Letter to Myself 10 Years Down the Road

In March, Ninja at Punch Debt in the Face wrote a letter to himself 10 years later and challenged others to do the same.  I came across one of those letters in late March at Fiscal Geek and another mid-April at 151 Days Off.  The letters were amazing and made me want to participate.  Here's what I'd write to my 37 year old self:

Dear Red,

You've been with hubby for 19 years now...are we happily celebrating our 15th anniversary?  Do you still snuggle in the mornings before work or give each other head massages when you're stressed?  Do you still make each other laugh?  Does he still refuse to let you cook the main meals because he "fears death", oh, and does he still over-compliment your sandwiches in an attempt to get you to make them instead?  Most importantly, are you two still in love? 

If you answered no to any of these, you should work on that.  Laugh more.  Loosen up.  Unless of course he did something supremely crappy.  Then you should...never mind...leave no proof.  :-)

So, did we change our minds on the kid front?  If we didn't, do we have more dogs?  If we did, I hope he or she is healthy and not a pain-in-the-butt like you were.  I would hate for Mom to have been right.  You know any kid you have are going to be a smart-a$$, right?  I wouldn't have it any other way.  Is hubby a great dad?  I bet he surprised himself.

How is our money looking?  Did BFS take off?  Is the house paid off as planned?  Did hubby talk you into trading up yet?  I hope not.  Stick to your guns and keep his mind off it.  You know how...buy him some board games or something.  (Haha, you didn't think that was what I was going to say).

Anyway, are we still on track to retire in 15 more years?  If not, why?  I don't want to work into our 60's, do you?

Are you still a nice person?  Have you made someone random smile today?  I hope we still have a good sense of humor.  I also hope we still help others.  If you haven't volunteered for a while, schedule that for this weekend.  You know you want to and there are a ton of places that appreciate our time.

Okay, please make sure that you make the rest of our life fun.  Love hubby some more, you know he's crazy about you.  Make a silly joke or use that kid voice we always fall into.  If you haven't been silly lately, man up and try it out.  You know we love to laugh.


Sincerely,
Red at 27...the one who hopes we had a great 10 years...


That was fun.  Do any of you have any comments or questions for your future selves?

BFS is Being Renovated This Weekend!

Hey everybody, I've got exciting news!  Budgeting in the Fun Stuff is migrating from Blogger to Wordpress this Saturday, June 5!!!

Don't worry, http://www.budgetinginthefunstuff.com/ will still be the URL and it's still all me, lol.  But, it will look really different and should be much more user friendly.  Wordpress makes commenting easier and is less glitchy in general.  I really hope this change makes it easier for you to enjoy BFS!

I have tried to work out any issues I can find using a dummy site, but if you have any comments, suggestions, questions, or complaints about the new site (or anything else), please email me at budgetingfunstuff *at* gmail *dot* com anytime. 

I truly appreciate all of you and hope you really enjoy the new and improved BFS starting this Saturday!

Financial Confession

I’ve been keeping something from you. I was either not going to tell you at all or wait until it is a non-issue, but why have a personal finance blog and not be completely honest about personal finance, right?

We spent $6000 in April 2009 on a really nice bedroom set of furniture and a Tempurpedic mattress. I’ve mentioned this before, but I did not mention that we financed the whole thing for 15 months at 0% interest.

Normally, that would not matter to me since we would already have had the cash, put it aside, and made interest off of it for 14 months before paying the bill in full. BUT we didn’t have the cash except for in our emergency fund, so we’ve been putting $350 a month aside while paying $50 a month to the bill. The bill is due in August and the money is ready to go for July, but it’s been slightly nerve-wracking knowing I owe big money for something I’ve been sleeping on for more than a year.

I knew we would never have to pay any interest since our emergency fund would have had us covered, but I still feel a bit sheepish about the whole thing. If I had lost my job or if hubby had become disabled, we would have been in trouble. We wouldn’t have needed to do anything drastic, but it would have been severely uncomfortable.

The upside to this confession is that I can now tell you that as of next month, that $350 a month is open to play with. Our tax account for the year is also polished off since I highly overestimated our property taxes last year, so that’s an extra $400 a month till the end of the year as well. Hubby’s final $2000 grad school payment is also ready to go, so we no longer need to funnel that $625 a month into a grad school account.

In short, an extra $1375 a month has opened itself up from now until December, so it looks like our $9500 car loan will definitely be paid off by the end of this year. We will also be able to open a second 2010 Roth IRA, but it will be funded from November 2010 to March 2011. After that, we are discussing what to do with the extra. We will continue to fund a second Roth IRA, but that will still leave us about $1000 extra a month to put towards the house or the emergency fund or whatever.

Let’s just say that I’m pretty happy and you may want to be in the room towards the end of November when we make that final Prius payment. :-)

What do you think? Were we nuts for taking on such a huge payment plan for bedroom furniture and a mattress? Should we be doing something different with the excess cash we have now?

BFS Site Problems - Are You Having Trouble Leaving Comments?

Hi everybody!

I was replying to comments last week and multiple browser windows started opening and wouldn't stop until I shut down my laptop and restarted. This happened two times in 5 days and I just thought it was my old laptop.

Yesterday I received this email from a reader:

"Hey, I just wanted to check if you know whether anyone else is experiencing this when they comment on your blog. The last couple times I've commented on your blog in IE, it goes crazy afterward opening up tabs and I have to do an end task on IE 7 to get it to stop. If I try to comment on my phone instead, sometimes it doesn't work at all."

I left this problem in the Blogger forum and have posted with the Yakezie bloggers as well.  I apologize if this has caused you any problems.

Have you had this problem when commenting on BFS?  Do you happen to be way techier than me and know what's going on?

Facebook Friends Could Ruin Your Credit!

This article at PC World, Skeptical Shopper: Can Your Online Life Ruin Your Credit, brings up something I hadn’t thought of before. Apparently, credit issuers are starting to judge a person based on their online community.

This worries me a little since I’m not picky on who I “friend” on Facebook. I also don’t run a credit check on my friends…I’m sure most of them would come back with major issues. My only saving grace is that I do not actually participate in online social networks much at all. I get emailed when someone sends me a direct message…that’s about as techy as I get.

I also wonder how intelligent this kind of credit check makes the banks. Obviously, not all of my friends and family are going to be in the same financial boat as myself. Wouldn’t it be weird to find that someone only surrounds themselves with people exactly like themselves?

Also, does having my own financial blog count in my favor? If you lose so many points for a “deadbeat” friend, can you earn them back by posting fiscally responsible blogs?

Okay, now I’m just getting silly, but I think that creditors who use this method are pretty silly too.

How would you fare if you were judged based on your online social network? My “Excellent” rating would fall a level or two…

BFS has a Guest Post about the Average Middle Class at Funny about Money

Funny about Money was kind enough to let me guest post today with How Middle Class Are You? 

It's a summary of an article about the average middle class and how my husband and I stack up...aren't comparisons fun?