Previous goal: Pay off all of my consumer debt (which I did in May, just before losing the job.) Good timing, me! Divorce was not kind to my finances: I took the debt to avoid having to deal with the ex not paying it, to the tune of about 25K. Ugh.
Current goal: pay my bills while unemployed.
(I can manage them on unemployment *except* for health insurance, where the full $450 payment for me kicks in next month. Fortunately, my mother's helping me out with that one. And if I don't find a job by the end of October in my field, I'll be aiming at temping. For folks wanting perspective: that sum is 3/4 of what it costs me in rent for a very small studio-sized apartment.)
Short term stuff: - Get really solid on tracking my budget and expenses. (I'm using a program called YNAB (You Need A Budget), which has both a desktop and iPod app version: so far, every entry this month is fully up to date, yay me.)
- Get job (which may involve a move, which will throw all sorts of new variables into the budget) One of the things I like about YNAB is it's fairly easy to play with practice future budgets and erase them while I'm trying to figure out what kind of salary would be my absolute minimum in Other Location.
Longer term: - I still have a student loan out there (currently in deferment due to the unemployment). I'd like to start paying that down much more aggressively now the consumer debt is out of my way.
- Save up for a car down payment and a few months of car payment in advance. (My current car is 10.5, and while it's okay now, clearly needs replacing sometime sooner than later to be reliable in northern climate conditions.)
- I want to save up between 3 and 6 months of expenses after that for emergency savings. (I'm single, no kids, so still trying to decide where in that I want to fall.)
- And then I'd like to look at saving up money for a house down payment, though depending on where I end up, that might be a long time coming. We'll see.
no subject
Pay off all of my consumer debt (which I did in May, just before losing the job.) Good timing, me! Divorce was not kind to my finances: I took the debt to avoid having to deal with the ex not paying it, to the tune of about 25K. Ugh.
Current goal: pay my bills while unemployed.
(I can manage them on unemployment *except* for health insurance, where the full $450 payment for me kicks in next month. Fortunately, my mother's helping me out with that one. And if I don't find a job by the end of October in my field, I'll be aiming at temping. For folks wanting perspective: that sum is 3/4 of what it costs me in rent for a very small studio-sized apartment.)
Short term stuff:
- Get really solid on tracking my budget and expenses. (I'm using a program called YNAB (You Need A Budget), which has both a desktop and iPod app version: so far, every entry this month is fully up to date, yay me.)
- Get job (which may involve a move, which will throw all sorts of new variables into the budget) One of the things I like about YNAB is it's fairly easy to play with practice future budgets and erase them while I'm trying to figure out what kind of salary would be my absolute minimum in Other Location.
Longer term:
- I still have a student loan out there (currently in deferment due to the unemployment). I'd like to start paying that down much more aggressively now the consumer debt is out of my way.
- Save up for a car down payment and a few months of car payment in advance. (My current car is 10.5, and while it's okay now, clearly needs replacing sometime sooner than later to be reliable in northern climate conditions.)
- I want to save up between 3 and 6 months of expenses after that for emergency savings. (I'm single, no kids, so still trying to decide where in that I want to fall.)
- And then I'd like to look at saving up money for a house down payment, though depending on where I end up, that might be a long time coming. We'll see.