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It’s the beginning of the month, which means it’s time to examine last month’s finances. With June here, we're inching closer to the arrival of our baby girl next month. I think it's hitting us a bit more that we need to stay focused on our finances now. Once our daughter's here, we'll be spending our time and energy getting adjusted as parents and getting to know. Being prepared now will give some peace of mind with the transition (baby expenses!) coming up.
Our Spending Habits in May
Boy, oh, boy, we spent some money in May. Here are our 3 biggest expenses last month:
- Home (Mortgages, Extra Payments, HOA Fees, etc): $1,140.75
- Food (Groceries, Restaurants, Etc): $482.87
- Bills/Utilities: $361.30
As you can see, housing is our biggest expenses between the essentials and the extra principal payment we send in. I'm happy that our food bill decreased significantly this month.
Checking & Savings
We transfered some money from savings to checking and after my husband pointed out some inefficiencies, we're going to make some changes with the accounts. Hopefully with next month's review I'll be able to point out the increase with our savings and a steady buffer in our checking account.
Retirement Accounts
We’re still not planning on making any changes to our retirement contributions this year. We really want to focus on more immediate goals of getting ready for the baby. I can’t anticipate the future, but I believe once we have some idea of how we’re going to handle our finances as parents, we’ll look at our retirement accounts and contributions.
My husband’s 401(k) has steadily been going up and it’s bumped up our assets a bit this month.
Our Cars
The automated deposits are coming along as planned and if everything continues as it has this year, we should reach our goal of socking away $5,000 more into the car replacement fund in 2011.
Both cars seem to be doing well. We’ve had no repairs to do, we just need to take care of our fluid levels on the vehicles. In case you’re wondering how I calculate the vehicles’ values, I used Kelly Blue Book. Every quarter I’ll update the values to account for depreciation.
Student Loans
Nothing exciting or new, we’re just chugging along with the student loan payments. Payments have been automated so it’s been relatively easy to keep up with them; we just confirm payments have been made each month. We switched the payments from the end of the month to the middle of the month to break the expenses between our deposits.
House and Mortgage
The mortgage payments are chugging along. As part of our usual routine, our automated extra principal payment (now $175) was sent in on the 15th of the month.
When deciding on how much we were going to send in to our lender, our main focus was creating something sustainable and had some impact with the mortgage.
Here’s where we stand today with the mortgage:
- Total Loan Amount: $110,890.76
- Interest Rate: 5.00%
- Loan Term: 30 years, fixed rate
Our goal is to pay off our mortgage way before we retire. Right now our timeline is about 15 years, instead of 30 years. Once accomplished, we’d love to be able to direct that money into other interests and goals of ours down the road.
Monthly Summary
Here’s our net worth from the spreadsheet:
Net Worth (as of May 31, 2011): $52,389.44 (+$1,634.68)
Your Net Worth Update
How are you doing with your finances? How are you doing in 2011 so far?
Photo Credit: borman818