Money Matters
als1982
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
October/November monthly check-in.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
HeartlandHustle | Personal Finance and Betterment Blog
Re: October/November monthly check-in.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Mostly yes- We paid off our furnace cleaning and soil/seeding (we got the grass grown fully before strict water restrictions because of the drought-Phew!). We mostly watched out spending and was able to contribute a good amount to our vacation account and e-fund and even started adding back to our ROTH's. Our flights are also paid for. We didn't get to change the outlets or frame 2 pictures for our bathroom to complete it...hopefully by the end of the year.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Continue to watch spending and contribute to our e-fund and vacation account. We have a set-back that we need to pay for now that we found out there have been shed break-in's on our street/surrounding streets. We will need to have 2 motion flood lights put on the house and we are buying 2 wireless camera's for the front and back of our house. I took inventory and pictures of everything in the shed, I just need to get all the documentation/pictures together in one folder.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short- Add to e-fund, vacation account
Middle- Pay off trip, have $10K in e-fund by end of year
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
We only go to one grocery store to get our food/toiletries and shop sales in the weekly flyer. I also use coupons from the newspaper as well as digital coupons on the stores website. While we spend anywhere from $80-$100 we never waste any food, everything gets eaten so we just stock up when things are on sale and buy what we want. We spend under $400 per month
My family does all the main cooking for Thanksgiving, so I have app or dessert duty which is pretty cheap anyway...
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
We usually just give money, winter items, or food when we see a location set up to donate too. (Toys for Tots, food drives, clothing bins, gift trees)
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Continue tracking expenses in YNAB, we've been overspending in some categories but luckily that trend is going down. So just need to keep working at improving! I also put $500 in savings today.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Track expenses and try to stick within the budget as best as I can even with hosting Thanksgiving. Put another $500 in savings by the end of the month.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short, fund my Roth IRA for 2016. Middle, save up a secondary e-fund, Long - I think we've decided we want to pay off our house in 6-7 years instead of sell and buy another one so that's the next big thing.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
Definitely by meal planning, buying some things in bulk and freezing the excess.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
Usually I sign up for a child or two on a giving tree at work, participate in food drives, and on Sundays occasionally I volunteer at a service that cooks a hot Sunday dinner for needy families and delivers weekly groceries and other needs to them.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Keep working on the bathroom- we're getting there. Fixtures and vent were installed.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Finish the bathroom. Right now, we're cleaning up some grout lines that are a little uneven and will be installing everything else this month (towel bars, mirror, lights, etc). Looking forward to getting this done. Also save $1000, start getting holiday gifts.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
short- finish the bathroom, fully fund roths for 2016, start monthly withdrawals for roths in 2017.
middle- exterior renovation, punch list of small projects in the house (repaint some trim, change out 2 lights, decorate the front vestibule), maybe repaint DH's office.
long- retirement, girls' 529 plans.. stay on track.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
This is one area I don't really stress about- our fridge is empty (like serial killer empty) by Saturday afternoon. We go through everything and we buy mostly organic, so as long as we're eating it, I'm good.
I actually don't cook anything for Thanksgiving- I supply the house and set the table. Everyone brings the food to us!
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
We donate to the city mission for Thanksgiving, clothes/jackets/boots/etc throughout the year, Christopher's Haven, Chive charities, and NPR/WNED/WBFO.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
My financial goals were to cash flow and figure out best way to pay for two large rental projects. I'm happy with my decisions. I paid for a $4K new HVAC system with a "credit card check" that gives me 0% interest until Aug. 2017. I paid for $4,880 in new windows with a 0% interest for 6 months offer on $4K of it and cash flowed the rest.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Have the reno for my new duplex finished and start doing showings by the end of the month.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short: I'm seriously stressed out just thinking about this one. I need to get a cash-out refi on one of my rentals done yesterday. I really wanted to wait until my new duplex is rented out and do a refi on that one, but my job is so insecure right now, I don't think I have the luxury to wait even 2-3 months for that.
Other short term goal: Find a new job (sigh). Things are sinking fast. Rumors are they will be laying off half the people left on my project, though I'm not sure when.
Middle/Long: Build up to at least $5K/month in rental cash flow. So I don't have to worry about layoffs anymore!
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
I save on food and grocery expenses by shopping at Wal-mart and warehouse stores (Costco/Sam's). I also prowl the weekly ads at Winn Dixie. They always have a lot of BOGO offers.
It's just my H and I for the holidays. We don't spend much for TG. We get as small a turkey as we can find. Usually less than $15...but egads...that is enough food for lunch/dinner for a week. Two boxes of Stouffer's stuffing and we also throw in onions and crumbled breakfast sausage (about $10). Other sides and desserts ($15-$20).
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
My H and I are Scrooge-like. We give a little bit monetarily throughout the year, but not necessarily at the holidays. My time is even more precious than my money and I don't volunteer it.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Cash flow our Vegas trip - we were really close! We only spent $85 from our savings account, so I will take it.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Stick to our admittedly-last-minute budget for Amsterdam over Thanksgiving. We have every booked that needs to be booked, so it's just incidentals at this point. I'm not worried about.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Thinking of updating our master bathroom prior to kids. And then kids. Then long-term we are considering our housing needs and obviously retirement.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
I just buy everything in bulk that I can. My best tip for inexpensive holiday cooking is buying Costco butter in bulk.... because everything uses butter.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
Our primary giving season is actually July-September, because that's when every organization that we financially support has their annual drives. The only thing special we do around the holidays is select a couple of angel tree kids for presents. H and I have a really good time picking stuff out for them. I also do a last-minute purge of the house to finish any in-kind donations by Dec. 31.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them? There wasn't anything special for the month, but we did finally invest my bonus money from 2016, so that was a big accomplishment.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them? A few minor house-related items to take care of this month, pay for those in cash and not decrease savings at all.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them? Short/middle term, pay for some home renovations. Long-term, save enough for a good down payment on a vacation house.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes? I don't actively seek out ways to save on groceries, the best method for me is to plan meals ahead of time and stick to the list. We try to save a bit by not going out or getting takeout very often.
Thanksgiving is pricey, but I don't mind it. We host our families and some friends, and spend several hundred dollars on food and drinks. I'm OK with it, it's nice to be able to this and we go to others' homes for other holidays, so it balances out in the end.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday? We give to a women's and children's shelter, Planned Parenthood, our local NPR-affiliate and our local SPCA annually, it isn't tied to year-end. For the holidays, we participate in several work-sponsored charity drives like food and clothing drives, plus we adopt a local family and cover their holiday wishlist.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
To sign up for a Roth 401(k) now that I am finally eligible and I did it. Since we're cash-flowing our IVF deductible/co-pays I started with 10% instead of my original plan of 15%, but I plan on increasing that with my next raise.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
We're still just holding steady as much as possible. The big thing for this month is to stop being lazy and getting take-out because that's been wasteful this past month.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Nothing new or exciting. Just keep saving for a rainy day....
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
COSTCO! Oh I love me the Costco hahaha. Also for things we can't freeze/use fast enough I primarily shop at Market Basket which good quality, low prices, and they (like Costco) treat their employees really well. It's a business I feel good about giving my money too and it's important to me to shop with my conscience.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
We don't have specific year end giving as we give to our favorite charity every month as an automatic bill (Rosie's Place for any other Boston area locals). I also give to Planned Parenthood regularly, but I don't have it set up as a monthly bill in the same way at the moment (although I would like to set that up soon and need to talk to DH about it....)
@kmurphy2131, we have a weird spot in our house where the living room...which is where we are most of the time...has a hallway next to it, but there is no door. And you can't put a door, because across from that wall is a long closet.
So we hang a blanket up in that opening most of the year, to keep the cold inside the living room during the summer and the heat inside during the winter. It's definitely not the prettiest solution, but it does the job effectively.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Stay within budget for attendance at two weddings-accomplished, barely
Consistently add to savings-Not accomplished due to plumbing expense
Start home and car repair savings-Accomplished
We also were able to pay off one of our 0% debts unexpectedly by moving some money around
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Cash flow remainder of my yearly deductible-will use extra paycheck money
Raise my ROTH IRA contribution back to where it used to be-will use money formerly allocated to 0% payment
Continue savings contributions
Add eating out category to our budget to minimize the amount that we cheat in this area.
We're making a radical change this month that I'm excited about. It was time to face the reality that using credit cards for points was causing us to overspend and taking away from our ability to save. We have switched to debit only and have done the trick where we quite literally "freeze" our credit cards in a block of ice in the freezer. I was living in denial about this for a while but I just kind of failed and it's time to own up to that. It feels good to take control and be on a cash-only system again.
Status of Ongoing Goals-We finally figured out what these are!
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short-Save enough to pay cash for all childbirth expenses. Progress is going well here.
Medium-Refinance to a 15 year mortgage to eliminate PMI. This goal will wait until after my maternity leave.
Long-Be adding 30% to retirement accounts.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
I am not the best person to answer this question! Food is important to me and in general I'd rather cut back in other areas, including eating out, for the sake of eating well at home. Since we eat a lot of veggies, we have found a CSA membership worthwhile, but I'd warn anyone considering it that there is a significant time cost to go with the financial savings.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
We spread out our giving throughout the year with monthly deductions for the most part, but I always like to do 1-2 toys for tots or adopt a family types of things. This year I'd love to find some money for a good donation to UNHCR given all of the horrible things happening in many parts of the world.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
No major goals. Just keep plugging away and keep paying off my 0% interest CC. I was able to accomplish them. I stopped carrying the card with me so I haven't been using it. It's really helped me keep my spending on random things in check.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Continue paying off the 0% interest CC. Stick to a cash/debit budget for the month. We'll see how that plays out.
Possibly pick up one or two Christmas gifts using my allowance money.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short - Pay off 0% Interest Card (Dec) and Student loan (Feb)
Middle - Hopefully update our bathroom in the house within a year. Up my retirement contributions to 15% with a 5% match.
Long - Save 20% down for a down payment in the next 5 years and get our boat paid off early.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
I'm terrible with this advice. H and I hardly ever save on food expenses because we eat out too much. We do pretty well at making sure to eat left overs and not letting food go to waste thou.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving? Do you serve warm meals to those in need? Man the kettle and ring the bell for the Salvation Army? Support your charity of choice on #GivingTuesday?
Last year I adopted an elderly person in a local assisted living home and that was great so I'll do that again this year. I'll also be helping H's mom with providing gifts for local family. And will most likely pick a name off the giving tree. I haven't decided yet if I'll buy Christmas gifts for everyone or just donate the $400 I set aside to an animal rescue.
Also, do you find that your CSA saves you money? I swear even with all the produce I don't actually save much. Maybe I need to find simpler ways of using my stuff. I feel like a lot of it requires that I buy other ingredients to cook it with, and we can't really coast on leftovers/whats in the pantry since new stuff is coming. That said, I LOVE my CSA.
October
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Increase savings--not accomplished. We decreased by a couple of hundred. High dog expenses and no side income netted out to a loss. Given our expenses where we ended wasn't too bad.
November
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Increase savings. We'll get $450 from our foreign student but it probably won't go far with a $300 kennel bill coming up at Thanksgiving and other monthly expenses. We will do our best on the monthly total by keeping spending down.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short is to increase savings. Future goals will be determined early next year.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. How do you find ways to save on food and grocery expenses? Any tips for inexpensive Thanksgiving dishes?
Meal plan, coupons, Aldi and stock up on sales. We also moved to more just in time grocery shopping by going to the store more frequently and buying less. This has saved us from having stuff expire and get thrown out.
For the holidays I get my recipes together in advance and make a grocery list of ingredients. Then I buy ingredients as they go on sale.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. With the holidays approaching, how do you handle your year-end giving?
No special holiday giving, just making sure any donations that weren't made are done before the end of the year, including a Goodwill drop.
H and I do a bell ringing shift together for the SA each year. My mom's family and FIL's family were helped by the SA back in the day and we feel connected to the charity.
I definitely think the CSA is more cost effective than my wild stabs at urban gardening. Maybe next year will go better...
I will say that ours is a little bit light on the more unusual veggies. We got a lot of greens, tomatoes, and basic root vegetables like carrots and potatoes. Our old one back in MA got a bit more wild and using everything was more of a challenge.
We've also dabbled in a meat CSA. That didn't save us money at all, but H really likes the idea of local, humane meat even if it means eating less of it. We're skipping that one next round just because we have bigger financial fish to fry.
Sorry you were dealing with the credit card creep too. It just made it too easy for us to "borrow" $50 from next paycheck that then did not end up being saved. I'm happy to be trying a new approach for a while!