Intro + two questions

[jenett]

Hi there! Great idea (and name) for a community. I'm Jenett, and last spring I finally got the real adult-paying job to go with the Master's in Library Science (I'm the teacher librarian at an independent high school.) Before that, I was a (much less well paid) library assistant at the same school - great experience, but hard on my finances. I've lived in Minnesota for the last 10.5 years, and love it here.

- Various money decisions during my marriage + subsequent divorce were not really kind to my finances, and I spent about 4 years living on a painfully tight budget as a result.
- BUT! I'm 2 months away from paying off more than $25,000 in debt. (I still have student loan debt, but I'm a lot less worried about that one.)
- And I've now got enough money that I can look at all sorts of fun long-term planning. Yay!


Budget tracking

I'm playing with different budget programs and trying to find one I really like and update regularly.

I'm currently checking a trial of You Need A Budget - it's got a high pricetag ($60), but it builds a bunch of rules I very much like into the process, which I think might be worth it for me, especially the way it handles budgeting and tracking together, including rolling over budget amounts to the next month. Detailed review of YNAB 3 here.)

Switching to a credit union
I've got a recommendation from my former boss for a credit union focused on educators, and I'm working on setting up an appointment to talk to them. Any advice, though, on changing over to a credit union is most welcome! (Especially the part about changing over all my automatic payments without tearing my hair out, though I'll probably wait till summer break to do that.)

Replacing my car
My car is going on 11 years old, and it's time to look at replacements (sometime this summer.) I'm still undecided whether it's going to be a new car, or - more likely - a recent used car. Part of why I want to do the credit union thing now is that I'd like to see what they'll do for me re: a loan.

If you have a compact-ish sedan you're really happy with, feel free to tell me about it - my current car is a Saturn SL2, which I love, but since Saturn isn't a good option going forward, need to figure out what is. (Going carless isn't an option for me for health and other practical reasons.)

I'm at the stage where I'd like to look at buying a house in the next 2-3 years.
I currently rent, and love my landlady, but my current place is tiny (400 square feet), and places severe limits on some important things. (You can read more about my religious life over here, but the brief version is that I do in-house ritual and teaching with a small group on a regular basis, and a 8x10 foot front room just isn't ideal when all the furniture also has to be moveable for ritual.) So, a big goal of the next few years is going to be saving up a down payment.

Health fun
I'm finally coming out of a long stretch of feeling really lousy (current diagnosis is Vitamin D deficiency and subclinical hypothyroid). One of the things I've found that has helped is swimming regularly (fortunately, there's a YWCA about a mile and a half away on my route to/from work)

But I'm also looking at other things I can do for my health - everything from some cooking skills that would make eating better after work easier (I have a new crockpot but am still learning how to use it best) to looking at budgeting for body work, to making sure I budget for doctor bills.

(I have a sort of weird health insurance: my work pays for the first $1000 minus copays for medication and such, I pay for any costs between $1000 and $2500, and then the insurance kicks in again. I'm currently in that middle ground, but ideally want to end up with a nice buffer for next fiscal year in case it's needed, as right now, it's eating money that could go into savings instead, and I need to make payments in sizeable chunks after appointments.)

Health suggestions can be tricky, but I'm fine with ideas from people who assume that I've already given these issues plenty of thought. (And that there's some stuff that won't work for me that I'm not bothering to list out right now.)

Comments

[indywind]

Seconding the rec for a medical --or rather, a Health Savings Account. Cool things about them (at least, some versions) include:
+can be used to pay for a wide variety of health-promoting goods and services, not just medical treatment (mine allows dental, vision, and psych care, and a limited amount of stuff like nutrition consulting & fitness coaching.)
+many employers support them in conjunction with insurance, and typically contributions are pre-tax (direct deposited before your wages are taxed). If I understand correctly, you don't pay income tax on the money that goes into the HSA, only on interest it generates--the idea being that the Fed. Gov't wants to reward people for saving for their own health care. (If you decide to quit and cash out the account, you pay tax on that amount.)

+savings in HSAs typically rolls over from year to year if you don't spend it, unlike FSAs (Flexible Spending Accounts) where contributions are typically lost if not spent in a year.

There's more, but I'm a little fuzzy on which is common to all HSAs and which is particular to mine. If you wanted to pursue an HSA, but were worried about having having too much of your savings restricted to health-related use only, you might consider putting in the HSA only enough to bridge your insurance's coverage gap for a year (i.e. $1500 plus whatever you estimate for expected copays). If you're going to spend that much on healthcare anyway, you might as well make the most of it. MHO,YMMV.

I have been loving my credit union, which has provided better customer service and more options for customization in managing accounts, automated payments, investment options (CDS, money market, like that) at good rates with advice on which to use for what, auto buying and financing advice, homebuying advice and mortgage financing.

WRT becoming a homeowner....It's probably premature to give much specific advice; just save aggressively and educate yourself. As a new homeowner myself, the thing I most want to pass on is: Try to have as much cash on hand as you can possibly manage when the time comes--as much as 25 or 30% of your expected purchase price.

I feel pretty strongly about the effects of home-made food on both physical and financial health, but I think there's been another post recently made about that which probably deserves a look before I start running my mouth. :-)

[jenett]

Ah, yes. We have a FSA, but not an HSA available. (If I could roll cash over year to year, I'd be happy to leave money in there.) I'm hoping that most of this year's costs are going to be abnormal, and I won't need to worry quite so much about hitting that $1500 middle window most years.

(It's one of those "If we're looking at 2 specialist visits and my normal physical plus the relevant blood work, that'll fit under the initial $1000 that's the school's contribution, or very close to it If it's 4 specialist visits and bloodwork, then not so much" thing.)

If I know it's going to be the second, then having the money come out pre-tax is a definite win, but only if I can then spend it sensibly. Otherwise, it probably makes more sense to just have a savings account handy in case I do find I need it. The good news is that I should have a good idea before the next time we hit plan years. (Which we do in October, because we're a school, and it makes sense to link the insurance and related cost years to the school year.)

Feel free to go on about food - I feel the same way, but the medical stuff (which included pretty overwhelming exhaustion for a couple of months that made anything more than *very* basic feeding myself really tricky, plus a lack of appetite that made things worse) has gotten me off track. Now that I'm starting to have enough energy to do things again, I still want to find more things that are inexpensive and healthy and good for me that work well for a single person living alone who doesn't bring lunch to work.

(Work feeds me lunch: it's actually usually a very good lunch with a range of choices, but it means if I make large batches of something, I have to have them for dinner for ages and ages, which is not always so great.)

FSA

[aedifica]

For what it's worth: The way I have my FSA planned this year, there's enough money to cover my therapist visits if I keep going as often as I have been, or if I stop seeing the therapist, I'll use that money for a new pair of glasses (possibly prescription sunglasses for when I'm out biking) or else contact lenses. I don't know whether you have stackable medical goals like that, but if you do, that could work.

Re: FSA

[sara]

Hah, we had a year recently where we bought two pairs of glasses for C. and about two gallons of NyQuil, the last week in December.

But since the next year the dog ate two pairs of his glasses and I got swine flu, hey, it worked out all right. *GRIN*