About Me

Amy

I created this blog because I like reading other military spouse's blogs. Part of being a military spouse is having the uncertainty of not knowing where you will have to live next or for how long. It often means moving around every few years and dealing with the deployment of a loved one. Financial advice isn't one size fits all and often financial advisors tailor their advice to the non-military folks out there, saying to buy a house right away and talking about 401k's instead of TSP's.

Two years ago (soon after my husband and I got married) I saw David's Bach's book, "Automatic Millionaire" and it truely changed my life and how I thought about money. We started out with pretty much nothing when we got married. I had $1,000 in credit card debt, and my husband had $1,000 saved from a recent re-enlistent bonus. We have since opened 2 retirement accounts, a high-yield online savings account (with automatic deductions from our checking account) and increased our networth from $0 to $18,000!

My husband's military pay includes his base pay, housing allowance, cost of living allowance, food allowance. All together it's $2,000 on the 1st of the month and $2,000 on the 15th.

We save 15% of his pre-tax income in the Thrift Savings Plan, which is the government's version of a 401k retirement account, only with no matching funds. Some people think we're crazy saving for retirement when we're in our early 20's, but we just want to use compound interest to our advantage!

We also save 25%, or $1,000, per month of his take home pay. We're saving to buy a home at his next duty station, though I have no idea where that will be yet. Currently we have about $12,000 saved up for our first home, and by the time we leave here (1 1/2 years from now) we should have at least $30,000 saved.

Part of the reason that we can save so much is that we have no car payments. I'm no finance expert, but I firmly believe that people spend too much on new cars when they should be saving instead.

Net Worth for April 2007 ... $17,700

May 3rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm

http://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2007/04

Arggghh... After paying down the credit cards by $500 this month, I proceeded to charge $700 on them. There were some unexpected expenses, some unexpected visits from inlaws, and some unexpected furniture purchases...all put on the plastic. While we do have an emergency cushion, none of these purchases really counted as emergencies...so we charged them? I really can't explain my logic behind this saving beyond our means, but just because you can't explain something, doesn't mean it's wrong. Take gravity for instance...

Posted in Net Worth | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Net Worth for April 2007 ... $17,700”

Mulyanto Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 01:06 pm

Did you know you can put your Net Worth IQ graph on your page? By the way, there's nothing wrong with charging your creditcard, as long as you pay the full balance at the end of the month. I see my credit card as a interest free 1 month loan. Since you have all that cash, why don't you pay off your credit card balance?
armyamy Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 06:59 pm

I don't know why we don't. I guess that money is ear-marked as long-term savings, and if I used it to pay off the old credit cards then we would have less saved. I don't know if that's a good game-plan or not, but since most of the cc debt is at 0% for the next year, I'm going stick with it til then.

Oh and I didn't know about the graph! Thanks!
Amber Says:
May 12th, 2007 at 10:25 pm

I agree with Mulyanto, make sure you pay the bill in full next month..thanks for the tip as well in regards to the graph
disneysteve Says:
May 15th, 2007 at 10:01 am

What exactly is an unexpected furniture purchase?

Army Amy's Amazing Personal Finance Blog (wow!

Saving money while my husband's in the Army and I work for peanuts.

Net Worth for April 2007 ... $17,700

4 Responses to “Net Worth for April 2007 ... $17,700”

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