Making Me a Millionaire

Oh, How I Love OpenTable

The husband and I love to eat.  It’s a great way to just get away, experience different cuisines and have some private time to talk and bond.  Although I’m all for saving money, I just need to eat out at least once a week.  It’s one of those things my husband and I really enjoy and aren’t willing to cut out.  So if we’re going to be dining out, why not earn points towards a free meal in the future?  That is why, I always use OpenTable to make reservations.

Here’s how it works:

1) Make your free reservations at OpenTable.com

2) When you arrive at the restaurant, let the host know you have reservations and give them your name

3) Enjoy your meal

After your meal, you should see points added to your account.  Most restaurants will offer 100 points for dining.  Each city has a list of restaurants that offer 1,000-point reservations.  I’ve noticed in the cities I looked at that there are many good restaurants that offer the 1,000 point reservations.  These are great as they allow you to build up points much faster than the regular 100 point restaurants.

What do you do with all these points? You redeem them for Dining Cheques!  They are basically gift certificates that you can use at any OpenTable restaurant.

2,000 OpenTable Points = $20 OpenTable Dining Cheque
5,000 OpenTable Points = $50 OpenTable Dining Cheque
10,000 OpenTable Points = $100 OpenTable Dining Cheque

I always always always use OpenTable to make my reservations.  You can even use it for lunch reservations and small restaurants.  It doesn’t hurt to always check before you head out to eat!

Back from Seattle

Sorry folks!  I’ve been MIA for a while because we’ve been in Seattle checking out the city and deciding whether or not it is the place to move to.  Well, after much thought and discussion, we’ve decided that Seattle will most likely be our new home!  Now we’ll just have to work out the kinks and start downsizing.  We currently live in a 4br townhouse and have accumulated a bit of junk.  We’re looking to move into a 2br/2ba apartment in Seattle so we’ll need to spend lots of time on Craigslist  trimming down on stuff.  I’m glad we’ll be downsizing because after living in such a big house, I really do believe the bigger the house you have the more money you spend to furnish it!  I am however, sad that we won’t be owning property.  I really hope we can get back into the world of real estate before home prices get too high again.  Sometimes I wonder if this move is a good idea.  It’s definitely a great place to raise well rounded kids but with our families back east I’m sometimes conflicted.  My husband doesn’t seem to have this problem as he just does it without worrying so much.  Would you ever move across country to save yourself from state income taxes?  Would you move far from your family to give your kids a good environment to grow up in?

January 2010 Net Worth

Here’s an update on my net worth for this month.  I’m feeling good with every month that passes!  But then again, when the economy has hit almost rock bottom, going up is not a big surpirse.

This month, we’re in the green by $26548.60!  The only thing that depreciated was my car.  We actually sold it (haven’t gotten the check yet though) for $24,000 so I know we lost $1k there but that’s OK.  I just canceled the auto insurance for that car so we should be saving a little bit more money.

Here’s a graph that shows how much the net worth has gone up in the last few months.

This has been the best month so far!

Next up:  Once we get the check from the car we sold, I’d like to use that money (and pull out some money from our cash savings) to pay off that home loan of $36,978.55.  With that paid off, we’ll have an extra $600 a month to play with and we’ll save ourselves a couple thousand dollars in interest.

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Goals for 2010

I’m very happy with the way we managed our finances towards the second half of 2009.  We curbed our spending and made sure we weren’t being reckless with our money and as a result, we managed to accumulate a good chunk in our emergency fund.

In 2010, we will be selling our house and moving to a new city.  We booked our tickets to Seattle for January 14 so hopefully that will help us in making our decision on where to move to.  With all these big changes, its a bit more difficult to have aggressive goals but I will still list some that I plan on aiming for this year.

1) Max out the Roth IRA for 2009. Since we still have until April 2010 to put money into our Roth IRA, I plan on maxing both our accounts out.  The Roth IRA is one of the best retirement vehicles and I plan on taking full advantage of it while we still can.

2) Put away $50K into our down payment fund. 50K sounds like a lot to be able to put away, but we’re lucky that my husband still has 5 months of his severance left!  We plan on putting away his entire severance and continue living our lives like we normally do (ok maybe with a little more spluring than usual).  We want to buy a home soon and we all know how insanely expensive west coast home prices are.  We probably don’t want to carry more than a 300K mortgage so that means we’d have to put down at least 200K.

3) Invest more in stocks. In 2009, we focused mostly on mutual funds and not enough on stocks.  This year, I plan on evening it out and investing in both stocks and mutual funds and try to do dollar cost averaging.  I also want to learn a little more about ETFs.

4) Spend less on food. This past year, we spent over $16K on dining out alone!  It’s carelessness and gluttony at its best.  I’m not proud of it.  I hope to cut this in half for this year by cooking more at home and being more mindful and aware of what we’re ordering and what kind of restaurants we are going to.  I’ve also wasted groceries on many occasions when we had food at home but we chose to dine out and ended up throwing out the food later on.  My new goal is to eliminate excess and waste!

5) Give more. My husband and I have a foundation set up with Vanguard.  The purpose of this foundation is to one day either set up a school for underprivileged kids or to offer scholarships to students who cannot afford college.  I would like to contribute $10,000 to the foundation this year.

6) eBay. With the big move happening this year, this is a great opportunity for us to sell some of our furniture or clutter on eBay.

7) Prepare for a baby! Ideally, we’d like to start having kids soon and with each pregnancy/delivery costing around $20K we need to start preparing.  I don’t want to actually set aside the money for a baby but I want to be aware of the costs and prepare accordingly by putting some money away and being smart with our spending habits.

It will be fun to look back on this entry and see how many of these goals were met.  I hope we succeed in achieving our goals and I have great hopes for 2010!