Fed cuts rates again

Well, the Fed cut the rates again.  This is very good for my HELOC, but very bad for my savings.  I see a rate drop on my online emergency fund coming soon.

Debt Ticker and Stuff

Here are some things about our finances:

• The Debt Ticker total on the left includes about: $2,700 on one credit card with a fixed 7.9% rate; $8,400 on a truck loan with a fixed 5.99% rate; $46,000 on the HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) at a 7.25% variable rate, which I believe is down around 6-6.5% now; and $110,600 on our mortgage at a fixed 5.75% rate.

• Our retirement accounts are all over the place right now, but we are working on consolidating them.  My husband has two 401K's.  One from his old job that we are in the process of rolling over and one from his current job.  In total his retirement fund is at about $19,000.  I quit working in Aug 2004, but I kept my 401K and Pension with the company because they were doing so well.  I have been thinking about opening up an IRA to be able to continue contributing and to rollover my current plans so it will all be in one place and less to take care of.  I'm in the process of researching different companies to possibly go with.  My 401K currently has about $21,300 and my Pension has about $8,700.  I am fully vested in both plans.

• Emergency Funds:  We did have about $5,000, but then my husband was forced to leave his job last summer and was out of work for 5 1/2 weeks.  Thank goodness for the emergency fund!  Currently we are in the process of building that back up.  I am doing this in a couple of ways.  The first is by rounding up all my purchases to the nearest dollar.  I use Quicken and have a separate category that I move these funds into.  At the end of each month I transfer the amount to my online savings account.  The second way is by having my VA Disability payments automatically transferred into the online savings account each month.  We use FNBO Direct for our online account.  I have been very pleased with it so far.  The rates have gone down, but unfortunately so have all the other banks' rates.  Right now their savings rate is at 3.25%.  We currently have about $2,300 and my goal is to start out with $5,000.  Once I hit the $5,000, then I'll work on another $5,000.

• Other Savings:  We have another savings account, but we don't keep a lot of money in it.  This one is at our credit union and only earns 1% interest.  So I only use it for my automatic mortgage payment.  Every pay period I transfer half of the mortgage payment into it.  On months with three pay periods, I transfer half three times and create a buffer in case my escrows go up, which will change my payment.

• Net Worth:  According to my Quicken program, our net worth is at $142,104.97.  I would love to get that to $1,000,000, but it will be a while before we get there.  I also haven't updated the value of our vehicles (one paid off and one not) or our house lately so that may effect the outcome of that as well.

That should give you a little background on our current finances.  I'll try to get some tickers on the left soon to keep track of this information.

Financial Views

Firstly I'll start you off with a little background info. I'm a 35-year-old woman who also happens to be a wife of 11 years, mother to two young boys, a current homemaker, a college student, a former Army soldier, and a former bank mortgage employee, et cetera. For my family I also tend to be a chauffeur, errand runner, bill payer, problem solver, project planner, cook, laundress, maid, blah, blah, blah...I'm sure there is more. :-D

I love taking care of the finances and especially love when I come up with a creative way to pay everything without going further in debt. The big thing with me is: DEBT IS BAD! Do we have debt? You better believe it! But we also know as a family that we don't want very much of it anymore. We don't go as far as cutting up every credit card. I believe that it is ok to have a credit card for emergencies and for shopping safely. However, my goal is to get to the point where it is used for true emergencies and/or when we already have the cash to pay off what is spent.

Now you may see me interchange I, me, we, us and so forth. Primarily, I take care of the finances. Hubby hands over all receipts at the end of the day, I take care of the bills, plans for payoff, savings, and anything else to do with our finances. However, that doesn't mean he is in the dark about it. We discuss most of the plans, but he leaves the details and daily work of it to me. I also have all financial info available to him whenever he wants to look at it because I don't believe it is healthy to hide financial info from each other. Does he know everything? No absolutely not! I've found he knows it is being taken care of so he doesn't want to know unless there is something he wants and needs to know if there is money for it...lol.

So here are some basics from my point of view:

1) Debt is BAD! Most people will try to tell you it is normal, but it's not! Debt is ABNORMAL! Being debt-free should be NORMAL!

2) We have one credit card, one HELOC, one truck loan, and one mortgage. I am currently racking up student loans, but those won't become due until around June 2011. Hopefully, something will be paid off by then or I will be back to work.

3) I would like to use this blog to keep track of anything that can be remotely linked to our finances and our plan to "Ditch My Debt".

I'm sure I could add more, but it is getting late. I'll be adding some tickers, graphs, whatever of debt, savings, and net worth along with anything else I can think of over the coming days.