2012 Money Goals, 1st Quarter Savings, Debt, & Income

Savings

  • Emergency Fund – As I said earlier I have yet to start back on saving in my Emergency Fund. It currently sits at five dollars.
  • Taxes – I just recently paid Estimated taxes to the tune of 450, with about another hundred still in the account. Only time will tell if this was enough.
  • Slush Fund – Need to set this up. By next quarter I hope to have an account established.
  • Place to live – here’s the really dumb part on my move. I have 3,750 but it’s mostly from Student Aid that I have managed not to spend.

Debt

  • Student Loans – The original loan was for $5,500. The current principal is  $5,299.77. Which mean $200 is paid off of the $750 goal. The only bad part is I have about $60 in interest that I have not paid yet.
  • Credit Card – I only have a $200 credit limit and my last bill was for $0 and currently I only have a $3 balance from Saturday. So on using it less I am making progress.

Income

  • My business which is Computer Repair and Programming seams to be on track. After doing the quarterly book work it’s at $4,505.67. Which my goal is $20,000. So it’s almost a quarter of what I expected. Yet the last two/three weeks have been slow and may explain why it’s not $5,000. But I can live with that.
  • Passive Income – Have yet to establish any, I have been reading blogs, books, and listening to shows on that topic. Lets see if I can get this going soon.

Noticeable Quarter Events

This quarter has been an interesting one. First time I’ve installed a security camera system, which was a good learning experience. Always wear dust masks when working with ceilings and walls. But onto some bad events. The beginning of March there was a bad storm which busted out three windows on my Ford Explorer. The repair bill was around $700 but my parents chipped in, which helped a lot. Had my parents not chipped in and with virtually no Emergency Fund this could have been much worst.

Now you may be asking me, where’s the expenses? I haven’t had much time to analyse my expenses yet but I can say more was spent on my Explorer then any other category. I will make a new post when I’ve done that.

And as always, feel free to comment below. I want to hear your comments and suggestions. If you like this post make sure to subscribe to the feed at the bottom of the site. Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon.

– Zack

Also, on a side note, today I’m 19. With the extra money from gifts I hope to not blow them. I would really like to pay off some debt and/or save but I need to at least make sure I don’t blow it on food and stuff I never use. Finally I am expecting a slight increase in one of my Subcontracting Job and I plan on using half of the excess to pay debt and the other half to fund savings. Which should amount to about $50 for each category per month.

2 thoughts on “2012 Money Goals, 1st Quarter Savings, Debt, & Income

  1. Depending on your emergency fund (EF) needs, split ebewetn the EF and the car loan. But the crux of the matter is not really how to divert your leftover savings, but how to increase those savings to erase your debt burden more quickly.Saving depends on1) Increasing Income (often less feasible).2) Decreasing Expenses (often more feasible).Most people focus on #1, and neglect #2. But most expenses can be decreased dramatically, or even eliminated. Share rent with lots of people, or live at home or in a low-cost area if possible, avoid owning cars in the near future (they suck a lot of money), eat out less, buy less (or better yet, nothing) or secondhand, don’t engage in expensive sports/hobbies, no travel/tech gadgets/brand names/movies, etc. Reduce all water, power, phone, mobile + cable bills to the minimum. Analyze your biggest expenses (usually rent/car/food/leisure/bills), and find ways to cut all the financial fat. Since you’ll have a lot of extra time on your hands, use it to invest in educating yourself and developing your professional talents/interests/skills so that you can achieve a higher future income potential. Go DIY don’t pay others to teach you.Live poor because actually, you ARE poor. By my personal definition, if you need a job in order to feed yourself, you’re poor. If you need to worry about what your boss thinks of you, you’re poor. If you’re in debt, you’re in the hole poor. Don’t be generous or ashamed you literally can’t afford to be. Be generous and proud after you’ve saved up some $ $ $ . Extreme situations call for extreme measures. If you compare yourself to other people with lots of debt, you’ll feel your situation isn’t so bad, but you should be comparing yourself to people with positive net worth. I only make 18K/year now, but I save about 10,12K more than 50% savings on income. I’ve been doing this for many years now, so it all adds up. So despite my low income, I had my basic 1K EF in my first month. I intentionally chose to live in a lower-cost city that didn’t require a car, and in the beginning I had to forego a lot of costly urban enjoyments (movies, dining, shopping, etc.). But the payoffs have been tremendous; I don’t worry about money or jobs. Plus, I only work part-time now. If you can find a way to save 1K a month, you’ll be well on your way. It’ll only take 20 months to pay off all your debts. If you have higher income and can save 1.5K, you only need 13 months to be completely debt-free.After you pay off your debts, you should continue your hardcore saving for a couple years, (1yr =12K, 2y=24K, 3y = 36K, depends on what your long-term financial goals are), after which you can invest your savings, and your money can start working for you, instead of you always working for money. Then you can ease off on or abandon the Spartan lifestyle. If you’re a guy, you might not want to though, because being a Spartan is actually pretty cool. It’s good mental physical training, because it helps to cut away all the consumer materialist crap in life. Makes you focus on what’s really important in life which is ironically, not the money, but yourself, your relationships, and your purpose in life. And coincidentally, all those 3 things suffer when you’re working the 9-to-5 grind and spending nearly all of your hard-earned money on whatever. Best wishes to you –

    • I was debt free until I bought a home a year ago. I’m detcdaied to paying off that mortgage well before the 30 years are up. I’m doing the Crown Financial Ministries Bible Study right now and last week was on debt. If you keep a home mortgage for 30 years, you will end up paying 2-3 times the value of the original mortgage by the time you are finished! That means you are paying more in interest than the amount you originally took out.Proverbs 22:7 says Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender. I want to be financially free to serve the Lord however He calls! Once debt is paid off, we will be free to give even more generously or work for free for a ministry if God called us to do that. We are working agressively toward that goal.

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