We will soon be outnumbered...

My wife and I found out last night that our family will be growing once again. Instead of being able to play man-to-man or parent-to-child in this case, we will now be forced to play zone. It is still very early but also very exciting. If this pregnancy goes like the first two, the arrival date should be right around Christmas. Just in time to reap the tax benefits of having a child.

Work overload

Wow, what a week for work. Since the beginning of the month, I have been picking up some extra duties due to employee turnover and the added bonus this week was the arrival of an internal audit crew. Needless to say I have pulled more documentation and answered more questions in the past four days than I had in my previous 15 months in this job. It will be over soon though and then I get to go on vacation for a few days. Yippee!!

Roth IRA

I did some analysis of our Roth IRA accounts and realized that I will likely only be about a $1,000 shy of the $5,000 minimum balance for the elimination of annual fees by the end of the year on my wife's Roth IRA. As such, I made the decision to transfer an additional $1,500 to her IRA now from our savings, so I wouldn't forget to do it later on in the year. Now, we just hope the market keeps rising or at least holds steady. Otherwise, this move will mean nothing.

April Net Worth Update

April was a nice solid increase. In fact, we saw the largest percentage increase since we started tracking our net worth last fall. You can get all the details of our balance sheet by going to Networth IQ. There were not many changes this month. The increase was mostly due to a strong showing for our retirement accounts.

Budgeting woes

Well, we fell off the wagon for the second month in a row. I tried to simplify things so all we had to do was record our cash outflows. Unfortunately, that didn't even work. I am going to have to go back to the drawing board and see if there is something else we can try.

New Tires

A few months back, I had a little driving mishap with my Honda Accord and destroyed two of my tires. It wasn't the brightest move to make, but my short term solution was to get two used tires. Unfortunately, they weren't very good and I now have another example that fits the saying, "you get what you pay for." Anyways, I did some research on some new tires and settled on the Bridgestone HP50. They appear to be pretty good tires from the reviews I read and should last a good 60-70,000 miles which is approximately 6-7 years since I don't put many miles on my car. I just got home from Sears and let me tell you that first ride was nice and a dramatic improvement over the old tires. From a cost standpoint, I took advantage of two things to drive the price down. First, I bought the tires at Sears which is a participant in Discover Card's current 5% cash back promotion. Second, Bridgestone is offering a $50 mail in rebate. I will be completing the paperwork for that tonight and will give an update when I receive the rebate.

I got a raise!!

I have been anxiously awaiting this day for the past week or so. I guess with all the positive economic indicators and the positive trends for our company I was hoping for a nice pay increase. While I won't complain, it unfortunately wasn't much more than a cost of living increase, 3.23%. I am going to wait and see how it impacts my paycheck and then decide how much I will increase my Roth IRA contributions. My initial thought is that I will contribute $50 more each month. As they say, every little bit helps.

American Express - Finally a Solution

Back in February, I posted about my difficulties getting American Express to correct the interest rate being charged on my statements. After four months and numerous calls to their customer service department, everything appears to be corrected. My initial balance transfers are now accruing interest at 3.99% instead of 13.99%. My account was also credited for the excess interest charges from the previous months. Life is good.

March Net Worth Update

Another month has come and gone. I have updated my net worth and it can be viewed at NetworthIQ. Not too many changes to report. The cash and credit card balances went up due to the Sears check I cashed. I was hoping to see a more significant jump due to the tax refund but we also had some significant expenses. I will be reviewing our expenses in relation to our budget in an upcoming post. Let me just say it wasn't pretty and it is really making me wonder how I put together a budget that was so far off from reality.

Family Member Loan

There has been a lot of discussion in the personal finance blogosphere about this topic. Some people think it is the right thing to do and others think it can only cause problems. The reason I bring this up is that I received a call this morning from my sister and she asked if I could loan her $2,500. It is but it isn't a lot of money so I really couldn't decide what to do. Needless to say, the wife and I had a long discussion ranging from expectations of payback, can we afford to even help out, should we charge interest. We finally reached a consensus that we would help out this one time. I am going to try and keep my expectations of payback low and if they don't come through with repayment I will chalk it up to experience and make every effort to let it go so it doesn't become a source of contention within the family.

Tax Refund Received

Just like Tax Act estimated, my full tax refund showed up in my bank account today, exactly ten days after submitting the return. Life is good. We are going to try and save most of it but I have been putting off the purchase of new tires for my car so a portion will likely go to that.

Credit Card Courtesy Checks

Among the items in my mail today were courtesy checks from Citibank for my Sears Mastercard. Two of them stated 3.99% interest until the balance was paid off and no transaction fees. While it isn't that great of a deal since my savings account only earns 4.50% interest before taxes, I thought I would give it a try for the simple benefit of boosting my emergency savings. I currently only have two months of expenses built up and it would be nice to have it closer to four. So, I made the check out to myself for $7,500 and cashed it without issue at my local bank. In a few days, the money will be in my EmigrantDirect account. Based on the 2% minimum payment requirement, I will need to pay $150 to begin with. Hopefully, I can squeeze my budget enough to make this extra payment from current funds and keep the entire $7,500 in my savings. In a way, this is an extra incentive to save.

Preschool

For the past few weeks, my daughter has been attending pre-school two days a week as a sort of trial run. Things have gone well so we made the decision to enroll her for next year. It is a Spanish immersion school and it has been amazing to see how much she has picked up already. The development of little minds is amazing. Anyways, the personal finance aspect of this decision relates to payment of tuition for next year. The school offers three payment options: 5% discount if you pay in full at time of registration, 3% discount if you pay the full amount at registration with a credit card, and full price if you pay on a monthly schedule. Fortunately, we have the money to be able to pay cash now and get the full discount. Our emergency fund will take a short-term hit, but we should be able to build it back up over the next few months as my wife gets paid for coaching soccer.

New Credit Scoring System

The three credit reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax have created a new "VantageScore" that will replace the FICO score. According to the article at Yahoo!, the new credit scores will be available to lenders immediately but will not be available to consumers until later in the year. I am anxious to see what my score will be under this new system, so I will be keeping a lookout for the announcement that will proclaim that this is available for customers as well.

Tax Refund

I just e-filed our federal tax return. We should be getting a refund of $2,588 deposited into our checking account on or around the 24th of March. I used TaxAct to complete and file our return. We used their free software and paid $7.95 to e-file the return. Fortunately, we live in the great state of Washington so there is no state return to file.

Back in November, I did a rough estimate of our taxes and realized then that we would be getting a sizeable refund. I adjusted my tax withholdings but was still way off. Hopefully, I can be a little more accurate this year so we don't end up giving Uncle Sam a free loan.

Budget Pains

March has thrown some early curveballs, and I am expecting to be well over our budget by the end of the month. I have decided that I don't want to "pinch pennies" the rest of the month to try to get closer to the budget. Instead, I want March to be a month we do like we always have. After I have a full month of data, I will identify areas we can hopefully trim.

February Net Worth

February was a rather boring month financially. We held everything constant and just made our normal debt payments and savings allocations. Our net worth increased to $86,045 from $84,254. This is an increase of $1,791 or 2.13%. Our detailed balance sheet for February can be viewed at NetworthIQ.

Credit Card Arbitrage - Update

The process is complete and I am now earning 4.75% on $6,500 thanks to Citi Bank. I received my Citi Bank credit card a week and a half ago and immediately requested a check from their website. The check arrived a few days later and now has been transferred to my savings account with ING. The process went smoother than I expected, so I am going to try this arbitrage thing once more. This time my wife will be applying for the card. I will post once everything is set up with that account.

2006 Budget

After much procrastination and tweaking, I have finally developed a budget that I am hoping my wife and I can adhere to. We will begin tracking each and every expense starting March 1st. I will post the results after the first month. We will see how it goes and how accurate my projections are.

American Express - The Recurring Battle

Back in December, I applied for an American Express Blue credit card. I applied for this card because it advertised a 3.99% lifetime interest rate on balance transfers initiated during the application process. I ended up transferring $13,000 to the card from two merchant cards issued by Citi Bank. I didn't have balances on either of these cards and was able to request refund checks due to the credit balance the transfers caused. This all went smoothly. Unfortunately, my first and now my second statement both show the balance transfer as a regular purchase and thus is accruing interest at 13.99%. I called customer service and they assured me it would be fixed this month and that my next statement would have the proper adjustments. Hopefully this will be true, so I don't have to go through the hassle of calling them again.

As an FYI, I applied for this card so I could payoff my Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) which had a variable rate that had jumped to over 8%.