What a boring topic for a Friday!
… but it's also kind of exciting. hehe.
Here's the breakdown:
Assets: ↓ by .04%. Definitely acceptable.
Debts: ↓ by 3.68%. I'll take it! (Best it's been since February!) We anticipate paying off one credit card this month bringing us down to 2 credit cards (instead of 4) that we owe on. According to Mint, we are on track to have them paid off by May 2015, but I'm anticipating (perhaps optimistically) that we will have them paid off sooner. This is certainly not the case with student loans though, unfortunately… :(
Net worth: ↑ 3.98%. We are only $300 away from our peak net worth last achieved back in February of this year which is exciting! :) After our crazy spring with purchasing a truck, moving, and going to Europe, I thought we would never bounce back. Slowly but surely (thankfully) we are.
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| green = this year; yellow = last year |
Spending: Via Mint I can see that Justin and I spent $600 less in the month of September than we did in 2013! Yay! The only negative is that we spent $500 more than we did in August. I suppose this truth is negated by the fact that we bought 2 Christmas gifts, 1 birthday gift (a really expensive one that we are being paid back for) and plane tickets to DC. We also went over our food budget. While we definitely could have done better, it would have been easy to have done worse as well.
Credit Scores: I received my first credit card last month – Chase Slate, a card with no transfer fees and 0% interest for 15 months. We were able to transfer some (as in VERY LITTLE) of our debt to that credit card to help us save on interest over the next few months as we continue to battle debt. One of the positives of my getting the card though is that my credit score went up 12 points from "fair" to "good"!!! Now I'm just waiting on the day when it goes up even farther to "awesome" status; after all, one's credit score should be a direct reflection of the person it exists for, right? ;)
While Justin did not sign up for any other credit cards, we are anticipating that within the next month or so his credit score should also increase since his spending limit on one of his credit cards was increased! Go Justin! :)
Interest Payments: This is the part that makes me sick. We weren't paying hardly anything at the beginning of the year, but one truck, a few vacations, and a move caused our payments to skyrocket again. I'm grateful it's coming back down, but grr!!
Last, but not least:
• Totally spent an afternoon counting coins and found $30! Yes, it is so worth doing. :)
• In counting coins, I found some from several different countries. Canadian money ftw?
• Got our 2% cash back from Costco purchases. Yay! Now we just need to find time to get our check cashed.
• Received an $11 check in the mail from Top Cashback for purchases we were already making. Free money? Well … not quite, but close! :)
How are you doing on finances so far this month? Acceptably well? Could be doing better? Could be doing worse? Fantastically? Does it make you feel better to see your finances when you compare them to mine? ;)
