I didn’t add anything extra this month because I spent ALOT on 2022 travel this month. BC golf trip had to be paid, Iceland airfare, Vancouver bonus trip airfare. So now I feel broke but it was all planned (ish) spending. And the show tickets! And paying some stuff off from February vacation trip! It is the year of travel. No credit card interest will be paid but will have to tighten up for April on stuff. Also looking forward to tax refund coming in to max out the TFSA for the year (I do bi-weekly automatic savings but this will help the little bit that I am short).
Oh well, I never spent this much money as in MArch.
All well in budget but it feels odd, Kitchen remodel, new dinning table, new light over the dining table, additional seating … Plus one week on holiday prepaid for December …
On the positive site there is now a Vanguard Europe group, that means I can now invest with them on a 0.65% cost overall. For Germany this is sensationell!
I have invested 5000 Euro in it which are not considered in this challenge.
I now add 500 Euro monthly, (starting April) into this account which will be considerd here.
Means for the end of March:
5.353,38 Euro saved = 14.866,62 Euro to go
Not to bad if I consider what’s going to be paid at the moment.
My numbers are a little messed up while we wait on a huge backlog of work expenses to be approved and reimbursed (like $4k I’m pretty sure). That should all come in the next 2 weeks. (The lady who usually approves was in a bad wreck and is out for an unknown amount of time. The manager who was supposed to take over is new and, while nice, needs lots of prodding to do manager things).
Anyway, I might just wait until April to update once everything trickles in.
March Update: We may or may not be buying a van when the one we ordered is delivered to the dealership (in approx 6 ish months). We definitely will not be able to pay cash for it, but we want to pay as much down as possible, so we have temporarily diverted most of our monthly savings into the new car category. From now until October it looks like we will only be saving the automated stuff. When the car arrives we will make the final decision about buying or not, and if not then we will reallocate those funds into the long term savings categories it was originally planned for.
So, likely not reducing the amount into that Roth 457; husband has landed a tenure-track job starting in the fall, so our income will nearly double, plus the state has decided to throw the surplus they have at raises, so I’m getting my first-ever COL increase. Ever, really. So things will be fine.
We maxed out both IRAs for 2021 when we filed taxes this month. I still don’t have his paystubs, so this will be short a few hundred dollars.
Jan-March contributions from my pay to the things listed above: $2,808.75 a month for a total so far of $8,426.25.
Two IRAs fully funded with the old people catchup amount: $7,000 each for a total of $14,000.
Total not counting his $600-$800ish into his Roth 457: $22,426.25
End of April it is 7.392,38 Euro saved, 12.827,62 Euro to go
I have still 2 payments for the kitchen remodeling to come, but these are budgeted for.
No a fun fact at the moment: Dollar and Euro are closer in exchange rate as ever before. 1 Dollar = 1,05 Euro as of today
Direct result of inflation and the war in Ukraine.
Oh! Me! I finally did a savings. $5,000 of wedding money into i-bonds. Woo! I am also in the process of surrendering some dumb life insurance and that will free up more for monthly savings.
4 months in, and halfway to the goal. Savings aren’t coming as fast now that we are only contributing the automatic things to long term savings, but it’s good to know that we can hit the goal with just the automatic stuff. All other monthly savings are going into savings-to-spend sinking funds, mostly for a potential new car purchase this fall.
My profit sharing was deposited this month, $10, 532. It doesn’t exist to me because I never see it, it just heads straight into my rrsp. I added extra money into non registered savings, so of course the markets dropped! My tax return went to purchasing summer rims for my car, which I was bummed about because I wanted to throw it all into savings. Oh well, have to spend some of it for necessary things. Savings buckets for property taxes, bathroom reno and vacation continue to have funds added in too.
April Savings: $5,000
May Savings: $7,000
2022 Total: $12,000
Not too bad, with half the year still to go. Insurance policies closed, and my monthly contribution was almost $400. Prior to wedding planning I was sending about $300/mo to savings outside of that so if I can do $700/mo for the remainder of the year, that nets me almost $5,000 more. OK so not quite $20,220–I will need to get creative, unless I’m going to count my bonus again.
Added complexity since I joined this challenge: pregnant, due end of October/early November.
I’m doing ok with this! About halfway there. July and December are three paycheck months for me in 2022, so a LOT of those third paychecks will go into savings and Roth. There will also be more going into my work retirement account and deferred comp those months.
We’ve “saved” like $7600 so far. Although there’s like $3500 in outstanding reimbursable expenses we should get this Friday, so that’ll skew next months numbers. Also we won’t talk net worth here I’m measuring direct action, sans market forces here.
May was a spendy month - flowers, home repair stuff, grass seed, all those wonderful spring things. Savings buckets for property tax and home renos got funds, vacation not so much. I have seen that with grocery tracking we have continued to sit under $500 for 2 people for the last 4 months, which I’m quite pleased with.
I’m still happy with my progress, I am very privileged and pretty much on auto-pilot. I will need to make some changes as my rrsp is maxed out as of today with the huge profit sharing deposit. I will likely bump up my non-registered biweekly deposit and start adding to the cash bucket since my dream timeline is 4.5 years away for retirement for the remainder of the year before we reset for 2023.
@anomalily because I have hit the challenge target! But I’m still going to see if I can top last year’s savings amount.
I’m measuring direct action, sans market forces here.