April 20

Leftovers for lunch, but with a wakeful crying baby in the middle of the night, for HOURS, there was also fancy expensive coffee when I got to work. $3.46 on fancy coffee.

Update: I spent $1.25 on a drink and cookie to go with the leftovers.

April 19

Today I spent $6.21 on lunch, plus $0.75 on bottles of water.

And $87.76 on a pair of concert tickets.

And $21.95 on dinner for the family. Fortunately, there are leftovers, which I’m having for lunch tomorrow.

What the Money Guy Said

It looks like Mrs Mama and I are in pretty good shape in terms of saving for retirement. Right now, we have about $135k between us, in 401ks and various flavors of IRA. And we each sock 15% into our 401ks, although we haven’t funded IRAs in the last 2 years.

That said, the Money Guy made some suggestions for tweaking our investments, and I’m thinking about how much of his advice I should and will follow.

• We are overexposed in international stock mutual funds
• We also have too much invested in large cap company oriented mutual funds
• We don’t have enough in small cap mutual funds
• We don’t have enough in real estate mutual funds
• We don’t have enough in stable/income/bond funds to protect ourselves in the event of a severe downmarket
• We own too many individual stocks

Out of this so far, I’ve made a couple of changes. I sold:

• 20 shares of KSS (Kohls) for $1,554.22, on an initial investment of $1000.
• 45 shares of EAT (Brinkers) for $1,507.77, also on an initial investment of $1000.
• 24.387 shares of OAKLX for $828.42, on a rollover IRA investment left over from an old 401k, basis $670.33. (No, that’s not an individual stock, but I think I should get rid of any asset I have that is less than 1% of my portfolio. This is going to be a phased-in process.)

I also have limit orders open to sell my 66 shares of PFE (Pfizer) at a loss of about 25%.

Query: Which Debt to Pay?

I loaned Uncle Sam way too much money in 2006 and am getting about $6k back.

With that money, I can either pay the $5549.15 I have on a credit card at 17%, or the ~$2600 left on furniture at 19%, plus a chunk of the credit card.

There would be something nice, psychologically, about getting rid of the cc debt. But I don’t 100% trust myself not to run it up again.

On the other hand, getting rid of the furniture debt means less interest overall, and I trust myself not to go buy another room full of furniture.

I just went and played with a debt calculator, and realized that I could pay off the cc debt in a year if I put the difference into paying it down, and then the amount I used to pay monthly on both debts into paying the cc off. That sounds like a good idea!

Wednesday Update

I am a little out of control. I really should stop reading Mir’s sale blog.

Although to be fair to myself, I actually do need clothes for work, and a 60-90% off sale plus a $25 off $100+ purchases means that I got 6 shirts & sweaters, and 3 pair of pants, for $110.06 including shipping. An average of $12.23 per article of clothing is pretty good.

But I didn’t really need the wooden deck chairs as much as I needed the clothes.  Although again, we do need someplace to sit outside, and currently we have one green plastic faux adirondack chair. $40 for a pair of nice ones is a good price. So is the $5.98 for 24 large cardboard blocks that Noah is getting for Christmas.

Yesterday, I spent $8.55 on lunch; today I spent $17. Ugh. I’m bringing lunch tomorrow.

Expensive Weekend Update

April 13: Spent $12.00 on lunch and $12.59 on dinner for the family.

April 14: Spent $114 on a Mommy & Me music class for The Boy, then $35.47 on a bottle of wine and a six pack, $17.85 on books that weren’t available at the library (2 novels).

April 15: Spent $85 on a sweater, a pair of pants, and 3 pair of shoes, all for work. Spent another $14 on a pair of shoes and 3 pair of socks for The Boy. $40 into the plate at church.

April 16: $0.95 for lunch. (Finished the cereal I bought last week, splurged on oreos from a vending machine and 2 bottles of water. Got an extra nickel back in change.)

Am freaking out because the accountant has not yet returned our tax returns to copy, sign, and submit to the IRS. TOMORROW.

Spending on 4/12

$11.32 on rash cream and lotion for The Boy. His skin is so dry, poor guy.

Lunch and Groceries 4/11

Today I spent $7.32 on lunch and $35.59 on groceries.

Also, the cloth diapers that I ordered arrived. I did some math and figured out that I probably need to use each one 40 times before I hit the “cheaper than disposables” break point.

Considering his age, that’s unlikely to happen with The Boy. But there’s a decent chance of it happening if he gets to be a Big Brother.

Even if it doesn’t, I’m about more than just the cash. I’m trying to hit that sweet spot where I can be good to the environment, good to my baby, not waste money, and not have it be a pain in the ass.

And maybe I can sell them used on ebay or craigslist when we’re done with the baby stage. I may not recoup the whole investment, but that probably will help me hit that break-even point.

Meeting with the Money Guy

Mrs Mama and I both save 15% in our work 401ks, which means that our retirement savings is in pretty good shape — probably better than any of the rest of our finances. We also have rollover and Roth IRAs, but neither of us has contributed a new dime to those since 2005.

That said, we have a total of about $135k in all of our retirement accounts, combined. (Except for Mrs Mama’s ancient and tiny TIAA-CREF account, which we ignore.) Roughly$70k is in our direct control, with the other $65k in limited-option 401ks.

When I reviewed our retirement assets last month, I figured out that we have 26 distinct holdings, including 10 individual stocks.  Those assets range, individually, from being as much as 17% of our portfolio, to as little as .08%. Yes, that’s 8 hundredths of a percent, or $107.

Well that makes no sense. Obviously I can’t keep track of 26 different investments, and I’m not. It’s also silly to hold on to lots of little assets that are worth only 1-2% of my portfolio, or less.

So I asked a random financial planner guy who I met recently if he would review our savings and make suggestions. He’s coming over tomorrow with his proposed changes.

(Yeah, that could be the worst way to find a financial advisor, but his business model is to try to get me to transfer my accounts to him. Which I warned him was unlikely and offered to just pay for his review service. He declined.)

What’s This?

Welcome to Mama’s Money Diary.

I’m a 37 year old lesbian mom, trying to save money, plan for my family’s future, and live a nice life. Pretty much like most moms.

Step One: Track what I’m spending.

Today:

• Cereal & Donuts – $5.09
• Diapers – $16.14
• 4 storage boxes & a soda – $39.84