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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.

About 5 years ago (very soon after my husband and I got married) I saw David's Bach's book, "Automatic Millionaire" and it truly 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 managed to save for a downpayment on a home, open and contribute automatically to 2 retirement accounts, and get rid of all our credit card debt once and for all. At the time this blog was first written I was very excited to write that we had "increased our networth from $0 to $18,000!" Now that number has gone up a bit.

Retirement.
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. We also try to max out our Roth IRA every year (some times it doesn't quite happen but close enough).

Saving.
We used to save 25%, or $1,000, per month of his take home pay but still had credit debt and as you'll see in some of the old blog entries we struggled with that for a while. We've notched down savings a bit, but still save regularly and have an emergency cushion that we're comfortable with.

Home.
After moving back in with my parents we saved like crazy and managed to save $33,000 for a downpayment on a our first home! We financed the rest with a 15 year mortgage since we had recently begun listening to Dave Ramsey and liked a lot of his ideas. We pay an extra $300 a month towards principle which means that if everything goes as planned the house will pay off in 10 years instead of 15!

Cars.
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.

Our goals now are to pay off the house and save for when my husband gets out of the army, whenever that may happen...

Viewing the 'Net Worth' Category

NetworthIQ i love you

October 5th, 2010 at 06:40 pm

https://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2010/09

Our debts keep going down and our assets keep going up...what more can a person ask for? I always felt like some of the things we did were not understood by our friends, but I feel good about the choices and sacrifices we've made along the way.

Posted in Net Worth, | 2 Comments »

July Net Worth... $20,550.

August 5th, 2007 at 05:04 pm

http://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2007/07

Our networth over the past year and a half has been steadily increasing. This will soon end as I go back to college and try to pay for that in installment payments instead of saving $1,000 a month for our future house. I still want to take out a student loan but haven't applied or had a chance to research it. School starts soon, and that first installment payment for tuition is coming up. It will be almost $2,000 due on August 20th...yikes! College truely is expensive.

Posted in Net Worth | 2 Comments »

Net Worth Report for June 2007 ... $19,480

July 17th, 2007 at 12:21 am

http://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2007/06

I promised to post our networth on the 1st of every month, but this month has been pretty hectic and I've not been online lately. But here it is! I took everyone's advice to pay off the high interest cards before they got out of control, and next will be tackling the 0% interest card...afterall that 0% won't last forever!

19 months of saving money. House down payment here we come!

Posted in Net Worth | 3 Comments »

Net Worth Report for May 2007 ... $18,509

June 2nd, 2007 at 02:47 am

http://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2007/05

I edited our net worth to put in the exact figures and that raised it a little. It's going to change dramaticaly tommorow or so when I pay a couple thousand dollars on our credit card bills, thanks to the advice of everyone on here! Smile

Posted in Net Worth | 0 Comments »

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

May 3rd, 2007 at 07:25 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 »

Net Worth for March 2007 ... $16,400

April 3rd, 2007 at 03:04 am

http://www.networthiq.com/people/ArmyAmy/2007/03

Hey thanks YOUCANDOIT for the link to the Net Worth IQ website...

I don't count our cars or personal property in figuring our net worth...maybe i would if they were worth more. Anyways the only thing I don't like about the networth website is that they list "cash" as a column, and that's where I wound up putting what we have in our savings account since there was no column for "Savings account".

Our networth is currently $16,400. Not bad if I do say so myself. Smile

That's 16 months of hardcore savings!!

Posted in Net Worth | 6 Comments »

Net Worth

March 30th, 2007 at 05:08 pm

Oh I noticed on some other people's blogs that they periodically post their net worth and how they are doing compared to last month's net worth. I think that's awesome! So few people in the "real world" (the land outside of computers) will tell even their friends what their net worth is, and here on personal finance blogs folks offer up their progress and goals to anyone who wants to read! How cool is that?

Well, I think I shall make this a monthly column and update it on the 1st of each month. I wish I could be like some of the people on here (like Ima Saver who is my blogging idol!) and post daily, but I guess once every few days isn't too bad...