December was overall a slow month for me, I took a week one vacation on the beginning so I was not able to pay more debt that I wanted. I did meet my goal to be under $40,000 in total debt.

This month I need to finish paying off Lowe's which the free ride expires and start tagging on Home Depot which I should be done by end of February. The only one left then in credit card will be Brooke Savings which according to my trajectory I will be done by May or June and its all about the Home Equity then.

Goals for 2009.
1. Pay off All Credit Card Debt
2. Pay off HELOC
3. Fully Fund Roth IRA
4. Start paying off Car Loan and be done by mid 2010

I am finally getting my wheels rolling again, this month i was able to do beans and rice and rice and beans. Traded in my expensive BMW gas consuming 6 cylinder twin-turbo for a Toyota Hybrid SUV that does an average of 30 MPG. My gas consumption went down 60% in October alone.

My Year End Goals still hold:

* Pay off AMEX Completely - No longer carry a balance.
* My Chase Freedom is already on a spend only what can be paid at end of month and my bill is due usually on the middle off the month, so there is usually a balance on it that gets paid every bill cycle.
* Make a serious noticeable dent on my Home Depot Home Improvement Line and Brooke Savings Visa.

I want to start 09 under 40k.

My debt reduction plan had a slight de-railment, $10,635.00 in Medical Bills for Wife's Surgery.

My Debt has increased to $55,516.79 but i still continue attacking....

This was a month that i tried to save as much as I can and not let temptation lead my way.

For the first time in a long time, i am now under $50k in debt. Hopefully if i can continue this track i'll be somewhere around $30k at the end of the year.

I am now attacking my American Express Card like there is no tomorrow and want to have that paid in 2-3 months time.....

Funds
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I have started to streamline my financial life.

I have combined my Funds to one big EF/LT Fund. I have transfered all the balances into an EmigrantDirect acct that is paying a misly 2.75% APR.

The total amount I have in the account is $909.01

Real Estate
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I received my bi-yearly tax bill remainder for FY08. A whooping $1972.00 which I have been putting away.

Water bill went down from $230.00 to $185.00 for the quarter. This is the lowest i have ever received for a water bill. I have managed to go from $400.00/quarter to half of that. Little things come a long way.

I have spent the day on my front garden putting some top soil and re-seeding my lawn so i can have a decent lawn this summer.

I am almost finnaly through doing my taxes. I been using TurboTax for the past 5-6 years and i simply love the interface. It took me about 3 hours to gather everything and put it and make sure everything is correct. I am go over once more just to make sure i didn't miss any deductions and send it to uncle sam.

After reviewing old bank statements, i found this in an old acct. I immediately initiated an ACH transfer to my Household acct. Going towards lowering CC debt.

Every since i started writing things down, like CC balances, I have seen my self question things a little bit more now..

I love my cell phone company, since i use my cell phone primarily for business, i usually go through about 5000-7000 minutes a month. I had their best plan which was 5000 minutes plus free weekends/nights/mobile2mobile for 160.00, i just received a letter that a new better plan was available for 99.99. i am so happy because now i do not need to control my minutes and every month will be the same bill.

I will take the difference and hopefully be able to contribute to my LT fund.

Woohoo, one more credit card paid... I am on a roll, hopefully next month i will be able to cancel the balance on my AMEX Blue which is $2663.10....
The way i am working is i am using MS Money to plot out based on Interest Rate...

Next Month,
Amex $2663.10
Juniper $1367.47
BBuy $794.88 ( No Interest Plan )

Cheer for me... heh

Well, that audit that happen 3 months later from BofA dinged my Household Acct. Because I was not planning on getting withdrawn 400 on a Thursday from a bad check that happened 3 months earlier. Because my wife had used our check card to pick up a few things at a local store. The two small transactions posted after the large one( bank rule ). so i am down $70.00 in Overdraft Fees and because of some careless on their part, they did not setup the overdraft acct link(why have one then if its not setup for that purpose). This is how my Saturday started...

Today, I logged into my Online Banking Acct to see what was going on (see if dd hit it) and i was shocked to see a $400.00 debit on the acct. I immediately googled the company name which was AAERC and nothin came up, stopped by a branch and after 20 minutes researching, it was a check that was deposited on my acct in November from a person that owed me money. The check was good, except that instead of writing $450.00, he wrote fifty dollars, the number was correct, but not the wording. I asked why it took so long to catch it and the CSR said, "Well, every transaction is manually checked and audited to see if there were no mistakes during the automation process and usually because of high volume towards the end of the year, sometimes it takes up to 6 months to catch it.

I was angry, had a major headache and didnt know if I cussed BofA or the person that deposited the check. This serves as experience. "You should be the only one depositing into your account" so this crap doesn't happen again. Oh well, time to go chase the person that owed me money. Now this is the bad part......

Starting Off with a little about me. I'm a IT consultant out of Boston and i'm trying to work my self into a monthly budget. Maybe some sort of an excel sheet and diverse what whatever money is left at the end of each month. Since i'm in the middle when it comes to investing. I plan on putting about 60% in to cash (CDs/Online Savings Accts) and other rest in maybe some foreign etfs. I'll give you guys an update of how time goes... and an update on the budget.