I'm not sure what we would have done this year if we hadn't managed to get the credit cards paid off when we did. We have lost $600 every 4 weeks to the 2% rise in taxes. Previously that money was going to pay down debt. Our plan for this year had been to start contributing to the 401K. Now it's going to pay for a government retirement program that has no chance of even existing when we are old enough to get anything back. I feel like they are taking our retirement away from us twice. One by not allowing us to have the money to provide for our own retirement, and two, by feeding it into a system that will be bankrupt long before we ever see our 60's or 70's. It is frustrating.

Our 401K is not the greatest, it has NO matching at all. But it is a tax shelter. Just one we can't afford to contribute, too.

I am trying to rethink a lot right now. The idea of cashflowing college for the kids is still, maybe, within reach. It would be so much better if there were jobs available. If I knew they could save a couple hundred dollars a month towards college I wouldn't worry so much. Even my niece, who did manage to get a job last summer, only gets about 3 hours a week because retail is practically moving backwards right now.

So anyway, changes I will be making starting after March is to eliminate the vacation fund of $100 a month. This one is going to just have to last us for several years. And that's okay. It's a luxury and vacations were completely financed by us (no vacation benefits). If we hadn't been saving so long for this one and already had most of it taken care of, I'd seriously think about cancelling it.

I will be cutting the laptop fund down to $50 a month and I will be cutting the appliance fund down to $50 a month. Both were previously at $100 each. Once I know what the property tax is going to be this year I can make an adjustment on my property tax fund. It has been approximately $1060 per year for the last several and our tax assessment went down. They should send out the bill soon. Right now I am setting aside $100 a month, but when I know what it actually is, I will cut it accordingly.

Once mid-April arrives I can turn off the furnace at the old house, which will mean no propane costs. Propane has jumped dramatically this year. We keep the furnace on until there is no chance of the pipes freezing. Also once they are done with the repairs to the old house I can have the water/sewer shut off, saving me $72 a month.

The four person cell phone contract we are on expires this summer. With DS being homeschooled there is no reason for him to have a cell phone anymore. He is always with me or his father or his grandmother. The only person he ever texts he can IM as well. Honestly I wish there were an unlimited texting only plan, no phone calls, because that would be the best thing for our needs. DH and I use Skype when he's in Alaska.

I think when we do move I am going to up our laying hens and start selling eggs. Just one of those sign in the front yard things. If I can make enough to pay for feed for them and some broilers that would cut our food costs dramatically. Also starting to seriously research rabbits. I've talked about it off and on, but it's time to get down to the knitty gritty on it.

If eggs pay for feed I can cut our grocery budget by $200 a month. Then maybe we could handle college and retirement.

I keep trying to keep myself focused on the fact that we are out of credit card debt and we are comfortable. It is mostly luxuries I am looking to cut. It is not necessities. But we've only gotten to have luxuries recently so it is hard to have worked so hard to get here and then feel like the benefits we should have been reaping have been snatched away. We feel the loss of that $600 a month. But I imagine there are a lot of people out there that feel that 2% even deeper.

So here I go making a commitment to start blogging again and then I spend a day not actually doing anything. Well, I didn't spend money on my day of not actually doing anything, so I suppose that's something.

I have a cold, with a nasty throbbing stuffed up head, which curtailed me driving anywhere but to the school and back today. I had planned on going to the bank and getting money for the kids allowances, going to the chiropractor and paying for a month in advance on the family plan, maybe stopping by the grocery store, but that didn't work out at all. So, no spend day.

I transferred the $2000 from ING to my local credit union for the car payment and it should show up by Thursday which is when DH gets home and we go look at the Escape one more time. I think it's pretty much a given that we will buy it, but we didn't want to rush the decision.

DH is sending me the revised figures of the new take home pay so I can finish the budget and the new 401K access info. Our 401K changed from Vanguard to something else a few months ago. I wasn't happy with that. I like Vanguard. I trust Vanguard. I know nothing about this other group. But the fees are supposed to be lower which meant the company was willing to match an additional 1% at 50% on the dollar, so I can't complain too much. As long as it does a decent job. Just don't know yet.

So, it's been a little over two months since I last posted an entry. Things have really changed so much for us in that time period. DH was given yet another raise of $50 per day with the new contract. This puts our income at a level I never thought I'd see while we were still in our 30's.

The raise did not go into effect until this month, so we won't hit $117,000 for a yearly income this year, but that's what it'll be next year. I cannot even fathom this amount of money. I know there is a huge chunk of that going for taxes, but our liveable income has gone up so far in the last 8 months it's almost ridiculous.

The first thing we did was raise our 401K by 1%. I'd like to do more but we have to buy a new car and until I know what the payments will be I don't want to do anything more.

If all goes well, by the end of the week we will be the proud new owners of a fully loaded 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid with 21,000 miles on it. We have $2000 for a down payment and will be financing the rest.

I'm currently using my mother's car because I'm afraid to drive mine. Especially after an $805 car repair to my '92 Crown Vic that still didn't fix it all the way, I'm not putting anymore money into that car. And Blazer needs the transmission fixed and I just don't want to spend that kind of money on a '96.

We've made some large purchases so far this year. The first was a new couch that seats six and came with an ottoman for $1387.94 which included delivery. The old one has been moved into the playroom which never had one before and is horribly broken down and offers no support at all. It took us several months to save up for that.

Then last month we bought a new TV with my husband's yearly safety bonus. We spent a lot of money on that, but I figure it's a long-term investment for us since we don't go to movies or out to do anything much (besides eat) entertainmentwise. We just watch movies from Netflix. So we got a big screen HD plasma from Costco and it's fabulous. 50 inches. $1300.07.

Our entire tax return of just over $3600 went to pay down debt, which we still have far too much of. I'm currently working on making up a new budget to reflect the new income.

We will qualify for the entire tax refund coming out in May for two adults filing jointly with two children and when that check comes it's going straight into the emergency fund.

I really wish we had not gotten so far into debt in the past. I know that it was mostly medical debt but when I think that we'd have over $2000 a month from this point on now that wasn't allocated to something if we didn't have debt, it would be amazing. That's $24,000 of net income that could be going into retirement and stocks and vacation planning. Oh, how I wish.

I'm going to try to keep this blog going better now. I need to stay on top of the budget now with the new numbers and a new payment that will be coming into the mix. Other things, our 401K is still above $50,000 and our mortgage is almost down to $30,000, so progress is being made. Always a good thing.

I transferred $20 (two weekly auto deposits) to ING this morning and an additional $15 in ones I had in the coin jar from earlier in the week.

$2004.87 Old Balance in EF
+ 35.00 Deposit
---------
$2039.87 New Balance in EF

I'll be depositing $23 in rolled coin into the safety net, hopefully today, as well, but I'll add that in after I do it.

I also got the 401K statement yesterday and since July 17 it has increased by $2455.58, bringing it to $50,250.89. I am quite happy that we have finally hit and gone over the $50K mark. That feels good. Obviously we still have a long way to go until retirement but this is a major milestone for us.

I got our 401K statement in the mail today. Our new ending balance is $47,795.31. The year to date increase is $5,481.11.

$42,312.20 Beginning Balance
+ 1,176.71 Employee Contribution
+ 949.41 Employer Contribution
+ 3,135.07 Market Gain
+ 319.53 Other Transactions
- 99.61 Fees
-----------
$47,795.31 Ending Balance


We have $2204.69 left to go to hit $50,000. I am hoping to hit that before December of this year.

Our 401K statement came in the mail today. The new balance is $47,276. This is an increase of $3,045 for the quarter. We are getting so close to the $50,000 mark, I can taste it. I don't know if that will happen this year or not, but I think it will definitely happen by this time next year. Depends on the ups and downs of the market, as everything else does.

Our 401K statement came in the mail today. The new balance is $44,231. This is an increase of $1918.80 since end of December's statement. Of course, statement ending date was February 26 and we all know what happened after that. We are buy and hold so I don't know if there is much point to going online to look and see what kind of a hit we took. Probably just depress me. Plus, we recovered well the last time this happened in the first quarter of 2006. I really just prefer the long-term approach.

Our 401K statement came in the mail today. Our new balance is $42,312.20.
This is an increase of $858.20 for the month of December. Not as much as usual but still decent, considering what the stock market did last month.

On Year to Date for 2006
_________________________
$32,951.79 Beginning Balance
2,434.08 Employee Contribution
1,936.06 Employer Contribution
3,638.37 Market Gains
1,527.49 Other transactions
-173.59 Fees
-----------
$42,314.20

**********************

$9,362.41 Total increase in 401K for 2006

Not bad for only contributing 3% of our income. I wonder what would happen with 4%? Well, maybe we can up it later in the year and find out.

...that DH's 401K has more money in it than our mortgage has left to pay off. I've been watching the amounts come closer to meeting for awhile, but this last month just blew it right past it. It's a good feeling.

Since the last statement date in October, DH's 401K has increased by $2792.09, bringing the account to an ending balance of $41,454. The account has more than recovered from the 2nd quarter slump, it is barreling along. When DH gets the raise in January we will raise his contribution to the account. Right now it is only at 3% so I'd like to see it go up to 5% or 6% in the next year.

We received our 401K statement today for period 07-01-06 to 09-30-06.

Beginning balance--$36,377.74
Employee contribution--$499.18
Employer contribution--$395.89
Market Gain--$1,291.57
Other transactions--$138.95
Fees--(-)$41.42
Ending Balance $38,661.91

Changes from beginning of year: +$5,710.12

It has recovered nicely from the second quarter dive.

I opened my ING account today and sent $250.00 off to that, to qualify for the $25 bonus (thanks, Baselle for the referral link). Once everything is up and running I will most likely also open an Emigrant account. This was a very big step for me and I want to settle with it first, though.

Didn't make it to town today with enough time to deposit money as we had to go to the chiropractor and then drop DH off at the airport.

I will deposit it soon though, $10 cash, $5 surveyspot check, and the roll of nickels and roll of pennies I rolled today, $2.50, total deposit of $17.50.

Not too much excitement today. The autotdeposit was today so savings is $10 richer, putting me at $947.

We loaded $100 onto our Costco cash card and then used it to put $30.19 worth of gas into the car 2 today @ $2.58 a gallon, 4 cents less than a few days ago. It is weird seeing the gas tank on F, or even on the right side of the halfway point, really.

I had a doctor's appointment this morning, so $15 co-pay and $10 perscription. My kidney infection came back or else its a new one, so I'll be on antibiotics 3X a day for the next 14 days. Oh, joy. Big old capsules, too. Bought organic milk at the store my pharmacy is in so $5.29 for that.

I pulled all the meat off the rest of the turkey bones and seperated it into packages and froze it. I then threw all the bones and skin into the crockpot with 6 quarts of water, a head of crushed garlic, a chopped onion and salt and pepper and am making broth. I will have it going all night and it should be good and rich in the morning when I'll pour it through a seive and then I will make turkey noodle soup to have with supper tomorrow.

I am really into having soup right now. It is very comforting The weather turned on us this last week or so, went from mid to high 70's to wet, rainy, mid 50's to low 60's, and one night got down to 33! Yikes. It hasn't been that cold again, but we really have to drain the pool tomorrow before it happens again.

As for the soup, twice this week we've had homemade chicken noodle at dinner and tonight we had golden potato (DH's great grandmother's recipe), very rich and good, very satisfying and I notice it cuts my appetite for the heavier protein that follows. I still eat the same large amount of veggies as usual, though. But they are cheaper than protein, usually.

I may make a nice onion soup, possibly French onion, but I really don't know if I have the patience to be finicky. I like the ease of crockpot soup. It allows for a large degree of laziness. Which the lousy weather is encouraging. Just want to curl up with a good book under the covers. The current good book I am reading is "Smart Couples Finish Rich," by David Bach. It is very good and I am learning a lot. I had no idea the limits on spousal IRA's for a non-working spouse (when the working spouse has a 401K) had risen so much. Last time I checked, it was a lot lower. This book was written in 2001 and it was $2000 then, so it might be more now, even.

I will have to look into that. I'm not sure when I might be able to fund one, but I want something in my name for my own personal security. My DH is a solid man who I don't think would ever leave me for any reason and seems to think the sun rises and sets on me for some reason and I see no reason I would ever leave him, he is kind, good and a wonderful spouse and father and I kind of think the sun rises and sets on him also. But I still want something in my name. Security is my biggest issue. I want it no matter what else happens. The idea feels right.

Not much else today. Oh, DH took Tobias to soccer and they are having team pictures so that was $8. School photos were yesterday and today so that was $16 for both kids. We only get the 8X10 and scan it to make copies on the school ones, and the 5X7 team photo with the individual shot in the same photo for sports photos. Rose will have her team photo tomorrow, another $8. I wish these weren't all in the same week, but I guess this is a good week for it if it has to be all at once.

Okay, I think that's it then for today. Got in a very talky mood, I guess.

It looks like our 401K is starting to slowly recover from the plummet. Well, the balance is going up. The change since the end of July is a difference of $872.26. The total balance is at $37,250 now. Some of that is contributions but some of it is also dividends (not as much). It is good to see the number increase, the way it should be. I hope this trend continues. Faster would be good, too. LOL

Our quarterly 401K statement came today. It was nowhere near what last quarter was, but I figured it wouldn't be. I figured we'd see a correction and we certainly did.

Beginning Balance: $35,802.11
Personal contribution: $678.19
Work contribution: $535.92
Market Loss: -$728.19
Other transactions: $133.42
Fees: -$43.71
Ending Balance: $36,377.74

So the balance of the account rose by $575.63, but that was not even as high as the amount we put in ourselves and barely over what work put in.

Still, year to date earnings are: $3425.95, and long term thinking is where we have to be with something like this.

Hopefully things will turn around soon. I like to at least break even rather than lose more than I put in.

Our 401K statement came yesterday and I couldn't be more thrilled. When the economy tanked after the tragedy of 9/11 our 401K dropped from $18,000 to $10,000. We deterimined to hold the road and continue to have an aggressive fund and today our total is at $35,802.11. The last couple of years have really rebounded, but this last 12 months has been really zooming.

For the quarter we contributed $592.68, work contributed $475.24, dividends were $123.05, unrealized gain was a whopping $1702.18, minus a fee of $42.83. That is a total increase of $2850.32! In three months. Wow. Long term thinking can pay off and realy make things better.

My mood has improved immeasureably when I realized that our $401 K is almost $5000 more than our credit card debt. It makes paying off the credit card seem that much more possible.