A few of you asked what I plan to do now that I am debt free (yay!), and that’s a good question since my focus has been primarily on whacking away debt since starting this blog.
Money, goals and motherhood
A few of you asked what I plan to do now that I am debt free (yay!), and that’s a good question since my focus has been primarily on whacking away debt since starting this blog.
Looks good. You could probably knock out your emergency fund sooner than Jan 2011 if you focused on fewer goals at one time.
If you were to put the money that is going to the car repair fund, 401k and roth IRA with your $650, when would you hit the $10,000 mark?
What if you add the money from the “me fund”, how soon could you hit the goal?
Just a thought…once you have the $10,000. You will have money for car emergencies and you will be able to contribute more to retirement and the “me fund”.
The only thing I may do a bit different-re-arrange some of your $$ to fund healthcare, entertainment and travel. I had surgery this past fall and even with the good insurance we have, I spent a lot of $$$ out of pocket. I would not include this $$ in my emergency fund, if I could get away with it. Just my 2 cents.
I’m so happy for you! I’m also a bit jealous! I wish I could put $650 away to my emergency fund. I’m still working on my debt. I also just hit a major set back when I realized my mother in law had been holding my husband’s medical bills from me and two of them JUST went to collections. So I had to take $1,200 out of me and my husband’s emergency fund to pay off the medical bills. Luckily, they won’t send them to collections since I paid them in full, but it was a seriously major set back and I had no idea about them. My mother in law failed to tell me she was holding them or having them sent to her and my husband didn’t tell me he still had medical bills that she was paying. Very irresponsible on both of their parts and I had to practically drain our emergency fund (most of the money came from our wedding as gifts) to take care of it. MAJOR bummer. :(
By the way, I love the idea of a “Me” fund. I have a “Misc.” fund that I use when I want to spend some money on myself. Right now, it’s going to be used to buy new clothes. I live in a cold, rainy climate but I’m moving in about 6 weeks to a very hot, warm climate so I need some summer clothes (I don’t own a single pair of shorts!). I’ll go cheap and do Old Navy or something, but it’s still nice to know I have $50-$70 to put towards a few summer pieces. :)
I also have a Christmas year and every year my goal is save up $500. So far I have $70 and I will add another $20 when I get paid on Monday.
I also second the “Travel Fund”! I really want to travel. I want to do Vegas, Hawaii, and Europe, so I definitely need some serious $$ to do that! I won’t be saving for “Travel” until all our credit card debt is paid off, though. I don’t want to spread myself too thin with savings goals. I’d rather save for one or two big things instead of three or four small things.
I actually like your idea of just using the E-fund for car emergencies, so I may just pause on the Repair fund until I have $10k. Mentally though I hate taking money out of that fund and I kind of expect to have repairs every year.
As for the “Me Fund” I don’t want to wait to buy something until after I have a fully-funded emergency fund because it’s something I wanted to buy after I become debt free.
But perhaps I should think of that! It would be nice to go ahead and knock out that goal. :) Thanks for the suggestions!
Sounds like you’ve really thought this through. It sounds like a good plan to me.
How are your 401k and Roth accounts allocated? Is there already a post discussing this? (First-time reader).
Congrats on getting out of debt!
Awesome. I love the freedom you now have. For us, it is a matter of managing risks so we don’t have to blow our budget on anything. I can’t wait till I can have a savings budget line labeled “because I can have this now”. I love the idea of building the e-fund faster- but why not build the Me fund and E-fund side by side. Worse comes to worse, the me fund becomes your e-fund. Say you only spend 50% of your me fund until you have the e-fund full. That way you have freedom and some safety.
I would look at expenses from the past few months or year to work out an average spend on the last few items and put a budget amount on it accordingly. I find that it’ll make your budget more accurate instead of relying on the misc amount. I usually have a misc amount for any unexpected expenses that might crop up.
Wow, that $280 food budget is impressive. My wife and I budget about $500/mo for food and consider that pretty ambitious. lol
WOo! Just noticed the $25 saved to your something pretty fund! That is SO exciting!
I’m going to live vicariously through you for the next few months until my debt goes away. =D