Teleidoscope

Sat, Dec 20, 2008

Balance 2008

Posted at 5:37 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Kind of battening down the hatches and taking stock given the state of the economy. The company sent out the last paystub of the year early because they are switching over to email delivery of paystubs and wanted to test it, so I was able to do some calculations.

Net decrease in loan principal balances for the year, including credit cards and mortgage, was just over 25% of my gross pay and just under 40% of net pay. Total remaining non-mortgage debt is about equal to the decrease in non-mortgage debt this year.

Charitable giving was 10% of net, so about half my net pay went to debt reduction and charity. (Planned Parenthood and Energy Outreach Colorado need to be added to the list of charities for the year.)

Minimal monthly runrate, cutting most charities and with minimum loan and mortgage payments, is slightly less than one paycheck per month.

Non-retirement savings is about 6 months of runrate. Lower than I would really prefer in this economy. But I'm expecting a large tax refund (I'm just adjusting my W-4 this week), which I think I will add to savings rather than paying down loans as I had previously planned -- having an extended emergency buffer is worth the difference in interest between the savings accounts and the credit card accounts.

Savings CD rates are low at the moment, but I get good rates on my credit cards because I have pristine credit. (I just took advantage of a link from one of my credit unions to get annual free copies of my credit reports, and there were no surprises.) My highest rated card is below 14% and most of my balances are at 10% or below (some is way below: I migrated some to a 2% balance transfer rate a couple of months ago). And I just realized I need to switch which Visa card I use by default for online purchases and such: the card from the backup credit union has a rate that's 3 points lower than the card from my primary credit union. Everything above 10% will be paid off by the end of January.

The mortgage is a 15 year loan at a low rate. Refinancing again wouldn't make sense unless the rates get down below 4.5 % with low fees.

I think my hatches are pretty well battened down.

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