Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

This weekend I was describing autism to my mother and my weirdly autistic tendencies. (I tend to listen to one CD in my car over and over again every day, even though I have an in-dash 6 fully loaded up with 5 other options. I also like to repeat the same song over and over too, but I don’t do it when I have passengers. But it tempts me.) As I described the condition, my mom asked me if I thought my cousin was autistic. I said no, but he is developmentally disabled. My cousin went to a special high school for developmentally disabled kids, so I’m not making a casual diagnosis. He’s been tested and evaluated. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we are all a little worried about how his older brother will care for him when my aunt and uncle die. He’s just getting started on his career path as a dental technician and it sounds like a good career one that isn’t physically taxing that he can do for the next 35 years.

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Surprisingly, there were some good things in my budget.

On the income side, because I made an effort to save, I made ~$100.00 in interest by doing nothing but saving! I like that! I don’t think 2007 will see a comparable number unless people want ING referrals from me. The ones I got from 2006 were categorized as interest income. (Email me at mapgirlsfiscalchallenge at Google’s mail service.)

I saved money on my car insurance, and the savings is approximately the cost of my new homeowner’s policy I had written this year. I expect this savings to be eaten up by a rise in premiums next year.

I don’t know about you, but I plan out what I’m going to pay in credit card interest. For some reason, I paid ~$100.00 less than planned this year. I must be some kind of pessimist!

Though I splurged on a ridiculously expensive skirt this year, I was under budget by ~$900.00. I think Frumperella can reassess this figure completely for 2007.

My crack habit, er, excuse me, my YARN habit was under budget by ~$100.00. Thank god I quit my second job at the crack house, i.e. yarn shop. I spent most of my budget in two purchases during their annual clearance sale at the beginning of the year. I think I realized what I was doing and made sure not to buy anything else unless I REALLY needed it. Now I don’t feel so bad buying high quality kid mohair as a year-end gift to myself.

My gift budget looks like I was under ~$300.00, but that doesn’t seem right due to a weird little transaction I did with my sibling to buy wedding presents for my cousin. I was probably under by only ~$150.00. The other thing is that I tend to buy lunches and dinners for friends as treats for their birthday, and I put that all into my dining out category. Remarkably, I wasn’t ridiculously overbudget by dinging out, which is why it didn’t make the BAD list.

Before you chide me for dining out a lot. I was totally on budget with my spending AND I grossly over estimated my grocery budget by ~$1200.00. It’s not like I overspent on a generic category of ‘FOOD’. This also will have to be reassessed for next year, including another $250.00-$350.00 case of wine. My wine rack is empty and needs replenishment.

I don’t understand Quicken sometimes and I think this has to do with my screwy allocation for healthcare benefits from work, but I was under budget by ~$1800.00 for a generic ‘Insurance’ amount.

Surprisingly, my medical expenses were not way out of budget. I was under by ~$200.00. But I will have to carefully plan 2007 since I bumped up my Medical FSA and I still have a mountain of expenses to cover. My dentist was very clear on how much stuff will cost me for each item I’m having done which allowed me to change my FSA allocation. Make sure you ask yours for an outline of charges. They really should be able to give you one if you ask.

Last interesting category is my taxes. I got refunds from DC and VA, but only after overpaying VA due to their weird auditing practices. If you don’t include my property taxes on the car and condo, I actually over budgeted by ~$1000.00. I think this is primarily due to ramping up my pre-tax contributions and deductions.