A few weeks ago, I received my last student loan refund for the school year. A fat $3,500 check was sent my way and I quickly put it away in savings. I don’t need that much money sitting around – costing 7.9% -  but I gotta admit – it feels good to see an account balance of almost $8,000. Even when the money isn’t really yours.

I sent some back even though I didn’t want to. First just a $1,000. Then I got real and sent another $2,000 back. That brings my total student loan refund account to $2,200. Now I’m debating whether or not to send some/all of the rest back.

Without it, I’ll still have almost $2,500 in personal checking/savings plus an additional $3,000 in business accounts I could tap if the world ended something crazy happened. Yet, it provides an odd sense of security since I try to pretend the business accounts don’t exist.

I know I have two major expenses coming up: international airfare and a $800 study abroad deposit. Airfare needs to be purchased soon – by the end of May most likely. That ticket is likely to cost $800-$1,200. The deposit isn’t due until June 1st, so I have 3 or 4 more paychecks coming before that date.

I think the best solution right now is to send in all but $1,000 of it. That would cut the interest I pay while providing some security in case in my budget is about to tear apart after paying for airfare and the deposit. I’ve also considered opening a new credit card with a 0% promo offer for 6 or so months so I could pay over time without paying extra. Gotta work the system when possible…

How much do you think I should I send back?

Maybe it’s just one of those days, but I’m starting to think I need to change my financial game plan. Over the past 2 years, I’ve been attempting to do everything and anything with my money. Save for retirement. Invest. Create an emergency fund. Save up for a new car.

All of those things are great and I wish I could do ‘em all at the same time. But I can’t. Saving for a new car and investing are out. I’ll tackle those goals down the line. Instead, right now I want to focus on investing for retirement. The reason is pretty simple: I can’t get any of the time I stay out of the market back. Starting with $1,000 at age 19 instead of age 22 means an extra $100,000 at “retirement”. Who wouldn’t want to get in on that?

To accomplish this, I want to open an account at Vanguard. The Roth IRA I funded with 50 bucks at E*trade isn’t cutting it. I’m around $300 away from Vanguard’s $1,000 minimum balance. So for the next 6 paydays, I’m saving $50 to put towards my new Roth IRA. Having this done before I go to Italy is a priority so I’ve giving myself plenty of time to get the transfer complete.

Speaking of Italy, I wanted to mention that I’m no longer actively saving for my trip. Maybe I’ll start again once the IRA is funded, but I’m not sure about that yet. I’ve realized that it’s largely pointless to try and save up any meaningful amount in such a short time period. Blog income isn’t quite that strong. . Instead, I’m going to embrace my student loans and start applying for more scholarships.

I think this change will make my money a lot more productive. It’s just not realistic to work on every single goal I have. So I’m slowing down and making changes that should benefit me long term instead.

I’ve never made a budget. I know that making a budget is something everyone says you need to do. But I’ve never bothered.

It’s not that I think budgets are bad or aren’t necessary. I’d argue that if you have debt or a decent amount of bills every month, you should budget. But I have neither of those things. Of course, not having a budget doesn’t mean you can get away with not figuring out a general spending and saving plan.

I’ve saved almost half of every paycheck I received this summer. I make sure I have enough each month for gas and my cellphone bill. Plus I spend about $50-$100 on eating out, movies, and other entertainment. Other than that, I just put random amounts into my various savings accounts. Isn’t that enough?

I think the biggest reason why I don’t budget is because they seem too serious. All black and white with no wiggle room. My general spending/saving plan fits me better. If I had student loans, a car payment, and a mortgage I’d probably budget more seriously. But until then, I like going with flow.

How about you? Do you have a serious budget? A moderate budget? Or no idea of what you spend each month?

I’ve talked a few times about why an emergency fund is important. And I’ve talked about how awesome ING Direct is as a place to keep your emergency cash – and I swear it’s not because of the sweet bonuses they hand out. Honest.

However, I’ve never had the need to actually use the e-fund. In fact, I hadn’t really funded it that much. I know, outrageous. Here I am preaching and then not practicing it. But hear me out – I wasn’t working from February to April so I had an income of about zero. Now that I’m working for The Fed, I’m saving $150 from each and every weekly paycheck I receive.

The benefits of it have already showed up. I got my oil changed the other day. During the courtesy check, the mechanic noticed that my passenger side sway link bar is toast – it’s not attached to my vehicle. At all.

The repair isn’t very expensive – about $60 bucks for parts and labor, so I’m planning to get it done it done within the next few days. Even better, I have the cash sitting in my emergency fund. Then when I get paid, I’m going to refill the account with $210 – $150 for the normal contribution and $60 to replace what was spent.

Even though the repair was inexpensive this time and I can easily cover it with my regular paycheck, it feels good knowing that my emergency fund is in place for things like this. Next time, which hopefully isn’t for a long long time, the expense could be larger.

Still hustlin’ along to reach $1000 in emergency savings…

Before you can really get a grip on where your money is going, you have to track it. For a while, I would just check online banking or head over to Mint. The problem though is that all this automation wasn’t  helping me understand my spending habits. I would log in about once a week or so and look at my transactions and say “Oh, yeah, I spent $30 on fast food last week. I wish that was lower. Oh well. Maybe I’ll do better next week.”

Because I wasn’t the one actually writing down the expense, it felt like I wasn’t spending money.

Now, I’ve decided to use an Excel spreadsheet to track every cent I spend. I’ll still keep my Mint account for the awesome graphs and pie charts, but I need to be more hands on with my money. The follow screenshot is a picture of the spreadsheet I’m using. It’s dead simple and only took me about 5 minutes to set up. You can download it here.

My plan is to go through my receipts every few days and update the spreadsheet. Realistically, I can probably do this everyday because I don’t typically have a lot of transactions in any given month. Just by typing in the numbers myself, I felt like I was running my finances versus my finances running me.

While I like Excel, it’s not definitely not the only option you have to track all your expenses manually. Other options include:

• A trusty checkbook. Simply record every transaction as you make it.
• A spending journal. Just get a journal (lined if that makes it easier for you) and instead of writing your deepest feelings, write all of your expenses.
• Plain old paper. Step 1: Grab a blank sheet of paper. Step 2: Write down the crap you buy Step 3: There is no step 3, sorry.

I hope that I can get a much better insight into my spending activities with this method than by just using Mint or online banking. Eventually, I’d like to just not worry about every single expense, but I’m not quite there.