We are now the owners of a 2007 Hyundai Sonata, and once again, our net-worth is in the red. The soon-to-be-father and husband of a woman who drives 50miles round trip every day through the heart of Chicago is thrilled that we have a car that is reliable, more fuel efficient, more comfortable and has 6 air bags and car seat anchors. The newly-financially-responsible part of me is annoyed that we weren't able to wait until we could pay without having to get financing, and is distressed that we couldn't get a better rate. (Chase, the bank we've used for 5 years as a couple and I've used for nearly 10 years, wouldn't approve us at all.) The still-thinks-he's-19 part of me is thrilled to have a dark red sedan that drives like a sports car again. (And this one has a sunroof!). The obsessive-nerd part of me had already created a spreadsheet to track fuel economy, TCO, and maintnence schedules. So, it's exciting and scary at the same time. I guess it's a warm up for the baby's arrival.

The process of getting this thing would've driven a lesser woman to a clock-tower shooting spree. The original plan was that my MIL would arrive Friday afternoon for the baby shower. TBWITWW would pick her up and they would drive to the car dealership, finish the paperwork and bring the new car home Friday evening. Thanks to the lovely weather, the MIL never got out of South Carolina on Friday. Also, CarMax determined that the windshield washer fluid sprayers weren't up to snuff, and needed to be replaced, so we'd have to wait until Monday to get the car. The revised plan became that when the MIL got into town, they'd go fill out paperwork (MIL was on the title for the old car), and TBWITWW would return to accept delivery of the car on Monday. When they arrived at CarMax, they found out that the parts had come in early, so they could take the car home that day. 8,000,000 bits of paperwork and 5 hours later, they were done and able to bring the car home. The next time we buy a car, I think we'll try not to have to have an 8 mo. pregnant woman and her lives-in-another-state mother involved!. (I was at work through most of this.)

(In case you were wondering it's the uses-too-damn-much-punctuation part of me that wrote this post.)

Those who know me, know that I'm not a car person. I accept that some people need them for their day-to-day lives, and that, in our current situation, TBWITWW is one of those people. But I also think that a car is merely a tool to get yourself, your passengers and your cargo from point A to point B. I don't understand the kind of people (like my brother) who think of cars as fun. But then, he doesn't understand my facination with other stuff.

I've owned one car in my life. It was given to me by my parents when they replaced it with something newer. I drove it, but didn't maintain it well. And then, when it died. I left it by the side of the road. Dumb? Yes. But not something that really bothered me all that much. When we got married, TBWITWW brought her car into the family. I accepted that it was useful to have. Now that her commute is insane, it's good that we have it. But it's 11 years old and has almost 175,000 miles on it. Most of them city miles. The AC is leaky, the horn doesn't work, the windows don't all go down... All of which we'e be willing to put up with if it weren't for the baby. Somehow I don't think it's a good idea to have a baby in a car that won't be easily cooled to below 90 degrees. So, we're going to replace the car. (Anyone want to buy a '97 Buick Skylark? It runs great.)

After talking to people and doing some research we concluded that given our lack of general car knowledge, and complete inability to negotiate, we were best off going somewhere like CarMax. So, we went to CarMax yesterday. We liked the idea of knowing up-front what the cost of the car was. We expected some level of pressure to buy "extras" or to "upgrade" but were pleasantly surprised. When we walked in the door we were greeted by a salesperson (Greg) who told us how CarMax does things and explained the process. They would appraise our car for trade in while we looked at the cars they had available. The appraisal was handled by a completely different department that they said does no selling, only purchasing. Meanwhile Greg asked us what we were looking for in a car. We said we wanted an 4-door import sedan, less than 40,000 miles and under $20,000. We wanted good gas mileage, and nothing older than 2004-2005. We mentioned some specific cars that we'd checked on the website. and he took us right to them. He was knowledgeable about the cars, but (as they apparently work on a flat commission) put no pressure on us to choose any car over any other. He answered all the questions we had, and sat quietly in the back seat on the test drives. 4 drives later we'd narrowed it down to a 2005 Honda Accord and a 2007 Hyundai Sonata. Both had pros and cons. The Honda was older, but had only about 3000 more miles on it. It cost a little more, but was more comfortable. Also, the long-term reliability of the Accord is a known quantity, and it's known to be fantastic. The Hyundai was less expensive and had a V6 engine, but Hyundai has undergone some major changes for the better lately, so it's long-term performance is an unknown.

We decided to have them run an application for financing. We chose to have them run the numbers in a "worst-case" scenario. No trade-in (they only offered $250 for our car, which is about what we expected), the older and more expensive car, and using only one of our incomes. After we filled out the application (the hardest part was listing a reference, as we don't know the addresses of anyone and it took 4 phone calls to find someone who answered), they took us on a short tour of their facility while we waited for the application to process. They have a very nice shop area. We got two offers for loans. Not at great rates, but not terrible either. At this point we decided that we wanted to explore some other options in terms of financing and doing further research on the cars, as well as the warranty options they presented.

We've decided that the Sonata is a better choice, so this afternoon TBWITWW is headed to the bank to see what we can get in terms of financing there. So, by the end of the week, we'll likely have a new car. This experience was quite a bit less painful than I expected. The people at CarMax were great, and although the newly-financially-aware part of me is twitchy at taking on new debt, I'm not nearly as twitchy as I thought I'd be at this stage. Once we have the car, I'll post a recap of the financing process, an overview of our plans for paying it off, and some pictures. We're also planning to keep meticulous records for this car to see what it's really costing us in the long run.

A few months ago I opened an Electric Orange checking account from ING Direct. Part of my reasoning was that they pay a decent interest rate on the checking account (not great, but better than nothing), and to start to seperate some of our bill paying. The problem has been the transition from one to the other has been a bit arduous. Thankfully, this month we had some extra income, so we had enough of a buffer to start making the transition without worrying about a bill coming out of the wrong account and us not having enough money to cover that bill in that account.
Most of our accounts have online access, and those were easy to reset. However, a few require actual paper to be sent. These are the ones that are most concerning, because I don't have a confirmation about which account this month's payment will come from. If the paperwork goes through in time, it'll come out of the new account, but if not, it will come out of the old account. So I have to make sure there's enough money in both accounts to cover them. It's kind of a pain. On the other hand, I'm down to about 5 bills that I don't have automated (either though my end or the bank's) which greatly reduces the risk of missing a payment.
All of this means, my savings numbers won't go up much this month, but should jump significantly once I'm satisfied that all of the bills are directed properly and reduce the buffers in the checking accounts. We still have the car and job situations to work out, but progress is definitely being made. We're actually looking seriously at the possibility of me not having to go back to work once my job ends in September. At least not full time. If we can come up with a way to make this internet thing pay a bit, we may be able to pull it off.

No, they're not jewel encrusted, but for the money we spend on them they ought to be. Today we took both cats to the vet for checkups. Chubby was in for shots, and Iccarus was in for a 6-month senior exam. Chubby, as usual, was friendly and docile. And Iccarus, as usual, was a nervous wreck. He hisses and scratches and growls and yelps and craps. Yes, he craps on things when he's freaked out. So, they both needed bloodwork, and Iccarus ended up needing light sedation. Altogether, we spent almost $500 at the vet. Part of this was because we had them do baseline blood testing, which doesn't need to be repeated for a few years. We have the money available, so we figured, lets get it all done in one swell foop.

Expensive, but they're still worth it. We love the little bastards.

Maggie asked how I learned to work on my budget and savings goals. I'm about to give her much more of an answer than I think she bargained for. I talked about this a bit in this post, which was mostly some backstory and where I was at the begining of last year. I didn't really talk about how we got from point A to point B and to where we are now.

There were a few things that helped tremendously in making saving work for me. The biggest was simply the fact that we got the credit cards paid off. The Credit Counseling program we were in was basically a forced Debt Snowball. When we paid that off, it freed up almost $1000 per month, which we determined to put towards other debt and savings. The keys to learning how to do this were largely from a few websites, and a book. The book is The Wealthy Barber. It's a personal finance book that reads like a novel. The advice isn't anything earth-shattering, or even terribly specific, it's just advice presented as if by a close, trusted friend. It didn't so much change how I looked at personal finance, as it changed how I looked at learning personal finance. It no longer felt like math and rules. (Now, I enjoy math and rules for some things. But There has to be an answer at the end, and personal finance isn't like that.) So I began seeking out new resources for learning about finance. Most of what I found was geared at people who were not in my situation. There was a lot of advice about investing, but not as much about getting to the point where you could invest. Much of what was out there focused on finance and finance only. Much of it seemed to only apply if you were in a career field where you worked 9-5, had weekends off, and were making at least $50,000 a year. I saw lots of advice along the lines of "eat out less, go to bars less, go to coffee shops less, go shopping less". While variations of these applied, a lot of it didn't, and it was hard to find information that I felt really applied to me. For the first time though, I not only wanted to make finances work for me, I really needed to make them work for my family.

So I found some blogs. There are several that I like, but two that I identified with and felt spoke directly to me. These are The Simple Dollar and Get Rich Slowly, which has a great forum. The forum on GRS has actually been a huge help. Seeing the successes of others, getting advice, and having an environment to talk about goals with people who are pursuing similar goals adds some serious motivation.

Overall, what I've learned is that reaching the goals (at least for me) requires following the SMART plan (Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic, Timely) and being accountable to others. That's what the graphs in the sidebar are all about. I've got a lot still to learn, but I'm making progress, and I hope that what I've learned will help others too. I'll try to put up some more specific step-by-step information in the future, and when I figure out how to budget in an effective way, I'll pass that on too. If you have any tips that've helped you deal with money, I'd love to hear about them.

So far so good. My goal last week was to drink at least 64oz of water per day. I have, so far, achieved this every day. This week's goal is to eat breakfast every day. I've been having a cup of yogurt with bran grape-nuts type cereal in it. Hopefully this will help me manage my appetite and energy level better.

I haven't made much progress on the budget front yet. Its frustrating, as I don't really know where to start assembling the data. Do you keep a budget? If so, how do you go about it? I want something that's easy to maintain, and doesn't involve a lot of duplicating data that I'm already entering in Money. (The budgeting functions in Money leave a lot to be desired.)

I'm going to try to set some goals for this year. Rather than resolutions, which tend to be the fairly ambiguous, I'm going to try to use the SMART formula for setting the goals. The goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

To this end, I think I'm going to start by setting a monthly goal and weekly goals. The monthly goals will be a project to complete by the end of the month. The weekly goals will be more along the lines of habits I want to work on developing (or breaking). I'll report progress as I go, but I'll need help. I'd appreciate if all you readers keep me honest on this. If I don't update my progress, feel free to harass me about it.

To that end, my first goals are: for the month of January--to create a budget to help reach our new savings goals; and for the first week of the month, to drink at least 64oz of water each day. So... here goes.