June 26, 2013

Stressed out and Cutting Back the Budget

I'm starting to get stressed out about this whole rental property.  I was totally content with our decision to go forward with it, but the longer I have to wait the more I start to worry.  What if we don't get a renter right away or can't get the rent that I think we can.  Since the closing costs are about $800 more than I was originally estimated that's another big concern.  We are supposed to be able to close on Friday but the title agency called at 4:48 and of course I missed the call.  I had watched my phone all day until the end of the day and then didn't think to check it until after dinner.  The title agency is closed and left a message that they only have a 1 pm appointment left on Friday.  If we don't close Friday, then we won't be able to until Monday and I really really want to close so I can start advertising the rental and hopefully fine a good tenant quickly.  Then I'll have peace of mind.

I'm also getting stressed out about the big old check I'm going to have to write at closing.  It is basically depleting our joint savings account.  I justified this because we both have some money in personal savings accounts.  And if it came down to it, I could always sell some of my stocks or we could as a last resort get a HELOC on the equity that we have on the new condo.  Plus I really do think this was a good investment and will bring in at least a couple hundred dollars a month as well as cover all the expenses of the condo.

So I'm looking at the budget for ways to save extra money to rebuild our savings as quickly as possible.  Here are my new goals:

Lower Food Budget to $200 every two weeks = $60 per month extra savings
Lower "Extra" Money Budget to $225 per month = $15 per month extra savings

So that should give us an extra $75 a month to put into savings to try to rebuild our joint savings account as fast as possible.  Those are really the only 2 places that I can reasonably cut back.  We also usually have an extra $10 in our gas budget and an extra $10 - $20 in our electric budget so any extra money will go into our savings account as well.

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