As of today, there is $1,022.41 sitting in our ING account. Waheey! Thats an Emergency Fund!

Technically it is split into sub categories, or buckets, of Emergency Fund, Car Maintenance, House Maintenance and Christmas Fund. The automatic withdrawals put in place for this months pay have worked, dropping $250 each into Car, House and Christmas and will continue to do the same in the future.

We will continue to drop our spare change into the EF on a weekly basis with its eventual target of $2000 still in mind. We are still aiming for a $5000 balance in the House Maintenance bucket, but both the Car and Christmas buckets will be open ended, though we believe a minimum of $2000 in each would be a good buffer. They’re open ended as whatever money we don’t use in maintaining the Car goes towards the next one, and for Christmas, we travel every second year to visit family, so costs vary year to year.

Psychologically I am seeing less need for an actual Emergency Fund as we become more adept at identifying our budget black holes and accounting for them, and implementing extra deposits of cash into buckets we would tap into infrequently. Don’t get me wrong, I know there will be actual emergencies, i.e. if one of our parents has an accident and we need to be interstate to be with them, we have flights covered. I’m just finding at this stage I’m in a better place mentally to cope with any issue that may occur financially.

Congrats on your emergency fund progress! I know what you mean about feeling less need for an emergency fund when you get your budget under control. Knowing exactly where the money is going each month has made a big difference for me.

Thanks for that fiddlefaddle.

The automatic debit for the $500 to be paid off the Once CC came out as planned on Wednesday, so that’s another step in the right direction. And it’ll be fully paid off in February 2012

I’ve also crunched the numbers and it looks like, barring any unforeseen dramas (that we all know will occur ), the Car, House and Christmas funds will all be at their designated minimums by July 2012. Some will even be met earlier than that.

Automatic payment was made yesterday to the CUA Personal loan, we are now under $28K for that loan and the current balance is $27,862.38. It had been under for a short period of time, but the monthly interest bumped it back over the top. This time it’ll stay down below $28K.

Apart from that the rest of the month has been abusive to our finances.

Two planned, but unbudgeted, interstate trips have meant we’ve dipped into the extra cash dropped onto the House Loan back in August. Didn’t help the finances that we got caught up in the Qantas fiasco. The trips were great, got to see all of my family and some of the extended family on one of them, and Nicole returns this afternoon from visiting her family. She’s still got another week and a half of holidays too. So jealous, even is she will be staying at home.

Update time.

As mentioned previously, the couple of unbudgeted trips played havoc with our finances this past month.

House Loan: $519,011.96
Gold Credit Card: $4,934.48
Once Credit Card: $3,349.53
CUA Personal Loan: $27,862.38

That’s an increase in debt of $2,459.23 in the past month. Some of that we will be getting back from Qantas due to their cancelling of flights because of industrial action. Just not sure when that will be.

In the positive column we have:

House: $575,000
Car: $15,000
Other: $5,000
Super: $94,823.26
Cash: $ 1,090.29

That’s an increase of $826.73 in the past month, mainly due to the implementation of the Car, House and Christmas funds.

Plans for this month are looking OK. I’ve tracked down all of Nicole’s Super Funds, got the roll over forms, filled them in. I just need her to get a photocopy of her drivers licence notarised and send it all in to her current fund. Once that’s done, and they’ve rolled it all together, I’ll be able to update that asset.

There’s a possible trip down south again in December that will fall into this months budget. It’s a weekend of family get togethers, one for my fathers extended family on the Saturday, many of which I haven’t seen since our wedding almost 10 years ago, the other our annual close family Christmas party on the Sunday that we never attend. For some reason Nicole wants to attend the second event this year, and seeing as we’ll be down there, we may as well do the first event as well. Flights can be done via Frequent Flier points, accommodation will be free. Only costs will be a hire car and possibly some alcohol. So we should be able to get out of it pretty cheap.

Had a win late last week.

The contract for my mobile phone had expired and I was able to change provider, gaining better coverage and a cheaper monthly bill for no other loss of services. Saving is ~$40/month.

Also Nicole has managed to get copies of her drivers license notarized, so they can be now sent into her Super Annuation company with the other paperwork.

I’d just like to register my displeasure at the symbolism that is 1st of the month. Not only does it mean a little bit of extra work collating data and producing reports for my job, it’s the day that interest is charged on all my debts.

It’s very deflating to see all that hard work dissolved by interest charges.

At least this month my totals didn’t go over the next big value, i.e. the house loan stayed below $520k and the personal loan stayed below $28k.

Having done one for dunkydude, I thought I'd better put together a graph for my debts, with and without snowball.

Cool chart! I made one of those when I was demolishing my own credit card debt. Filling in the lower balances each month and seeing the line creep downwards was a great visual motivator.

Just read through your account. Looks like you are doing very well with things. Keep up the good work. Looking at your chart we should pay off stuff about the same time.

Update time.

Didn’t make any trips down south like we were thinking we might have. Apart from free flights on points, everything else would have sunk us, so we just didn’t do it.

House Loan: $519,515.52
Gold Credit Card: $4,961.28
Once Credit Card: $1,854.48
CUA Personal Loan: $27,655.86

That’s a decrease in debt of $1,171.21 in the past month. Still waiting on Qantas to credit us the costs for the extra days stay in Melbourne. They have come through with the booking code for our free flight though. So we will be attending the christening of my nephew, for which we’ve been asked to be the Godparents, in February next year using those flights.

In the positive column we have:

House: $575,000
Car: $15,000
Other: $5,000
Super: $94,823.26
Cash: $ 1,538.82

That’s an increase of $455.4, slightly down on expected, but the Christmas Savings, part of the cash balance, has been tapped for some of this years presents.

The Super Consolidation forms have gone off in the post. Who knows how long that will take to get all combined, but hopefully when it does I can get a confirmed total and bump up the super amount in the above list.

Been working on next years targets, and updating our budget spreadsheet as well. I’ll post up in the new year with those details.

Ok, so it’s the start of 2012.

Since we started on demolishing our debt in August 2011, we have decreased our debt from $562,262.83 to $554,411,47, $7851.36 in total, completely paying off a GE Finance loan of $1255.00 and paying down on our other debts. We’ve also increased our assets from 685,000.00 to $689,616.96, an increase of $4616.96. Our net Worth is looking better as well, starting at $122,737.17 and increasing to $135,205.49.

The aim for 2012 is to keep the pattern of debt demolishing going.

We’ll be starting the year with the following debts;

House Loan: $520,477.12
CUA Personal Loan: $27,708.35
Gold CC: $4866.57
Once CC: $1359.43

We’re also starting the year with the following assets:

House: $575,000.00
Car: $12,800.00
EF Cash: $484.54
Car Maintenance: $501.96
House Maintenance: $501.96
Christmas Savings: $0
Other: $5000.00
Superannuation: $94,823.36

Our aims for 2012 are to pay off the following:

Gold CC
Once CC and then cancel it.

And to pay down the CUA and House loans.

We also want to have cash amounts of:

EF: $2000.00
Car Maintenance: $2000.00
House Maintenance: $5000.00
Christmas Savings: $2000.00

We will also be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary, and plan a trip away interstate. I can see that costing us ~ $4000.00, totally dependant on where we stay and what we spend while away.

We are also looking at targeting certain dollar values. With set lower targets for both the CUA and Home loans, and target totals for cash funds.

House Loan: $520,477.12/$500K, 0%
CUA Personal Loan: $27,708.35/$23k, 0%
Gold CC: $0/$4866.57, 0%
Once CC: $0/$1359.43, 0%
Anniversary: $0/$4000.00, 0%
EF: $390/$2000.00, 17.62%
Car Maintenance: $501.96/$2000.00, 25.1%
House Maintenance: $501.96/$5000.00, 10.04%
Christmas Savings: $0/$2000.00, 0%

Man... talk about a time difference between the US and Australia. Im showing this post was made on

Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2012 4:42 am



Happy New Years

And on my screen it shows Posted Sunday Jan 01, 2012 8:42pm.

But yet in your post you say



Ummmm that's a years difference in time chages

Just giving ya a hard time.... Hope this year is even better for you on the financial front than the last one.