Real Estate Update

Just did an update on our networth numbers.  Our three investment property mortgages are each, now, under $100,000 in debt.

The current mortgage balance numbers are as follows:
$98,207
$85,483
$74,520.

We also are about to get under $200,000 on our primary home mortgage, right now the balance is $201,583.  Next month's mortgage payment should get the balance below $200,000.  This makes me happy especially in light of my recent house envy.

I seem to respond more positively to reducing our debt than I do to increasing our savings.

Royal Screw Up

So, I have a pretty good system set up for our personal finances.  I have a system for paying bills and for our savings that works off of our spending plant.  But, every once in a while things go surprisingly wrong.

At the end of last month, February, I was getting ready to do some work travel and I made the decision to pay our home mortgage March payment in February.  What was I thinking, well it seemed like I had lots of cash laying around our joint checking account, I knew I was traveling and I figured let me just take care of that big bill now instead of later.

Big mistake!  Several auto transfers and other obligations drafted after I made this payment and I, of course, came up short.  And further, of course, I had to try and fix this mistake while traveling.  Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Two weeks later, I am still undoing the damage that was incurred.

2013 Savings Goal - Another One Down

(1) Max out 401k(s) -        $27,677 (79%)  (goal is $35,000)
(2) Max out IRA(s) -         $11,000 (100%)  (goal is $11,000) completed
(3) Add to e/r fund -          $9,200 (92%)    (goal is $10,000)
(4) Pay down mortgage -   $5,000 (100%)    (goal is $5,000) completed
(5) Trading account fund - $4,902  (98%)    (goal is $5,000)
(6) House projects -          $2,300 (77%)     (goal is $3,000)

Total:  $60,079 (87%)

Today I closed out goal number 4 and I made the last extra principal payment to CitiMortgage.  In 12 months we have reduced our primary home mortgage by $18,500 which includes the $5,000 in extra payments.  Pleased to see our mortgage principal is now below $240,000.

At present, we are about $3,600 behind on our original 2013 savings goals.  To the extent we want to meet our revised 2013 savings goals, then we need to save another $2,950 before the year ends in just over a month.  I have another $1,998 in 401k contributions before the end of the year.   Which means that we would need to save another $1,000 towards our emergency fund, our trading account or our house project account.  Assuming we have five weeks left in the year, we will need to save $184 per week to meet our revised 2013 savings goals.

I think reaching our revised goal should be do-able, but December is always an expensive month.