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Hi Folks,
I recently joined this forum and have enjoyed reading all the good ideas. I appreciate all courtesy, honesty, and mutual respect demonstrated by all the members.
For many years, my wife and I would constantly be logging in to see our account balance, especially before making large purchases. We just weren’t sure if we’d have enough money. Our spending was never excessive, but we did not have control over our personal finances, and so we were not able to forecast when we needed more cash to clear payments I’d made.
One of the things that nickel and dimed us to death were overdraft fees. After a half dozen times, I finally set up overdraft protection through my bank, utilizing a 15% credit card from the same bank. Well, then I had 2 problems, the credit card was hitting me with a $10 fee each time, plus cash advance finance charges. So that still cost me about $50 per month. I’m happy to report that we haven’t had an overdraft situation longer than I can remember. Our account balance rarely drops below $1000, and we make all our payments on time without any extra income.
Some of the things that I changed were how we utilized our cash. I got rid of all paper checks, so my wife could not go off and pay stuff without me knowing. Everything goes through our credit card, so it is clearly itemized each month. Then I just pay off the balance each month.
This helps, but is not enough. You don’t want to overdue it, otherwise you will incur finance charges if you can’t pay it off each month. There’s always those once in a blue moon expenses that comes around unexpectedly, which clean you out and before you figured out what happened, you can’t even afford a happy meal at McDonalds. I’m talking about those medical deductible charges, or semi-annual car insurance premiums, or yearly car registration. These hit you up for several hundred bucks and you either have the money or you need to figure out very quickly where it’s coming from. If you write a check, and all your other bills are scheduled to be paid off at the same time, chances are you will overdraft, bounce a check, pay a late fee, and piss off a creditor. So, to combat this problem, I did a couple of different things. The insurance is now paid in small increments, so when I get the bill it’s already paid up. The medical deductible goes on my credit card, so then I have it itemized and it’s easy to extract for use in Schedule A on my taxes. And the car registration gets paid by my line of credit. The end result is that my cash flow is not disturbed and I can continue with my regular recurring finances without making waves.
There was a recurring pattern going on in my bank account. I could see that our deposits were very high, but then our expenses were just as high, the difference being only a few dollars. So we were living within our means. However, we experienced what I would call a rollercoaster effect. Let me explain, after pay day, our account would be very high, as high as it would ever be in the month, then slowly would trickle down, until eventually would hit its low close to zero, and then bam, pay day would come around again and infuse new funds. These biweekly ups and downs were causing havoc because I could not plan for new expenses accordingly. My cash flow would mimic a saw tooth, spike high one day and then slowly ramp down, then repeat. I implemented several changes to our personal finances that within a few weeks brought our cash balance up by several hundred, and load balanced my day to day available cash. This is primarily why we now don’t have any overdrafts or late fees; not to mention bounced checks or collection letters from creditors.
There’re a lot of other ideas that we implemented over the years, which have saved us money, and some have made us money. For 2008, my wife and I accumulated over $500 in cash rebates on everyday normal purchases. We got two fat checks in February from American Express and Costco and we used the money to pay down other recurring bills.
This year still has some challenges ahead, as we just added two new members to our family, which forced my wife to go part-time. My employer, obviously faced with a very poor economic climate, cut out all overtime and is forcing furloughs and shutdowns each quarter. I am confident thought that we’ll get through it and our personal finances will weather the storm.
Best of luck,
Ernesto
I recently joined this forum and have enjoyed reading all the good ideas. I appreciate all courtesy, honesty, and mutual respect demonstrated by all the members.
For many years, my wife and I would constantly be logging in to see our account balance, especially before making large purchases. We just weren’t sure if we’d have enough money. Our spending was never excessive, but we did not have control over our personal finances, and so we were not able to forecast when we needed more cash to clear payments I’d made.
One of the things that nickel and dimed us to death were overdraft fees. After a half dozen times, I finally set up overdraft protection through my bank, utilizing a 15% credit card from the same bank. Well, then I had 2 problems, the credit card was hitting me with a $10 fee each time, plus cash advance finance charges. So that still cost me about $50 per month. I’m happy to report that we haven’t had an overdraft situation longer than I can remember. Our account balance rarely drops below $1000, and we make all our payments on time without any extra income.
Some of the things that I changed were how we utilized our cash. I got rid of all paper checks, so my wife could not go off and pay stuff without me knowing. Everything goes through our credit card, so it is clearly itemized each month. Then I just pay off the balance each month.
This helps, but is not enough. You don’t want to overdue it, otherwise you will incur finance charges if you can’t pay it off each month. There’s always those once in a blue moon expenses that comes around unexpectedly, which clean you out and before you figured out what happened, you can’t even afford a happy meal at McDonalds. I’m talking about those medical deductible charges, or semi-annual car insurance premiums, or yearly car registration. These hit you up for several hundred bucks and you either have the money or you need to figure out very quickly where it’s coming from. If you write a check, and all your other bills are scheduled to be paid off at the same time, chances are you will overdraft, bounce a check, pay a late fee, and piss off a creditor. So, to combat this problem, I did a couple of different things. The insurance is now paid in small increments, so when I get the bill it’s already paid up. The medical deductible goes on my credit card, so then I have it itemized and it’s easy to extract for use in Schedule A on my taxes. And the car registration gets paid by my line of credit. The end result is that my cash flow is not disturbed and I can continue with my regular recurring finances without making waves.
There was a recurring pattern going on in my bank account. I could see that our deposits were very high, but then our expenses were just as high, the difference being only a few dollars. So we were living within our means. However, we experienced what I would call a rollercoaster effect. Let me explain, after pay day, our account would be very high, as high as it would ever be in the month, then slowly would trickle down, until eventually would hit its low close to zero, and then bam, pay day would come around again and infuse new funds. These biweekly ups and downs were causing havoc because I could not plan for new expenses accordingly. My cash flow would mimic a saw tooth, spike high one day and then slowly ramp down, then repeat. I implemented several changes to our personal finances that within a few weeks brought our cash balance up by several hundred, and load balanced my day to day available cash. This is primarily why we now don’t have any overdrafts or late fees; not to mention bounced checks or collection letters from creditors.
There’re a lot of other ideas that we implemented over the years, which have saved us money, and some have made us money. For 2008, my wife and I accumulated over $500 in cash rebates on everyday normal purchases. We got two fat checks in February from American Express and Costco and we used the money to pay down other recurring bills.
This year still has some challenges ahead, as we just added two new members to our family, which forced my wife to go part-time. My employer, obviously faced with a very poor economic climate, cut out all overtime and is forcing furloughs and shutdowns each quarter. I am confident thought that we’ll get through it and our personal finances will weather the storm.
Best of luck,
Ernesto