Friday, March 23, 2012

Still waiting

The boss is back, and another week has passed and I still don't know if I'm getting the raise. I only want to follow up with the boss once so I don't seem like I'm a greedy pest. So I want to wait until the right time to ask and not ask too soon and he doesn't know the answer.

Another co-worker got another job offer, but she is going to our old boss to see what they can do for her. I don't know what will come out of that, but I guess I'll find out if it turned out well for her if she decides to stay. Maybe I should have went to my old boss instead.

I'm really getting sick of my job. I hate the actual work and I'm really getting sick of the people and all the cliques. I hate feeling left out, and that's how I feel more often. If it wasn't for needing the money, I'd quit.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The boss comes back from vacation tomorrow

I still don't have an update about whether I am getting a raise or not because the boss was on vacation all of last week. I hope to have an answer - the answer I'm happy with - tomorrow. As much as I dread work, I'm actually kind of looking forward to going tomorrow because I want to know. I just hope the boss remembers... having all that time off gave him a lot of time to forget.

Well, that's about it for today. I don't really have much else to report with my finances.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

My financial goals chart

I feel like I need a specific wealth goal rather than just saving up money. I'm currently paying an extra $100 per month on our mortgage which should save us about $20,000 over the course of the mortgage, and starting this month, I'm putting $200 in my Roth IRA. I think I'm only going to invest $2,000 in the Roth IRA this year ($200 for 10 months) because I have too many short term financial goals. I can always change my mind later this year and add more if I start feeling guilty for not doing the full $5,000:)

Anyway, here is a chart I created to show what I'm saving for. I make about $400 a week after taxes, but $50 goes into the IRA. Assuming my husband's income pays the regular monthly expenses, and my income is used for saving for these goals, we should be able to save $350 per week.

It's pretty daunting to see I need to come up with $66,500 more (I started with $78,600) to reach all these goals.  I've love to have all them done in 2 years, but realistically it'll take about 4 years.

(Click on image to see larger version)

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Extra Cash Challenge - February's Results

Here are the results of the income I made outside of my job last month. Sadly, I have had the worst month since I have started tracking this.  Hopefully next month will be better.

Advertising for my blogs: $75.72
Amazon affiliate: $5.71

Total made for February: $81.43
Last month: $97.29
Difference from last month: -$15.86

I thought about selling some stuff on Ebay, but I couldn't really find anything worth selling.  If anything I might make 50 cents after shipping and fees and it just doesn't seem worth it to take the photo of the item, list it, pack it and then drive over to the post office just to make a few pennies.  I feel like I need to be confident that I can make at least $3 profit on each item to make it worth my time and effort.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

How much interest would I save if I paid an extra $100 per month on my mortgage?

Our new mortgage is $116 less than before, so I was thinking I should add $100 in additional principal to every payment since we were already used to paying more. I was playing around with some numbers on interest.com and saw that adding an extra $100 to every payment will have us pay off our mortgage 3 years and 9 months earlier and will save us over $20,000 in interest! So I think I'm going to do that. I'd love to do more, but for now cash is king and I need to continue saving money. It would be stupid to pay down our tax deductible mortgage at 4.5% but then be stuck with a car payment (where the interest is not tax deductible) at 5% or more. My goal is to pay cash when the time comes to replace our vehicles. But if you don't have any big purchases like cars and windows coming up in the next few years and are debt free except your house, then maybe consider adding a little extra to each payment to save lots of money over the course of the mortgage. Here are some different scenarios based on our loan just to give you an idea of what you could save.


Prepayment amount$1,000 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by15 years, 8 months
Prepayment savings$81,077
Prepayment amount$600 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by12 years, 8 months
Prepayment savings$66,560
Prepayment amount$500 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by11 years, 7 months
Prepayment savings$61,124
Prepayment amount$400 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by10 years, 3 months
Prepayment savings$54,473
Prepayment amount$350 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by9 years, 5 months
Prepayment savings$50,553
Prepayment amount$300 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by8 years, 7 months
Prepayment savings$46,136
Prepayment amount$250 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by7 years, 7 months
Prepayment savings$41,117
Prepayment amount$200 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by6 years, 6 months
Prepayment savings$35,358
Prepayment amount$150 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by5 years, 3 months
Prepayment savings$28,677
Prepayment amount$100 per month
Prepayment shortens mortgage by3 years, 9 months
Prepayment savings$20,821

Update on asking my boss for a raise

In my last post I said I would be asking my boss for a raise, so I talked to him yesterday, but I didn't really get an answer.  So it looks like it's a maybe.  Unfortunately my boss just started at his position at the beginning of 2012, and with no prior supervisory experience, he doesn't really know how to handle raise requests from temp workers.  I was told by others who were temp workers to go to him, not my temp agency.  However, he said he'd need to ask the temp agency.  So for now I don't know if it's going to happen.  Hopefully he actually does ask and not push it under the rug and hope I forget about it. He didn't ask me how much I was looking to get, so I never did mention my wage I was hoping to get ($14.75). So even if he does come back and say yes, it'll probably be a lot less than I hoped since they'll probably just pick an amount for me and I doubt they'd just hand out an almost 10% raise.