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Oddz and Endz and New Car Talk

July 30th, 2007 at 02:39 am

Today I added $4 in ones and $1.20 in change to my change jar. I don't have enough coins to roll any one type just yet, but I do have $24 in ones now, so I will deposit that on Monday along with my two checks and send them off to ING to the EF. That will give me a deposit of $72.22, which will bring my balance in ING to $853.27. Just $146.73 to go to hit $1000.

Starting in September we will be contributing the $10 per week I've been doing all along to the EF, $100 every 4 weeks, and all survey money to the EF.

We will be starting a new car fund and contributing $500 a month.

And we will be paying an extra $1000 towards debt. That should still leave enough of the raise left to raise our food budget by $100, pay for the kids activities and get the current vehicles into shape by the time we are ready to buy our new vehicle. And we will be raising our 401K contribution by 1%.

There is a large rumor that Toyota will be releasing a Hybrid Sienna mini-van in 2008 and that is what we have wanted all along since they started introducing hybrids. It may not be until 2009, and who knows, Ford may beat them to it at the rate it is chugging along pushing out hybrids.

But that is what we are aiming for and I'd like to have somewhere between $5000 and $10,000 saved up for a downpayment just so our payments are reasonable. Any bonus money that comes along will go to the new car fund.

The only way I will consider buying a new car is buying a hybrid. Otherwise we would go used. And there just isn't a huge used hybrid market. And there are no mini-vans yet.

We have talked Prius as well, but that is only good for the four of us. If we ever want to take the kids places with their friends, its impossible with our current vehicles. T has to be in a car seat until age 8 by Washington state law and it is impossible to have two adults, two car seats and two ten/eleven year olds in either of our vehicles.

Now, why start in September instead of August? Well, August won't have a full paycycle at the new raise. We'll only have an extra $1000 this first paycycle and I'll be using it to fund some accounts. I used to have a budget that took so much for each item and saved it up until that item was due, but its been a long time since I actually followed that kind of budget.

Well, I want to again. So each month I will set aside money for medical, auto and house insurances, property tax, auto repair, house repair, and propane. There may be more, I'm not sure at the moment. Maybe an activities and vacation fund as well.

I'll divide the bi-yearly amounts up into monthly amounts and deposit those into a savings account for common expenses, and will have a spreadsheet to track what goes in which category. So that is where that first $1000 will go, seed money for some of these categories. It will get this plan up and rolling again and hopefully allow us to stay on top of the budget instead of swimming with our heads barely above water.

The only thing left for me to do now is to make the new budget spreadsheet and the new maintenance fund spreadsheet. That's easy enough.



2 Responses to “Oddz and Endz and New Car Talk”

  1. monkeymama Says:
    1185800161

    Cool. We figured we may buy a new hybrid as well - we feel the same way. & nicely they are becoming more and more common.

  2. Ima saver Says:
    1185802395

    i am so happy for you!! Good going!!!

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