Well, I have not posted in quiet some time. 2015 has given us a wonderful wedding as well as my step-son living with us full time! I could not be happier! As it comes with finances, we have paid of D's car completely! He was so surprised when I sent the last payment! It was funny to think that he couldn't believe that was possible. It made me feel amazing to get to mark that off the list!!
So right now we have my credit card to pay off with approx $8500 on it. My car also has a balance of $8,600 on the loan. After that we have my student loans at about $33k. However, with us trying to add to our family we are going to focus on some other things first.
To start, we will be creating an emergency fund. I have us putting back $15,000 in an emergency fund. I came up with this number by multiplying our regular outgoing costs by 3 (to have 3 months of finances in case something where to happen), that makes $2,550 x 3= $7,650. Then I thought about possible medical expenses, $25 PCP copay, $30 ICC copay, and $35 specialist copay. I multiplied each number by 4 and added a personal deductible ($2500) puts us at $2,860. Then our vehicle deductible is around $1500 a car, well we have two of those so that makes $3000.
$7,650 + $2,860 + $3000 = $13,510
After that, I rounded to a nice pretty number. Now the key for me here is to make sure that I only pull out the appropriate amount for the emergency. So lets say we get to add to the family next year, I no longer have any money left in our HRA and I still have $5,500 of my hospital stay to pay for out of pocket. That means I could only put $2,860 directly towards that bill, since there is an additional $1,490 in the emergency fund I can put that down for that too. That would leave me with $1,150 balance. I can do a payment plan at this point or use our excess money after our bills are paid to pay this down. Once this is achieved it is key to build the emergency fund back up.
The reason I want to only use that amount instead of just paying off the complete bill is because of one week in particular. One Monday in September I got the phone call that made my home complete, my step-son would be coming to live with us. This was amazing news since we would not have to continue in court, thus incurring more legal fees. That following Wednesday, I had to take a trip to the ER for some tachycardia. That Friday I then had a fender bender in the husband's car. So I am a little gun-shy to put all of my eggs into one basket.
So as much information that I just gave you, I want it to be known that our current financial priorities are going to be:
1. Pay of credit card
2. Emergency Fund
3. Purchase a home
4. Pay off Courtney's car
5. Pay off student loans
Ill have an update soon as to how things are going!!
