Comments on: The law of household economics: Windfalls go poof.

By: peter

peter — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:42:01 +0000

Liz
Unless you are able to lower the rate on your student loans somehow, you would be better off paying that down with the additional $200. You do need an emergency fund, but if you have no credit card debt and some funds in the bank you are probably OK there IF YOUR JOBS ARE SECURE. (Big If!)
You should also redirect your extra morgage payment to the student loan unless it is so small it is insignificant.

By: GRB

GRB — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:48:47 +0000

Slightly off topic:
Andrea, you are getting robbed on that serpentine belt expense.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:25:11 +0000

I have a seperate question about savings…. I have about 200$ extra each month and I was wondering what would be best. To save it in a money market account to build up emergency fund, pay down student loan debt 20,000 6.75% or second mortgage 16,000 6.25%. All my bills are paid and we currently pay a little extra towards our mortgage but we don’t have much savings (3,000). Any suggestions would be great.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:19:56 +0000

I paid my midwives the last 1,000 for my homebirth which was nice to get done. With the remiander we bought a new bed. I think normally we would not have spent it so wisely but we planed well this time around.

By: Willy

Willy — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:29:39 +0000

I drank my stimulus refund up in two days.

How’s the economy?

Did I make a difference?

By: Andrea

Andrea — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:24:47 +0000

You know, this happened to me. We got the stimulus check and just so I didn’t spend a little more here and there I immediately put it towards our second mortgage. Well a couple weeks later I we find out our water heater is leaking and we need a new one- $800.00, car ins is due for $400.00 and I have to get a serpentine belt replaced on my car for $160. I’m kind of kicking myself. I know we’ll be better off in the long run but it would have been nice to pad our e-fund a little more.

By: Jx2

Jx2 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:52:43 +0000

Of our $1,200 stimulus check, $1,000 paid the credit card down to $0.00. There were some unexpected (and pretty large) costs for my wife’s schooling. The stimulus check was very timely.

The rest, we each took $100 to spend on whatever.

No savings, but nice debt reduction. Without the stimulus check, we would have carried that balance forward for a while.

Jim

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:58:39 +0000

Still waiting for my check as my SSN ends in “88″ so it’ll be in July sometime. I still plan to spend the max of $1200 on Cub gift card and get the 10% extra free. I also heard from a friend that you also get the Holiday gas discount coupon on both ends of the deal so that’ll add up to $25.20 off future gas purchases. $12.00 when I buy the cards and $13.20 when I spend them.