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Planning Ahead

February 26th, 2014 at 07:56 pm

Something I am doing right this year is planning ahead for expenses I know are coming throughout the year. The year it's a Federal tax bill, a new air conditioner at the rental house, and property taxes for both our home and the rental. (The property taxes are an annual thing, of course, but I've never really planned for them before, just hoped something would come along to cover them. Got burned on it a few times, too, and ended up borrowing the money to pay them (still paying that back, three years later -- stupid!), or once we paid them a couple of months late, because we knew we'd have a big commission check coming in; that cost about $400 in late fees, but still probably less than the interest on borrowing the money. Still, even paying $400 is stupid for an expense that I've known will come up at the same time every year for 15+ years.)

Anyway -- I've got the money set aside already to cover the tax bill. I just added $500 to the savings, so now the a/c is about 2/3 funded and I won't need to pay that out until I'm guessing June or so. (I don't know, maybe there's value in having it done in April or May? Lower prices, probably less busy? I only have one quote so I'll need to have a couple more people out there to bid on it regardless. I may also see if we can get one more year of recharging it, but apparently the type of freon it takes is hard to come by these days.) Taxes are due the end of August and end of September, so I have lots of time to save, do some side jobs, etc.

Right now I'm at about 52% of where I need to be. Comes out to about $700 a month I need to set aside. I'm get overtime at work for the next six weeks, so that gives me a good opportunity to sock some money away. (Though now are also, of course, our high heating bill months; I know I could go on the budget plan, but honestly it's better for us to pay the high bills during my overtime and the $20-30 bills the rest of the year. Our dryer is gas, too, so we always have some usage.)

I do have $1200 set aside in a separate account, which technically is intended for reimbursements I'll owe some folks, but around $100 at a time and spread out over the next two years or longer. (Half of those might not ever be paid out.) So until I get a few other things set up, I'm considering that as my "emergency fund", mostly so that I'm not as tempted to dip into it. Even if I had to deplete it, it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with $100 here and there for the reimbursements. I'm not really comfortable at having only $1200 as an emergency fund, and will be looking at ways to beef that up without affecting my debt payoff plan.

Overall, I'm pleased with my progress in 2014. Of course it's very early in the year, but this is the first time I've really done a complete assessment of my financial situation. It's not pretty, but I'm confident I can make significant progress in turning it around within a few years. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my progress (as well as to calculate the additional payment I'm making each month); I'll update the monthly balances (based on the card statements) probably over the weekend, but I'm usually pretty close. Unofficially, it looks liked I paid off $2,332 of non-real-estate-backed debt this month. I'll take it!

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