Bloom Where You Are Planted

My Chase Sapphire statement closed yesterday, and I have an extra 50,000 bonus rewards points. I am not planning on cashing them in right now. Instead, I plan to use mine towards a plane ticket (extra 25% if you use your points this way) when we go on our trip to Hawaii next year.

Have I mentioned that a lot of family members have gotten on board? My Mom says she will go. My cousin to whom I am close (and with whom I went to China) and her husband want to go. Cousin's son and his wife and daughter want to go (their daughter 1 year younger than my son). Cousin's daughter and her husband and their 2 kids are considering.

I am a late life baby, so I am roughly the same age as the generation after me. My cousin's son is 1 year younger than me. Most of my nieces and nephews were born when I was in grade school.

Yesterday I received a $20 credit cards reward check which I have already transferred to my mortgage. This month I have chipped $21.85. I am already thinking I will not chip my expected $150 bonus for opening a checking account. I am thinking I will stash it in my Roth instead. I have in the back of my mind that if I hit retirement with more than my Roth goal of 150k, I will be willing to use it towards my mortgage. You know, if I have one at that point. I am still up in the air about what exactly I will do. I may sell my house, take my equity and move elsewhere. At least, I certainly hope I have some equity again at some point. Maybe I am being presumptuous. So anyway, overshooting my Roth goal will not be bad, but missing it will be bad. So if I overfund my Roth, I can always use the extra towards my mortgage later.

I spent some money last night which I shouldn't have. BF and son and I had been invited to dinner at my ex-nieces house. (She was married to my nephew at one time, they have a daughter together.) Something came up in the late afternoon with her son (she is remarried) and they had to cancel. So there we were, all dressed up and no place to go. On a whim, I suggested we go out to dinner. We went to Applebee's. Afterwards, we decided to go see Cowboys & Aliens (we really liked it). When that was over, we decided to see Rise of The Apes (loved it). So it was an expensive night. I paid for everything. BF and I have a policy that s/he who suggests an outing pays for it. We have been together almost 2 years now, so are past the point of "dating". The first few months he paid for almost everything, but then I said that it was silly that one person should always pay. For awhile, we would tussle from time to time over who was paying. At this point, we just go with the person who suggests also pays.

At Applebee's, I had pineapple glazed shrimp served on white rice with a spinach salad on the side. It was delicious and only 310 calories! Applebee's has quite a few low calorie entrees.

Chase just cannot give enough money away!

I have had a Chase Freedom card for years, and often receive an offer of a $100 bonus if I would but open a checking account. I have never accepted, because part of the offer is I must sign up for direct deposit. Problem: I have nothing to direct deposit. My employer will not cooperate and neither will my ex-husband (child support). So I merely sigh and toss the offer aside.

Recently I opened my Chase Sapphire account.

Today, I got an e-mail offering me $150 if I would pretty please open a Chase checking account and there was no requirement about direct deposit! I read through carefully, I must keep the account open for 6 months or they will take the bonus back. How much will the checking account cost me? $10 per month. So still a net gain of $90. I read further and I learn that if my balance does not fall below $1500, they will waive the $10 fee. For $1500 to earn $10 per month equates to an 8% return. That is better than what I am getting at Ally, so I could move some money over and avoid the $10 monthly fee too! Right back to a profit of $150.

There is an awesome blog post today over at Five Cent Nickel. It eloquently sums up why investing costs matter.

I decided to make a minor adjustment in my asset allocation plan. While using Morningstar portfolio tools, I was noticing that my target retirement funds are holding more foreign stock and less small cap stocks. Therefore, I decided I would compensate a bit for this by adjusting the holdings in my traditional IRA. My traditional IRA is the only place I don't use target retirement funds.

This is my new asset allocation:

35% Total Stock Market
10% Small Cap Value

25% International

20% Total Bond Market
10% Tips

I like the idea of more small value anyway. It holds a lot of reits, so it is a way to get more reits into my mix without buying them directly. Small value is a good diversifier to a total market fund, behaves similarly to reits, but a small value fund holds reits as well as other sectors, so is less concentrated. I like that.

My son started high school today. It was bittersweet. He has a 0 period class, which means he starts at 7am! We have to be in the car leaving by 6:30 at the latest. This morning I dropped him off, went to get gas and have my car washed, and still arrived at work at 7:20! They aren't going to know what to think, lol.

I had to buy son's student ID card ($25) and gym clothes ($20) last week. Also a monthly pass for the city bus ($31). Over the weekend, I stocked up on filler paper, pens and pencils at the dollar store. This morning, I gave him a check for his lunch account ($40). After school today, we went to pick up some required items. He needed a flash drive, some dry erase markers, a protractor, and some index tabs ($18).

I haven't really bought him any school clothes, he is still wearing his summer clothes for now. I did get him a wallet ($10), he didn't have one.

EDIT: I also had to pay $25 to the photographer so that son's picture will be in the yearbook. All in all, a spendy few days!

I have been busy lately, trying to study at least some each day. Some days I get in a lot more than other days.

Tomorrow I am taking a vacation day! It is my first one all year, so I am a bit excited! I will be taking my son and a friend of his to a local water park, where I will spend the day floating in the lazy river.

Instead of buying tickets at the door, I Googled coupon codes and was able to buy them online at $20.99 each instead of $29.99. We will pack a nice picnic lunch and skip the expensive, greasy park food.

Yay!

...and guess what I saw? My mortgage interest last month was $795.84, a full $.07 less than I calculated.

Why do I care? Because it means that the tiny extra principal payments I made didn't just sit there in suspense as I had thought they would. Nope, they reduced the interest which accrued in July! I can't believe it.

It's not a rounding error. If my calculation was $.01 off, that could just be rounding. But not $.07.

From now on, all of my mortgage chips will be applied the moment I have the cash, no more waiting until the next regular payment is made.

I will have to edit the spreadsheet "snip" in my last post.

I had 3 small chips this month totalling $16.53. Not a huge impact, but I have reduced payment #358 down to $142.19.

This is how I did in July:



As you can see, my grocery bills were HUGE. Part of the overspending is from 2 additional people in the house, part is from the additional cost of NutriSystem foods. I will not be purchasing more NS food, and my expectation is that the 2 extra people will be gone before August is. Let's all keep our fingers crossed!

Everything Else this month included my vehicle registration ($142) and my required smog inspection ($46).

Other than those, nothing else was too awful.

Here we are in August. My utility bills are huge. My grocery bills are huge. My car insurance is due. My son goes back to school next week.

No matter how you slice it, August is going to be very rough on my checking account.

On the plus side, my ex-h has finally coughed up $100 towards his half of summer camp.

Yesterday we found a second hand bike for $75 for my son to use for transportation. His last bike was stolen from our front yard. I didn't want to buy another new one. The bike we found has new tires and tubes and is in good condition.

I was able to get an inter-district transfer for my son to our city's best high school. This means no school bus service and it is too far for him to walk or ride his bike. The father of one of my son's friends who lives less than 1 mile from the high school invited me to leave my son's bike at their place, drop my son there in the morning, and let the boys bike to school together. After school, I can pick son up there. On rainy days, the boys can catch the city bus and ride that. This sounded like a great idea to everyone, so that is what we are going to do.

Jumping the gun a tiny bit, but here is my net worth as of 7-31-11.



My car value continues to inexplicably creep up. Apparently, that made my home value jealous so it decided to creep up a tiny bit too.

My Roth at ING has now been folded into my Roth at Vanguard. Thanks to ImaSaver for alerting me to that $50 bonus.

My Betterment account is a taxable investment account. I have decided to go with a 40/60 stock/bond ratio. I am going to throw in just a little each month. I am counting these contributions as part of my regular savings contributions.

My credit card debt is now nicely consolidated at 0% until January 2013, so my plan is to pay in full no later than December 2012.

Nothing terribly earth-shattering here, I simply continue to plod along.

So in the past week, I have transferred 3 small chips to my mortgage. I had never done this before, I have always saved my chips to send with my next regular payment. I had thought the chips would be held in suspense and then applied on the 1st of the month. But look at this:

Date Description Amount Principal Balance
07/25/11 PRINCIPAL PMT ( Details) $0.81 $181,912.06
07/25/11 PRINCIPAL PMT ( Details) $6.72 $181,905.34
07/22/11 PRINCIPAL PMT ( Details) $9.00 $181,912.87
07/05/11 PAYMENT ( Details) $1,273.49 $181,921.87

Wells Fargo has been applying the chips directly to my balance. I expect the chips will not reduce the interest accrued in July. By rights, they shouldn't. I calculate I should be charged $795.91 of interest when I make my August payment. We will see if that is what happens.

In other riveting news, I have received my first Citi MC bill. It came a few days ago and is due early in August. I am not fond of the timing. I think I will go ahead and send them their minimum payment now (although I have already made my July credit card debt payments) and then in mid August, I will use bill pay to send them what I want to send them. The timing will be off, but if I send them their minimum now, I will be ahead of the game and it should turn out OK. I will have to keep an eye on it though, so that I don't have a billing period with 2 payments and then a billing period with none.

I applied and was approved for an Amex Blue yesterday. I have too many rewards cards with too many small point balances. I am going to work on getting my rewards up to cash out level, then close some of the cards. I won't close Chase Freedom (since 2004) or B of A (since 2003), but Discover and Sapphire can go. Then I will begin using Amex Blue. It pays 3% cash back on groceries and drug stores, 2% cash back on gasoline and department stores, 1% cash back on everything else. Not bad. I will have to get in the habit of charging my groceries.

Both balance transfer checks have now posted to my Citi MC account ($800 and $1300), as well as a $24 balance transfer fee for the $800 check. And that is all. Where is the $39 balance transfer fee for the $1300 check? Well, that is a really good question. I don't know quite what to make of this.

Update: My balance transfer fee has finally shown up, on 8/16/11!

My mortgage is owned by Wells Fargo, which is where I also do my banking. Therefore, I make my mortgage payment by logging on to my account and doing a transfer from checking to mortgage. Just for kicks, I went ahead today and transferred $9, specifying it is an additional principal payment. I just wanted to see how they will handle it. Will it just float around in suspense until I make my regular payment? I suspect that it will, but I would like to KNOW.

Last week, I received a gift card as a thank you gift from a client. It is a gift card to Olive Garden, which I love, but which will not help me at all with my weight loss. I have been contemplating selling it on plastic jungle and using the proceeds to chip at my mortgage. Is that tacky?

I have been reluctant to post this, as I suspect people will say "Yes, tacky, don't do it" and then if I do it anyway, how incredibly tacky will I be?

UPDATE: BF and I had dinner at Olive Garden Sunday evening. We split a shrimp appetizer which has 500 calories, and I ordered the apricot chicken served with steamed veggies which has 400 calories. Then we had salad and breadsticks, of course. (I would love to report that I skipped the breadsticks, but I ate two!) I did stick with water. I love Olive Garden's chicken scampi, yummmmm. But it has approximately 3 million calories so was out of the running. The apricot chicken was good. It was a nice meal out.

I just got paid $9 for a secret shop I did a few months ago, I plan to mortgage chip that. (No more credit card chipping, I will just stick with my Dec 2012 payoff schedule.)

This is a blatant plug for Morningstar's Investing Classroom. Some remarks I read today got me to wondering....people know about this fabulous, free resource, right?

Morningstar is an independent company which rates stocks, bonds, mutual funds, investing companies, etc. Morningstar's star-rating is often quoted in other financial publications and many products with high star ratings will include that honor in their advertising. Morningstar has a number of highly regarded financial writers on staff, with a wealth of archived articles available.

Anyone can have a basic Morningstar membership, though registration is required. There is also a premium membership available requiring a fee. Your basic membership gives you access to a wealth of information, including the highly regarded Investing Classroom. Each "class" is a short article followed by a couple of multiple choice questions. There are very basic topics covered, as well as some more "meaty" topics. I personally found it very, very helpful and beneficial when I was first learning about investing.

Beginning in August, this will be my new zero based budget:



My credit card debt is now all at 0.0% until January 2013. If I pay $128 per month, it will be paid in full December 2012. This is fine with me and I don't feel I need to pay it off any faster.

I have been gaining weight lately, so.... I joined another gym. No initiation fee, no contract, $25 per month. Also, I joined Nutrisystem. It costs $300 per month, so I have increased my food budget.

To help compensate for these new costs, I have cut my cash allowance by $40. Sometimes I save up cash from my allowance and treat myself to a mani or pedi. I have decided to stop those for now, and therefore can afford a cut.

I have been concerned that my traditional IRA isn't growing enough, so I will begin contributing $50 per month. That will help a little. Not a whole lot, but a little.

After all the dust from the above settles, I had a bit of cash to bump up my monthly savings.

So here it is, my re-re-re-re-rearrranged budget.

My Bank of America credit card is now charging me 7.24%. It seems that all of my extra payments were applied to the debt that is at 1.99% until September, not the part that was at 1.99% until June. I thought that was no longer allowed, but it is allowed because it was all at 1.99% at the time the extra payments were made. So the remaining balance is now being charged 7.24%. What is a girl to do? Well, I did a balance transfer of the last $800 to Citi today. There is a 3% fee and I am at 0.0% until January 2013.

I called Discover and learned that I am at 0.0% until July 25th, then the rate will be going to 14.99%. I did a balance transfer of the last $1300 to Citi today under the same terms.

That's $2163 and 18 months to pay it off before more interest is charged. So that is just what I am going to do.

Over the weekend, I received my new Chase Sapphire card. My offer was 50,000 bonus pts if I spend at least 3k in the first 3 months. My boyfriend bought his trailer today, it came to $2600ish. That means I only have to spend $400 in the next 3 months. With gas so high, that will be no problem.

Edit: Just for the record, I am not financing the trailer for BF. He will be paying in full when the bill arrives. This is merely a devious plot to rack up reward points.

I just emailed Chase using the suggested script from My Money Blog, asking that they extend the 100,000 bonus pts offer to me. They don't have to, so we will see if they are willing or not.

At any rate, I will have at least $250 cash for my trouble ($500 split with BF).

Thanks again, Monkey Mama!!

Update: Got a response already. The answer is no, I will not be getting the extra 50,000 pts. Further, the rep said they will be reversing the extra bonus pts already awarded to other customers! Here is the actual response:

Dear xxxxx,

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your e-mail regarding the sign up bonus offer inquiry on your Chase Sapphire account ending in xxxx.

I would first like to take this opportunity to personally thank you for choosing Chase to handle your account. As per the offer on your account, you will receive 50,000 Chase Sapphire bonus points after spending $3,000.00 in purchases within 93 days of account open date. These points will post to your account within one to two billing cycles.

The 100,000 bonus point?s offer was made through a small direct mail test and is non-transferable. The Offer Code and Invitation Number included in the mailing can only be applied to the recipient?s account. If you are not listed as the addressee of the mailing, we will be unable to apply the offer to your account. I understand you may be disappointed and I am sincerely sorry for any confusion.
Please know that we will consider reviewing the terms of other offers you receive in the future. We are aware of unintended card member manage to earn extra points and we are going to reverse those points in the near future.

Your satisfaction is important to us and I sincerely value your business. If you have any further questions, please reply using the Secure Message Center.

Thank you,

xxxxx

Well, credit card debt is up due to my class. Home value hits yet another new low.

More of my endless budget tweaking.

The results are in. Here is how I did:



With 2 extra people in the house, my grocery spending was way over budget.

Cash allowance was over due to a planned outing this coming weekend.

This morning over breakfast, I was telling my boyfriend about the Chase Sapphire deal, about the possible DOUBLE deal, and lamenting that I didn't know about the offer before I paid for my review class. BF says, well, I am buying that utility trailer soon. Eureka, I thought, I have known BF has been shopping for a utility trailer to use in his small business. He went to the website of the place he was planning on buying from and they take Visa! So I applied for Chase Sapphire this morning. If I am approved, I will split the points with BF as I couldn't have spent 3k in 3 months without his help.

So now I just have to wait and see if I am approved or not.

Thanks to Monkey Mama for alerting us to this deal!

I paid all the rest of my bills for June. I will need some more grocery money, but that is it. I had $2,244.36 left in my checking account. I like to keep $1,500 sitting there, and I still have $400 earmarked for my planter, but that still leaves me with some extra. So, I transferred $100 off to my CurveBall savings account. This was over and above what I had budgeted!

I had budgeted $373 for credit card debt. I paid $65 to Discover (my new debt for my CPA review class) which left $308 for B of A Visa. I added the $20 rewards check I received last week and paid them $328. My balance is down to $897.11. Yay!

The cost of my class was $3,065. I paid $65 last week. Since then, I have received $1,532.50 from work to pay for half the class. I transferred $32.50 to CurveBall and sent Discover $1,500. This leaves a balance of $1,500 on Discover.

Right now, the rate on Discover is 0.0% but that will not last forever. I think I may focus on Discover to get it paid down as much as possible before the rate goes up. I'm really not sure what the regular rate is, but I am reasonably certain I don't want to pay it.

My ex-husband says he will have to pay his share of summer camp over the next few months. I said OK, but in truth I find this very annoying. Our son went to this camp last year and it was a great experience for him. We agreed last July we would send him again this July. Last November we talked about it again, still both agreeing that we would send son to camp this July. Then when May rolls around and it is time to register and pay, he has no money set aside for camp and I get to pay the whole thing and wait to be reimbursed. Mind you, my ex-husband makes significantly more money than I do. The entire cost is $465, making his half $232.50. He had 10 months from July to May to set it aside, that is only $23.25 per month. If I can plan ahead and have the money ready to go on my salary, I don't see why he can't do it on his. How I look forward to the day I no longer have to deal with ex-husband at all.

I have racked up another $20 in rewards from Chase, so I ordered a check today. Another nice little chip out of my debt.

My son-in-law is finishing up his service in the US Army. He and my daughter plan to move right back here. My daughter asked today if I would cosign for them to rent an apartment. Don't worry, I said no. They will be staying here for a short time while they look for an apartment. I will be glad to have them nearby, but don't want them living with me. They are married adults and need to make their own way, for their own good.

I have been doing a lot of window shopping in garden centers and taking long walks around the neighborhood, scrutinizing my neighbors' yards. I have decided I am going to buy 3 simple trellises and stake star jasmine to them. This will be done along the side of my house. I am going to purchase some agapanthus, some ornamental grasses, and some osteospermum.

While digging around in my rocks, I have discovered that I have a lot of sprinkler pipe buried shallowly under my front window. For this reason, I am not going to remove rocks and plant things in the ground right under the window. Instead, I am going to put some sort of rectangular wooden planter on top of the rocks and plant geraniums inside.

It is going to be several hundred dollars, but I will stick to my new lower budget of $400. I have to, I already sent the other $300 off towards credit card debt.

Speaking of, the interest posted yesterday. It was $1.50, the minimum finance charge. I thought that my rate was going up, but it must have gone down instead. I am not going to argue.

Have you heard about Betterment? It is a newish company, they offer taxable investment accounts with very low minimums. They have two investment funds, both made of ETFs, one is treasury bonds and the other is stocks. You choose your allocation between the funds in increments of 10%, anywhere from 100% stocks / 0% bonds to 0% stocks / 100% bonds. The minimum to open an account is $10. There are no fees other than the underlying fund expense ratio of .9%.

InBox Dollars has an offer for Betterment. InBox Dollars will pay you $1 to open an account, Betterment will pay you a bonus of $20 to open an account. Yesterday, I opened an account with $10.

I don't have any specific plans for the account at this moment, I just wanted my free $21. I think I will just keep the account open awhile and think about it.

Yesterday I decided to cap my EF at exactly 3 months take home pay (for now) and start building up a CurveBall fund, for items such as vehicle repairs, home repairs, etc. I want to keep the EF for dire emergencies ONLY.

Several months ago, I opened a savings account and called it "Personal Expenses" and had started depositing any leftover money from my Cash Allowance, to be dipped into for those sort of expenses as needed. Great in theory, except, I didn't use it when I did need more cash. So I renamed the account "CurveBall" and will add to it instead of to EF (Main savings).

So here are my various savings accounts:

1. EF - kept at Ally Bank, balance $9,075.00

2. Vacation Fund - kept at Ally Bank, balance $3,174.55.

3. CurveBall Fund - kept at Ally Bank, balance $102.21

4. Piddly Fund - kept at Wells Fargo, balance $377.96. This is the account into which I deposit the change in my wallet about every 2 weeks. I have been doing this for years. Usually, I use the money for something fun for my family. However, right now I am thinking I need to just hang onto it.

5. Membership Account - my credit union, balance $5.06. This account is required to be open in order to be a member at my credit union.

6. Checking Account - kept at Wells Fargo, balance currently $2,266.41. Yesterday I paid every bill I have on hand, so there are only a few left to be paid for June. So far in June, I have not received any paychecks. I like to live on last month's salary and have a cushion. My planter money is also here ($400, I sent $300 off to B of A Visa yesterday). In August, my car insurance policy will run out and I will pay another 6 month premium out of the extra in my checking account. Another reason why I like to let it build up.

7. Betterment Account - $10.00

I signed up for my review course not knowing if I would be reimbursed or not. I was sort of hoping I would be, but I need the course either way, so I signed up. I used my Discover card (just a few days before Monkey Mama posted about that GREAT Chase Sapphire card deal, bummer!) for the purchase and have just been waiting to hear. The course is a bit over 3k. Today I learned that my employer will reimburse me for half now, and then if/when I pass they will reimburse me the other half. If I choose to leave them within 3 years after passing, I will have to repay the second half.

It is very generous, they don't have to pay a single cent, I know I am very lucky. They have really treated me very well since day one. (I've been there close to 6 years now.)

So in the meantime, I have more credit card debt to try to pay off.

I made my mortgage payment yesterday, the minimum amount due only. I'm not going to prepay my mortgage at all at this time. I enjoy whittling it down, but the credit card debt is more pressing. I want it GONE.

So with a little nip here and a little tuck there, I plan to send $373 towards my credit card debt this month. Also, since my planter plans have changed, I am going to send $300 of the $700 I have set aside. The remaining $400 is probably still more than I really need, but I don't want to cut it too close. Hopefully by next month the planter will be DONE and I can send off the rest of the planter money.

This is how May went. In general, I am pleased with my spending.

"Everything Else" this month was son's graduation outfit, field trip, and summer camp. Ex-husband is supposed to reimburse me for half of summer camp. To date, I have not had any trouble collecting from him. However, I haven't seen the camp money yet.

Here is my monthly update. My car value has gone up again! I suppose it must be supply and demand at work. Gas prices have gone up, so fuel efficient cars are in demand. Not that it matters much as I intend to keep my car for many years to come.

Also, my home value inched up! What a good little house. I sure would like to see some more of that.

My credit card debt is lower, as previously reported.

I make my monthly retirement contributions but they have little impact. Its good old market gyrations that impact my current value, for better or worse.
Overall, not whole lot different than last month.

All in all, I have no complaints.