Savings goal

Now that I'm debt free, I want to save money and have decided on an achievable monthly savings goal. The target is to save at least $1,000 per month.

So far this month, already $850 has gone into savings! The breakdown is:

$250: Paycheck overage

$550: Caretaking in September (just got the check today)

$ 50: eBay

Currently I'm waiting on a check for $160 for transportation services in September which will bump the total to $1,010! Plus, two more paychecks this month and more eBay which means at least $1,500 in savings this month...that's the plan. Really though, every month will be different and this month seems unusually high.

Besides that, I can't think of any other income I could possibly throw at the savings. Honestly, I never thought I would be able to save that much money.

I feel blessed.

And...a bigger step

The goal date to pay off my car mentioned in my last post has been changed to October. See, I had just over $1,000 in a savings account (not my emergency fund) that I didn't want to touch, BUT...it was making less interest than what I was paying on my car loan by about 4%. I know this isn't much, but after thinking of how stupid it was to keep this money aside when I could pay off my car sooner, I did it.

Today I called my bank and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I'd like to make a transfer from my savings to my car loan.

Her: Ok, do you want to transfer the amount of your next payment?

Me: No, I want to transfer all that is available, I believe it is about $1,065. I'm trying to pay off my car loan early.

Her: Sure, do you want to close this account?

Me: No, keep it open.

Her: Ok, it's done.

Me: Great, thanks so much!

Her: Yup........(hung up)

Wow...really? She probably has a giant car loan and mounds of debt and was mad that I am trying to do something about mine. -- Should have dealt with my branch manager but didn't want to bother her.

Anyhow, this is done, I owe $3,435 on my car and am excited!

:) Going to update my sidebar now....

Furniture Store paid off!

Today I decided to go ahead and pay off my Furniture Store account -- $58.97!

I know it's not a lot, but it's the first to go!

Since I did my budget and realized that my monthly bills come to more than I make, I figured that it is going to take me longer to get out of debt and I really wanted to pay off this bill this week. So I paid the bill from my ING account which when I transfer money to it to cover my ebay fees, I send a litte bit more each time, therefore I had enough.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but this is what I do to keep from scrambling for money when my ebay invoice is due. I look at my current ebay bill before transferring money from my PayPal account to my ING account and if my bill is $8.67, I send over maybe $12.00 or so. I keep track of the overage and each month I'm able to save a bit of extra money.

The next time I go to send money to my ING account, if my ebay bill is $13.05, I subtract $8.67 from $13.05 getting $4.38 and I'll send maybe $6.50 or so. Then again, I keep track of the overage so I know how much extra there is.

When my ebay bill is due, I make a payment to AMEX from my ING account and pay ebay. I would rather pay ebay with Amex rather than PayPal because this way I get Skymiles.