<$Thursday, June 21, 2007$>
Should I stay or should I go-o?
| Today is a good day. It's payday. All of my bills are paid, there's plenty of money in the grocery budget, our fun money allowances are paid out, and there's still about $50 left to spare. I didn't even think about what to do with that extra $50--I just signed onto my online savings account and hit the transfer button before temptation even had a chance to start whispering in my ear. It's a great feeling to know that everything is covered for the rest of the month, but it's made even better by that last bit. This has been a tight month, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to contribute anything to our savings. So even that small of an increase feels great. We finally have enough saved up to finance our move into town, so for the last month or so we've been looking at rental houses and duplexes in the area, without much luck. We've only seen two houses that held much promise, but both times we were beaten to the punch by the competition. After looking at a few houses in our price range in dismally poor and rough neighborhoods, we had a powwow and figured out that we could raise our budget if we repaired Husband's truck instead of replacing it. With the new price in mind, we checked out a duplex last weekend. It was in a decent neighborhood and had everything we need, so we turned in an application. But we checked it out during an open house, and there were a lot of other interested lookers. We haven't heard back on our application yet. I guess we'll keep looking. We have plenty of money to move, and I think there's enough left over to handle the most important of the truck repairs, but that's it. We don't really have an emergency fund, and this bothers me. So now I'm wondering if we should just stay where we are until we've saved up an emergency fund on top of the moving fund. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm used to our current budget. I know how to work with it, and I think we could save up the fund in a few months. The way things are going, it might take us that long to find and lease a suitable home, anyway. On the other hand, I think moving to town would ultimately save us a lot of money, even if we almost double our current rent. It would save us well over $100/month in gas, for starters, and I'm pretty confident that we could pull off enough energy hacks to keep our utility bills low. And then there's the grocery budget. Right now, we don't have a kitchen. We have a mini-fridge and a microwave. It's like we live in a dorm. Except instead of Top Ramen, we eat a lot of pre-packaged and frozen foods, anything that can either simply be heated up or assembled, and we also eat out or pick up fast food a lot more often than we should. That stuff's expensive. I believe having a full-fledged kitchen where we could actually cook healthy meals from scratch would cut down significantly on our food spending. Really, I think probably what we're saving now by living out in the country and renting cheap and what we'd save by living in the city will all even out in the wash, and our month-to-month budget won't see that much of an impact as far as how much is left over for savings and debt reduction. It probably won't really make that much difference when we move at this point, as long as we make that emergency fund a priority. So we'll keep looking, and we'll keep squirreling away what we can into savings at every given opportunity. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is one of those areas of life where slow and steady really does win the race. Labels: goals, money management, personal, saving+investing |
