build my savings account

For our savings we currently we have over $2500. With the economy the way it is we need to build this a little more. I’m banking that both of us won’t lose our jobs at the same time so if one of us loses our job we’ll need $5000 for 6 months living expenses in addition to the other persons income. If we both lose our jobs this would take us through about 2-3 months. This would be bare bones, no saving but insurances would all still be covered and we’re comfortable with that. So our savings goal is now $5000. We’ll be trying accomplishing this at the same time as our next goal, with the next goal being more of a priority.

We didn’t do as well as I hoped this month. Some of it is due to Terri having to work out of town and the cost for the food, travel, etc for her and her guys. That $250 will be refunded to her but it will probably be a few weeks and will go directly into savings when we get it. We also had to have a plumber come out this month which was another $130. So we were only able to add $120 this month BUT my tax refund will be coming in about a week and at that point we’ll be opening Terri’s IRA (another goal completed) and putting the rest into savings. By next month we will have completed some of our short term financial goals and I’ll be expanding on the next move we want to make.

This month I was able to put $750 into savings! WOOT. It brought our total up to $2,262.92. Another deposit like this next month and we’ll hit our goal of $3000 and be able to open Terri’s IRA. Not to say I’m not proud of how much we were able to do this month but I should still be putting more into savings. We aren’t budgeting our spending very well. We have a budget it just isn’t really being followed. I am tracking our spending on Mint.com though so at least I can see where the money is going. I’m hoping next month’s deposit will be around $1,000 but we’ll see.

I’m also looking at opening a high-interest online savings account either this week or next month. Right now we barely receive any interest on our savings, I think it’s something like 0.4% compared to 2.40%- BIG difference.

Since it’s the end of the month I thought I’d skip ahead and report on our savings goals. We had a lot of things come at us this month. I had some unexpected dental work I needed done, my car required it’s 90K service, the roof started leaking, Christmas gifts and we found a great deal on an elliptical. With all of that we weren’t able to contribute to our savings as much as I had hoped but thankfully we were able to pay for everything and occurred no debit.

I also dropped our goal from 4K to 3K because when we reach 3K we’re going to pull the 2K for Terri’s IRA and will reorganize when we’ve achieved that.

This month we were only able to contribute about $120. I’m hoping to triple that next month.