No BS Finance

Now that I’m paying a bit more attention again to personal finance, I’m stumbling across more personal finance bloggers that I never read before. I’d like to occasionally share my finds.

My first New (to Me) Finance Blogger is Donna Jean of “The Weight of Money“. My first awareness of her was via a comment she left here a couple of days ago. After checking out her site, I was impressed. I’m always drawn to those sharing their experiences getting out of the tough situations; constantly reading about the already successful people preaching their advice gets old after awhile. (Yes, I realize I fall into the latter category most of the time.)

What you’ll find Donna Jean writing about - her values, goals, and struggles. I was hooked fairly quickly and have enjoyed reading through her archives. Take a look - her blog is worth it.

I’m the first to admit I have no idea how much most families spend on Christmas.  My guess is it’s more than we do. This year we spent a total of $761.  Of that, $130 was for the five kids we bought presents for via the local Adopt-A-Family.

So, that leaves $631 spent on two kids, each other, my parents, the kids’ cousins, a couple of neighbor kids, and the two members of my wife’s family that we drew.  That total also includes our annual Christmas card that we send out every year (to over 100 people!) and shipping some of the presents.

Overall I have to say I’m happy with that total, even though it’s higher than I would have expected before totaling it up. I’m glad we pay off the credit card each month; the alternative is sickening to me.

Now is the right time to look ahead and set some goals for the upcoming year. Here are mine:

1. Complete the beefing up of the CD-ladder portion of my emergency fund. This will be done by adding $1,000 to a new CD in December. This will put about 40% of the fund in laddered long-term CDs, with the rest in short-term CDs and a high-interest money market account.
2. Either pay down $5,000 extra on the mortgage by June, or use the same money to fully-fund my spouses Roth, with the extra $1,000 going into mine. This is an either/or, since I’m not convinced extra retirement savings is the best use of our money. To retire early (age 55 for me), we will need the house paid off and have money to live off of that aren’t tied up in accounts we can’t get to until we’re older.
3. Increase the monthly contributions to our children’s 529 plans from $100 to $150 in May.
4. Put in the time and effort to develop a passive income stream. This isn’t fleshed out yet, and may or may not be related to my stable of websites.
5. Open a brokerage account to save money not needed for retirement (see 2 above) or for the emergency fund.
6. Save enough for a 2008 family cruise. We’re estimating that $6,000 will be what it takes.