I'm sure not looking forward to :)

One of my main goals in life is to make sure that I won't suffer any financial hardship. I also would like to be able to comfortably work only part-time by the time I'm 35 (lofty goal, I know!). I love my job as an insurance agent, and the place and people I work for are outstanding, but I think I would like it that much better if I weren't there 5 days a week.

My thought is that I can work part time to pay for things that don't stop coming, like utilities, food, gas, and mortgage. I would also like to pay off my mortgage as soon as possible, but am somewhat reserved in this because psychologically, not having that debt would feel great, but it might work out better for me in the long run to just keep deducting the interest in my taxes. I've been looking into this, but probably will feel a little more pressure to nail it down as it gets closer to my first tax season with the interest deducted.

I have been fiddling with Excel to figure out a good way to calculate my assets along with all my liabilities, and at some point would like to keep it posted here, to update regularly so I can watch it (hopefully!) grow. This also will be partly just psychological to keep me motivated and to see exactly where everything goes.

At this point, I have about $9000 in student loans to pay off, a mortgage of about $97000, and contribute 11% to my 401k, as well as another 3% I just decided to transfer automatically to an IRA through work. I make roughly 29,000/year, but that changes with bonuses. So far this year I've made about 20k, so if that keeps up I could easily clear 40k this year!