One of the core principles of getting out of debt is getting a handle on your money. This includes budgeting and sinking funds. A classic way to do these tasks is by using envelope budgeting for spending and saving. I maintain an ING account for my emergency fund and sinking funds. I don’t like to keep too many individual accounts going. I don’t want to transfer money from one to another and add that level of maintenance to the plan. After all, it’s so simply laid out why over complicate the thing? So I worked out a series of tags within MoneyDance to keep track of what portion of the account is what.

Tonight I came across the It’s Your Money blog. There is a spreadsheet there for envelope budgeting. I’ve seen similar items before but nothing that was either free or worked the way that I wanted it to. This sheet is different and I think it will hit the spot. It does not tie in directly to my finance software which is a slight negative. Yet the way it works that will not hinder me.

The sheet allows for up to 25 ‘envelopes’ per account. You enter the names of the categories and fill in the total for that category. Then as you spend down the money you remove the funds from the appropriate category. The balance total remains consistent with what is in that particular account but you can see exactly what remains in each category within the master account.

The sheet can be duplicated within the same file to maintain different master accounts. So the spending money account can be on one tab and sinking fund account in another. So it’s just one more file to maintain and work in. I can’t wait to see how this works over the long haul.

Over at The Consumerist where I first found the story, many of the comments focus on the fact that by saving his coins he lost out on interest over the years. So what if he didn’t ‘maximize the potential of his funds’. It seems to me that the important bit in the article is the fact that he saved for this purchase with loose change. Not with any big plan of action. Not worrying about the couple of thousand dollars he would have made in interest over the years.

Just a little savings every day. A simple habit that pays off in the long run.

Think about this the next time you see a penny on the ground.

So this is the typical ‘what to do with the year’ letter. I’ve been giving this some thought and here’s what I’m thinking, in no particular order with the exception of the first item.

I want to continue to grow the fantastic relationship that I have with Peg. She and I are so great together that no matter what else happens, I want the year to end with us together and as strong or stronger (if possible) than we are now.

The next would be to continue the bonds with family and friends.

If nothing serious happens between now and the end of the year, I should be debt free. I’ve been following the Dave Ramsey plan for a little while now and am really seeing some great steady progress moving forward. Doing some light number crunching shows that at an aggressive pace I should have everything paid off by the end of December 2008. While that date is realistic and the target, my goal date is March 2009. After all, who has a perfect year?

On the Ubuntu advocacy front I have a few ideas. I want to have semi-regular dining out experiences. I think that our Gutsy release party went really well. I want to see us do four more presentations before the end of the year and a community service project of some sort. I have some thoughts on tutorials to do between regular team meetings. Install fests will continue this year with the first one being discussed now. We will hopefully be approved by the 1st anniversary in March. Hopefully we’ll be celebrating that milestone with a table at the Hamfest. I also hope to become an official member by summer. This fall holds some potential, but all of that is out of my hands so I’ll clam up on that for now.

I’m also excited to see what happens with Inara, our dog, over the next year. Already we’re seeing hints of progress after just two weeks. I hope that by the end of January we’ll have her walking on a leash. Maybe by late winter or early spring we’ll be taking in fosters again. This does depend on how well Inara progresses obviously.

Professionally  I haven’t set any concrete goals. I’ve gotten the rhythm of the job down now. Going forward is getting deeper and digging into details of the work that I need to focus on. Ways to improve the daily progress and results of what I do.

I want to read at least two books a month.  One to improve myself and one to enjoy.

Outside of that, I just want to have a nice enjoyable year.

Love to all my family and friends!

As part of that project, I have built up sinking funds for various things that happen routinely. One of these is car repairs. Over the last week and a half I noticed that my brakes were having problems. Yesterday I put the car into the shop to see what the damage was going to be. $775 for a brake overhaul and other routine things. That’s quite a bit of money. The good news is that my car repair sinking fund carried the brunt of the hit. The emergency fund carried the last little bit and that will be replenished shortly. The best part was that when I was contemplating the repair costs, and even when I heard the number, I didn’t worry about it. I knew I had it covered and under control.

So out of curiosity, I went to BankRate and used their credit card payment calculator. Had I put that $775 bill on a 15% credit card making just minimum payments of interest plus 1%, it would have cost me $626.74 in interest alone and I’d be paying on the card for 122 months. That’s just nuts to me in my current mindset, but it’s how a lot of people live.

Today I was working within MoneyDance to move the funds around and such. I decided to hunt down a problem that I’ve had since the changeover a few months ago from Quicken. After moving to MD from Quicken, my checking account stopped reconciling. I was $13.73 off each month. As there was that much more in the actual account than my records indicated I wasn’t worried as long as it balaced that way each time since. I dug out the paper records from the bank starting at the beginning of the year. Within minutes I found the issue. Some entries from the beginning of the year on paper were actually recorded at the end of ‘06. So when I transfered from 1/1/07 a few items that cleared in 07, but were recorded in 06 didn’t make it and threw off the account.

So now I’m all balanced and good to go.

So my trip continued and when I was almost home I started hearing the thumping again. When I parked I didn’t see anything low. Maybe it’s a rock or something that I just can’t see in the dark. This morning I walk out and start the car. It’s a cold morning and my windows have frost. I get out to scrape them and walk to the passenger side. My front right has lost the air in the bottom half the tire. Knowing that these round wheels don’t work well when out of shape I decided that I should fix it. And considering that new tires were in the budget for next month I moved that up a bit.

So I called my customer and rescheduled that visit. Then I called the office and let them know what was up. I then went and talked to Peg and found that the local NTB is a decent place to get tires from. Having dealt with other branches in the past I was happy with that choice. So I put the donut on the car and drove over. Dropped off the car and found out that tires are more expensive than what I was thinking they were going to be at almost $125 each, after all the fees and stuff. I did have to tap the emergency fund a bit to cover the shortfall with the final piece of the fundage coming next months budget. So this is just another thing that I don’t have to go into debt over. Finding out about Dave Ramsey and his Baby Steps really was a good thing.
I was told it would be about two and a half hours before the car would be ready so I called for a ride home to wait. Four and a half hours later I decided to call them to find out what the holdup was and found that the car had been ready for a while. ‘Sorry we didn’t call you earlier’ was the general gist of their person. So I got a ride back over there.

When I went to pay I was asked ‘Do you want the basic, 1, 3, or 5 year alignment?’. I just want to pay and get my car. ‘Well we need to know what to bill you for.’ Huh? I thought it was ready. ‘Well we had to do an alignment.’ No you didn’t, as I told the guy that I dropped the car off with that I wanted a call for anything extra that was done. ‘Well we did it anyway, do you want to pay for it?’ Not really as I was not notified of the work. ‘Well I don’t like to do business like that {referring to work done without notifying the customer and expecting payment} it was a mistake so I won’t charge you for that.’ He took it off the bill, and I paid the original total.

Truth be told, had they called me to let me know that the car was ready I would have negotiated to pay for part of the alignment. The way he reacted seemed like an honest mistake was made in the deal somewhere. And because of his dealing with it as he did, quickly and without arguments, is why his store manager/owner (not sure if it’s a franchise thing) and the NTB corporate office will get a nice letter from me praising his work and professionalism.