Twice over the last few months I have had a vet bill to pay for Bella. I budget $0 for Bella's expenses. Obviously, she costs more than $0, so this has to change. However, I am loathe to increase my total sinking fund transfer.
Looking over my sinking funds and account balances, I decided to trim bi-weekly transfers as follows:
clothing - from $23.07 to $20.00
eGadgets - from $11.55 to $10.00
gifts/Xmas - from $38.46 to $28.46
hobbies - from $3.85 to $3.00
thereby freeing up $15.47 bi-weekly to set aside for Bella's expenses (excluding her food), while leaving my total bi-weekly transfer amount unchanged at $230. So we will see how this works out.
Additionally, I have decided to use the money in car replacement towards debt. Between us, we do have 4 vehicles, 1.5 of which are mine. While my daily driver is now 12 (!) years old, it has 140k ~ish on the odometer, is a Honda, and receives regular maintenance. I expect to be driving it for a good long while yet. However, I do want to beef up my car r&m fund to handle any large repairs, just in case. After the 5th wheel loan is paid in full, I can focus on saving up for my next car.
So, my plan is to transfer $1500 from car replacement into car r&m, leave $1 in car replacement, and apply the balance of $6,342.42 towards the 5th wheel loan.
My goal with the 5th wheel loan is to have the balance down to 23k by the end of 2020; paid in full by the end of 2021. I expect this last will require dipping into my emergency fund, possibly even wiping it out. I am willing to do so only if it pays the loan in full.
Sinking Funds Adjustments
January 1st, 2020 at 04:45 pm