Intro + two questions
Mar. 9th, 2010 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenett posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
actyourwageHi 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.)
- 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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-09 08:19 pm (UTC)(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
Date: 2010-03-09 09:09 pm (UTC)Re: FSA
Date: 2010-03-10 12:06 am (UTC)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*