Wow, it's been a while and I've been pretty invisible. Becoming a famous blogger isn't easy, is it?
2009 has been a tough year for my family; my dad died, my wife's mother died and my brother in law is pretty sick. Also a very good friend died, followed a week later by her mother. Now her sister is fighting breast cancer.
So I'm really happy to see the ass end of 2009. I have not paid too much attention here and I apologize, especially to you Ron, who always asked when was I going to post something again. Well, here it is.
With all our troubles our financial plan has been steadily working away. We've gotten a little lax with the extra money in our budget, but the basics of the budget has been sound. I started keeping track of our net worth two years ago at www.networthiq.com. I got caught up with my bookkeeping and did my first update at networthiq since May of this year. We have improved our net worth in the last two years by almost $44,000.00. That's amazing. When I think of the years that I did not have a plan for my money and the way it dribbled away, I could kick myself. But, there is no fixing the past there is only going forward.
Within the next week or two we will be paying off our car loan (the Santa Fe continues to rock! I love that car!). Then the funds previously going to the car loan with be added to the amount attacking the Consolidation loan. My guesstimate is just over a year and a half to knock out that.
As well, we are going to be increasing the amount of our emergency fund. We originally set the max at $1,000. I was listening to Dave Ramsey a lot back then and liked the idea of the mini emergency fund. I feel that we are better off now and would like to start building up to a 6 month emergency fund. Just ballparking that would be almost $24,000, so we won't be getting there real quick. The plan is to start adding $40 a pay to the Emergency Fund, that will add a $1,000 to the fund this year. Next year we'll probably double that which will give us $4,000 in the EF in two years. We'll look into that further then.
Our Operational Savings is working really well, those annual expenses that used to force us the scrabble to pay them are no problem now. It's great watching the money for the Morocco trip piling up. Travel abroad used to be a fantasy. This November it will be a reality.
