My Money Rules

I read a lot of other personal finance blogs and I don't want to repeat what they say. However, here are some of my financial principles that I live by:

1. Never put anything on your credit card if you cannot pay it off that month.
2. Save as much money as you can.
3. Make all your savings automatic so you are not tempted to spend it.
4. Max out your Roth IRA as early in the year as possible.
5. Max out your 401K, if you can.
6. Do not be ashamed to live with your parents - it can save you a LOT of money.
7. Buy everything you can on sale. Become friendly with the sales staff and find out when your favorite stores have sales.
8. Do not buy something you do not need or will not use because it is on sale.
9. Open a high yield savings account for your emergency fund. Fund it with at least $5,000 or 3 months living expenses, whichever is higher.
10. Be willing to splurge once in a while. It's no fun to always be on a budget, even better, put the splurge in your budget.

There are many more rules, but ten is a nice and even number.

Gym Membership for Life

My fiancé and I had talked about getting new gym memberships. He currently has one to a gym that does not have a location near our new home in SF. I normally do not go to the gym or just use the one at the hotels when I travel. 24 Hour Fitness was the obvious choice for us, but we needed to know more information about the prices. 24 Hour is especially good for me since I travel, allowing me to use the gym while I am out in other parts of the country as well.

His friend had gotten a deal where he paid $750 for the first 3 years and $99/year thereafter. This type of membership obviously benefits someone who knows they will be going for a long time and the club benefits from those who get decide they are going to start working out all the time and then do not stick with it.

Yesterday my fiancé went to the gym with his friend and asked if they had any three-year specials. Here is the deal we received: $600 for the first 3 years and $49/year after that. In the first 3 years, that calculates out to be an average of $200/year and $17/month. In subsequent years, it’s only $4/month. Of course, the benefit for the club is they make their money upfront since we had to pay $600 for each of our memberships yesterday. My fiancé’s friend even thought about switching to the new deal since it would save him money in the long run (after more than 12 years), but he decided not to. We can use all 24 Hour Fitness gyms except for one or two really nice ones, which is fine by us.

That means no excuses from me that the gym is too expensive. It is now a sunk cost for us, so we better use it and enjoy it! It also means that 24 Hour needs to stay in business and we need to work out A LOT to decrease our cost per use.

Comparative monthly gym prices (note this might be out of date since it was 2 years ago when I was looking to join a gym and these gyms are mostly in NYC):


NYSC: $80 discounted all-clubs access


Reebok Sports Club in NYC: $180 - the NICEST gym I have ever been to. What other gym has a 40 foot rock climbing wall?


Equinox Fitness, mostly in NYC : $100

Money in the Mail

This past week has been a very fruitful one. I try to find different ways of making money, then I often forget that I'm supposed to receive something. On Saturday I received a $50 Amazon gift card for writing 50 reviews for InsiderPages in 2 weeks. It was a special SF Bay Area promotion. I'm not sure if they're still running it. It was pretty time consuming. They ran the promotion earlier and I wrote 2 reviews before giving up.

I also received a $103 voucher for the Microsoft class action lawsuit (I think this might be a California only thing). So that means if I provide $103 worth of receipts for any computer/printer related items, they will send me a refund.

Yipee!

I also received some very generous checks from my relatives as wedding gifts, but that's a separate topic.

Getting Married = New Budget

I've been thinking a lot about how my future husband and I are going to spend our money after we get married. He recently finished school and is still looking for a job. He's in a pretty specialized profession and we want to live in a specific area, so there are only a couple of places where he can work.

I anticipate our combined income to be somewhere between $110K and $150K. I know that's a pretty big range. I know I will be getting a raise and promotion in the first week of September, but I've been told that I won't find out the dollar amount until September, so I am adding my raise into the range.

I'll take the average and assume we will be making $130K. If that is the case, this is how I see our annual budget breakdown:

$30K 401Ks
$13K tithe
$22K taxes (25% on $87K)
$8K Roth IRA
$24K rent (rent should actually be a little bit less, but not much)
$18K misc monthly expenses (inc. utilities, food, gas, student loans etc)
$15K down payment

This brings me to the question - is it more important to max out our retirement savings or save for a downpayment? We already have about $75K saved for a downpayment (remember we live in the Bay Area, so we need quite a bit of $ - we only plan on renting for 1 year since we want to live in SF). I anticipate exiting the workforce, or at least working part-time while raising our kids, so I want to max out my retirement savings while I can. I also plan on living well into my 90's since I had 3 grandparents do that - my grandfather is almost 100!

We will have to figure this out once my fiance actually gets a job and we move into our new place and see what our actual monthly expenses are.

More Wedding Updates

It's been a long time since I posted since I've been so busy with wedding planning. Right now it looks like we might come in under budget, but I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch. Our budget is $25,000. We were able to save some money by: getting a wedding cake at a Chinese bakery ($410), not hiring a videographer (one of my friends is going to do it - we might get someone professional to edit it), and buying cheaper wedding rings than we had budgeted. Originally wedding rings was one place we had planned to splurge since it's something we plan to have for the rest of our lives. Our original budget for wedding rings was $3,000 and we ended up getting them for $2,000. Therefore, I think it'll be close, but I'm really trying to push Tony and me into saving money. My fiancé is great since he wants me to have the best, but he encourages me to spend more money! Last weekend, I was picking up a hair clip and then I decided to try on veils. I expected them to be about $150, but they ended up being $75. I was able to stay strong since I knew I had my sister's veil. I liked the veil at the store better, but I wanted to sentimentality of wearing her veil.

We are also having a rehearsal dinner and a pre-wedding BBQ. I am not counting the expenses for those items as part of our wedding budget, but maybe I should. If I counted those expenses, we'd definitely be over $25K.

Since I will be working from home next week, I should get a chance to post more. But expect a 3 week hiatus from the last week of August to mid September as I finish up wedding planning, participate in the wedding, and go on our honeymoon. We're going to Fiji (that is also not part of our $25K budget). If we include the wedding, rehearsal dinner, BBQ, and honeymoon we will probably spend around $32K.

I found $50 (sort of)

Several months ago, my healthcare provider Cinga offered us $50 for doing an online health profile. I did it and promptly forgot about it. Then about a month ago, I was reviewing my pay statements and I saw that I had $50 of imputed income, which I decided was from the health survey. However, I had not seen any money. Well it turns out that they sent the check to my sister's house (I stay there part time and at my mom's part time). It's basically like a free $50 that I found. I am happy about that!

Watch what they charge you at the register

Twice in the past month, my mother and I have been victims of check-out clerk overcharging. The first incident happened about 3 weeks ago at Long's Drug Stores. My mom was getting some vitamins. Afterwards, she felt like something was wrong. We verified the number of items she purchased was the same number that they charged us on the receipt. We decided to go home. Once at home, my mom realized that they charged her twice for one item ($12.99) and didn't charge her for another item ($7.99). I don't think it was purposeful, just human error.

The second incident happened yesterday. We were at Albertson's, a grocery store in our area. We had purchased A LOT of items since everything was 70% off. As part of their strategy, they are closing some of their underperforming Northern California stores. My mom also had a coupon for $6 off $60 and since everything was at least 70% off, we wanted to make sure we spent at least $60. We ended up getting a lot of marinades, sauces, and soups - mostly non perishable items. The most expensive thing we got, was some frozen hot wings. We purchased two, but the clerk charged us for 3. Luckily I was reviewing the screen and caught that. It was the most expensive thing we purchased. Originally priced at 7.99, purchased at $2.40.

Overall once everything was scanned, the screen read $326. Once the discounts and our $6 off coupon was factored in, we spent $93.