End of month financial check-in

Another month down and it’s time to review the finances again.

All told we made some good progress this month. I finally settled on my priorities: kitchen loan gets top priority as it’s due in full by October. In tandem we fund the emergency fund until it’s full. Then we work on my student loan.  

We had two huge household problems this month that convinced me to put some serious effort into building an emergency fund. We had a very expensive furnace repair. Then we had some serious water damage into our bathroom from the unit above us. Fortunately this repair was paid for by the condo association because the leak wasn’t our fault. If it had been our fault we couldn’t have afforded the repair. Now I’m pretty scared that we don’t have an emergency fund.  

As a result, here’s where we stand.

Emergency fund goal: end of year	Kitchen Loan (1.99%) deadline: Oct 2014	Student Loan (2.65%) goal: end of year
Starting balance: $0 Goal: $20,000 Balance on 3/31: $2,520.88 $2520.88 saved so far 12.6% filled $0$20,000	Starting balance: $10,000.00 Balance on 3/31: $4,130.43 $5869.57 paid so far 58.7% paid off $0$10,000	Starting balance: $8,127.00 Balance on 3/31: $7,750.58  $376.42 paid so far 4.6% paid off $0$8127 Get a progress bar at DollarTimes.com

The next few months we will likely have to pull back our savings as we pay for the kitchen and then focus on rebuilding our very unhappy-looking checking account. But as I learn to spend less money on dumb little things I'm confident we can reach at least two of our three goals this year. I realize that we likely won't be able to make much of a dent in the student loan this year. But I'm okay with that because we'll have a good emergency fund set up by the end of the year.