Found Money

Before I was budget planning and before I had shared my goal to retire in 10 years with my friend Marci, I was busily going about my life without much awareness to my spending or the money that I had in various forms.

Upon reading Dave Ramsey’s book Complete Guide to Money, I became inspired to create a budget.  I really didn’t know where to begin as I simply was not focusing on my spending.  I google searched a budget template online and captured the spending of my prior month from my credit card statements and online banking.  Then my journey to found money began.

1. What were all those ACH payments about?  Yes, after 24 years of marriage, 4 children and a full-time job, some of these payments were not recognizable to me.
   1. I called businesses and asked for additional information and improved my visibility to my spending habits.
   2. I reflected on each ACH payment and asked if the payment still made sense today.
   3. Following Dave Ramsey’s advice on gimmick insurances, I cancelled a cancer policy my husband had initiated.
2. Get real.  Are you using your gym membership?  Will you start?  I had to face facts and cancel my membership right now.  I need those funds for things I plan to do; not plan to avoid.
3. Open your mind.  Cable is optional.  What?!
   1. I reflected on what the household was actually watching and cancelled two streaming channels I had subscribed to.  After all, I need more time for budget planning and planning to retire in 10 years anyway.
4. Do I really spend that much money on food?  Why is it that I can grocery shop and pack lunches for others, but have never made packing my own lunch a habit?  No reflection needed here.  My habits were not adding to my future or even my present. I immediately made a change and began packing my lunch every day.
   1. In the end, this change to pack my lunch has been embarrassingly easy to implement.  I was freezing left overs in bento boxes for my son.  I simply started to take a bento box myself along with a piece of fruit and a granola bar.  Big savings.
   2. I invite my friends and coworkers to picnic with me.  I explained that I was making a change to bring my lunch, so I invite my friends to bring their lunch and picnic with me, or to drive-through or get “to go” items for their lunch and picnic with me in that way.  My friends and coworkers have been totally open and supportive in doing this and it’s been fun.
   3. Another change I made was to plan for meals.  I plan a list of meals for which we will have ingredients in our home.  I shop for groceries based upon the plan.  I post the list of meal options on the fridge and we cross off each item as we prepare it.
   4. Until me debts are paid, I have budget planned for dining out at a restaurant one time per month.  I plan to add in more dining out once I have my 3 to 6 month emergency fund in place.  Until then, I plan to hold dining out to one time per month.
5. We have a terrible habit of collecting gift cards and not using them.  I’m embarrassed to say we place them in a drawer that we almost never use and we forget about them.
   1. We got out our gift cards and made a plan.  We placed cards we believe we can use in the next couple of months in our purse or wallet and we make a specific plan to use each.
6. Rebates.  We found rebates from a home improvement store that we are very good about sending in for our discount, but again, lousy at redeeming.
   1. We remind each other when planning to shop at that store, to use the rebates first.
   2. We keep these at home in a location we are both aware of so either of us can grab the rebates to use at the store.
7. CDs or Certificates of Deposit.  We are guilty of ignoring these.  We have funds tied up in this savings option and we’ve let them automatically renew for several years.
   1. We’ve placed a reminder on the online family calendar to move these funds when the CDs come due.  We agree this money can work better for us in our emergency fund or a retirement account.
8. We had a student lunch account fund.  I was aware there were funds that were in the account and that my daughter was packing her lunch and not eating at school, but visibility to my finances with budget planning caused me to take action and ask for my refund.
9. Read & scrutinize your bills.  I took a deep dive into our cell phone bill and began to wonder what some of those charges meant.  I called the company and learned that I had been overcharged every month for the last 20 months for a service I did not use and did not request.  After an hour-long negotiation, we worked out an agreement that was acceptable to me.  Shout out to Dave Ramsey’s negotiation tips as I repeated the phrase “that’s not good enough” often during that hour.
10. Review your insurance coverage for savings and proper coverage.  To be honest, this topic took time to research what we have, what we need and time to reflect in our planning.
    1. I made a list of all insurance coverage we had.  This activity was very jaw dropping for us.  Based upon Dave Ramsey’s recommendations, I added action items for each policy and noted areas where we have no coverage.
    2. We met with our auto insurance agent and asked her to teach us about our coverage.  We also asked her to make recommendations based upon what she knew about our family.  We discussed and agreed on our go forward coverage.
    3. We suspended coverage on an auto we are not using.  Our agent assures us it will be super easy to activate coverage as needed, but it’s great to know we can capture this savings now for a vehicle we are not using.
    4. We learned we could save on fees while our daughter is at college without a car.  Hooray!  More savings.
    5. We bundled.  One of the areas we were low or missing was renters insurance for our children and term life insurance for my husband.  We added policies for these needs and with bundling and savings for suspending insurance on one vehicle our insurance costs have risen by $22 per year.
    6. Consider cashing out insurance policies that have a Net Cash Value.  I recommend looking at this from a holistic perspective and seek input from your accountant and financial advisor.  From the larger picture, this may or may not make sense for you.
11. Invest HSA dollars if you are saving funds for health costs in retirement.
    1. I learned that I could invest HSA dollars in mutual funds.  It took a bit of searching on the site, and a call to customer service, but I finally managed to invest a large portion of these funds and make them work better for our future.
12. Wait.  There’s a Roth inside my 401K?!
    1. I learned that I could invest in a Roth inside my 401k.  I placed a call to our accountant and after agreement with my husband; I have moved dollars to take advantage of awesome future tax savings.

The reason I call all of this found money is because while I may or may not have been aware of these funds in the past, by placing additional focus on these items, we now have a plan for each of these dollars.  These funds are no longer lost in the ebbing and flowing of daily life.  They are exposed and they are working for us to help us with needs for today or are working to help us with needs for the future.

Please share where you have found money through your journey to retire.