Evolving Personal Finance » Entries tagged with "car repairs"
I Love My Car Even If No One Else Does
Kyle and I have transitioned from being a one-car family to being a two-car family once again. I bought my car in 2008 just after I started grad school, and we stopped driving it in 2012 but didn’t sell it, anticipating a time when we would need two cars again. That time came much later than we expected, but it has come. My car has been the butt of many thinly veiled jokes over the years … Read entire article »
Filed under: cars
When Plans Change
I have a personal update for you today! It’s about how our protracted time to graduation has affected our plans, careers, and finances. I though we had some timelines and plans down, and then they were shot to heck, and now the picture is re-coming into focus. Grad School I’ve mentioned in my weekly wrap-ups here that for the past several weeks Kyle has been working around the clock on writing his dissertation. We were hoping that … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, cars, goals, marriage, personal, savings, spending, transitions
November 2012 Month in Review: Money
We did a terrible job staying under budget this month – check the bottom to see if it was a pass or fail (it was close!). Our lack of control in the grocery store was to blame again. Our targeted savings accounts saved our behinds, too, as our car failed its yearly safety inspection and we had to make some unexpected repairs, but our Cars account was up to the task. Kyle is, I swear, … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
The Benefits of Targeted Savings Accounts – and Their Uncertain Future
Boy, am I grateful for our targeted savings accounts this month! We have spent a crazy amount of money this month, some of it unexpectedly. This month we have used our targeted savings accounts to purchase our Christmas flights ($625.20), six months of car insurance ($405.47), and other miscellaneous items ($149.85). All of that was planned and budgeted for so even though it was a lot of money it wasn’t stressful at all. Actually, we have … Read entire article »
Filed under: targeted savings
Targeted Savings Account Calculation: Cars through Aug2013
This weekend I re-projected the amount of money we need to save monthly into our Cars targeted savings account. I’d like to share my method with you so that you can see as an example how we decide how much to save into each savings account. The Cars account is a good one for this exercise because the payments we make out of it are very well-defined (unlike Travel or Appearance) but they’re shifting a … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, cars, targeted savings
Spend $1600 or Become a One-Car Family?
Irony: My car breaking down the day after writing about our disagreement over carpooling to work! When I published that post on Monday becoming a one-car family seemed a remote possibility, but as of this writing on Tuesday evening we are giving it serious consideration. So much can change in 36 hours! For the last few months, my car has been shaking considerably when its speed exceeds 65 mph. I knew I would eventually need to get … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, cars, choices, emergency fund, targeted savings
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