First of all, I was able to ride my scooter to work today, so that hardly used any gas at all. And that is good because the Jimmy is empty. Dad didn’t have to drive, either, because he went to a meeting and carpooled with his secretary. So “yea” for not burning hardly any gasoline today.
I got my paycheck from church and it was more than I expected since I missed those last two Sundays. But April had 5 Sundays and I played for two extra services – Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so it was still a little above normal. I love entering things and seeing my excess going up.
I’ve been working on a list of everything we want/need that isn’t a regular budget item – like both Dad and I need dental crowns and we need a reliable snowblower by next winter and we want to save for our family vacation. So when extra money comes in, we won’t necessarily put it all towards paying off debt, but put it in savings for some of these things that are actually important, but that we should pay for with cash.
Awesome!
We’re doing the same. We have a spreadsheet that lists all of the little things we’re saving up for. Things like car repairs or our vacations up north that don’t happen every month.
I know “sinking funds” (this kind of tracked savings) are a commonly requested feature for the budget you’re using. Hopefully we’ll be able to move our spreadsheet into the website sometime soon.
I’d be thrilled to hear what Dad thinks of the stuff Dave teaches in the book!
It will be very hard to get Dad to sound as excited as I am. He seems to be agreeing with everything. He is working on getting the cds downloaded so he can listen to them on his computer in the car, so that must mean something. And he was the one in the car that would put the next one in, so I know he wants to hear it all. I think his biggest challenge is not feeling that he has been a “failure” all these years. He also tends to see the “not doing or buying things” part of it where I see the “doing” part of it – saving, planning, etc. And it is always more exciting to do than to not do. But he did get right on the computer and drop his 13% retirement withdrawals so we have that extra money to pay off debt. And he is going to adjust his withholdings today so that our income taxes come out close to even this year. Right now we have the emergency fund allocated but can’t find an adequate money market to put it in. I have to call some places today, but the interest seems to run about .05% and you have to have quite a lot in it to not pay penalties. So I think we are just going to put it in one of our existing savings accounts – one that we rarely think to use.