Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Emergency Fund: Ding!

Turns out I outsmarted myself at tax return time by setting up my refund to be direct deposited straight into our emergency fund at HSBC. My refund was deposited on Friday which brought our total to $9950 and change. I couldn't bear to see us $50 away from our goal, but cash flow in the checking account was too tight for me to fix that. Seriously.

It hit me last night...the reason cash feels so tight is that my company is "borrowing" about $1600 from me (un-reimbursed business expenses...the bulk of that going back to the first week of December) and I had begun a balance shuffling process to consolidate those expenses on one low rate card that I had yet to complete. When the dust settled from the rest of moving money around, the checking account once again looked healthy. My minimum payments (out of pocket...ugh) will be smaller and the interest that my company will have to reimburse will be a smaller amount. Win-win I suppose.

But the net effect is that I was able to transfer in the final $50 so that we have officially met our emergency fund goal, and technically ahead of schedule. w00t!

But honestly we are feeling some savings fatigue so I better take Singlema's advice and celebrate by spending a *little* so we don't feel so pinched. So we're going to splurge a bit while on vacation in San Francisco. Nothing too crazy mind you...just maybe a meal or two to write home about. Oh, and we thought we might pick up the stuff we need to start playing DDR. You know...for the exercise. Ahem.

Now we have to decide where to park that money....

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11 comments:

  1. Yay! You have to archive all your 100% meters to keep a record of the accomplishment.
    As for DDR, if you get really good at it, I'm going to recruit you to be one of my dancing Wallettes!
    Can you sing karaoke and do DDR at the same time? I might have to try that...

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  2. Your employer and my employer should hang out.

    Mine has "lost" a bunch of deposits for my Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account. I have the max allowable, $192.30, deducted from each biweekly pay. They've lost 3 deposits. So I write my childcare checks as usual and can't get remibursed. It's been messed up since the beginning of the year.

    I guess the good thing is even tho that money is not earning interest, I'm not spending it cause I don't have it. Maybe I can dump the entire refund into savings when it comes.

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  3. Congrats on meeting your goal ahead of time! That will free up some cash flow down the road, no doubt.

    Careful, DDR gets addictive. I played it nonstop when I got my first pad and lost a few pounds in the first week.

    Matthew @ Crazy Money

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  4. DING DING DING DING!!!

    Oh Caitlin, I'm so proud of you!!! This calls for a major celebration! I hope you find the extra dough to get yourself something really nice for your vacation. It's not how much you spend but how much you value what you spend it on. *wink* Besides, all work and no play causes wrinkles in old age. HA!

    It's all about balance sis.

    Congrats again!

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  5. Ka-ching! This calls for another party... who's bringing the cupcakes this time.

    Congrats!

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  6. Well done on meeting your goal. I can't wait to see you meet your Networth Goal.

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  7. Wonderful news! Have a great time in San Francisco. I love eating in that town. So many wonderfully frugally great meals to be had! ;-)

    But if you want to splurge with a view, I could name you a few good spots. Have a good time!

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  8. Congratulations! Nice work. You met your goal. I enjoy the style of your blog and am curious how you created the save-o-meters. I share your interest in creating and saving wealth and will add your blog to my site http://howtomakeamilliondollars.blogspot.com/ If you could lend some expertise I would appreciate it.

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  9. Hey, Caitlin, did you get locked out of Blogger again? You're very quiet these days.

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  10. yeah I'm curious too.

    angry mob voice: "wah! where are the updates!"

    I'm under the assumption that she's away on vacation.

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  11. How can I contact the admin of this blog. I want to share some important information.

    Regards,
    Robin

    ReplyDelete

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