- How to Stick to a Budget
- For a Budget That Works, Get Control of Your Debt
- What Do Average Families Spend?
- Balancing Your Budget in the Big City
- Income Dropped? Expenses Have to Drop, Too
- How to Beat "Frugal Fatigue"
- Fast Ways to Cut Cable, Cell Bills
- What to Do with an Extra $5,000 a Month
- Planning a Family? How to Prepare Financially
- Facing a Layoff? Rule #1: Conserve Cash
- Living Paycheck to Paycheck? Knock It Off
- Why Your Budget Doesn't Work
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
What to Do with an Extra $5,000 a Month
Q: My wife and I are about to sell our home and move in with her parents. We’ll have to drain our savings of $15,000 to pay off the rest of what we owe on the mortgage. After the sale, however, our reduced expenses mean we’ll have at least an extra $5,000 a month. We’re carrying roughly $20,000 in credit card debt and make $130,000 a year in income. I see this mortgage-free living as a great opportunity and don’t want to waste it. Can you recommend a good book or point us in a direction to ensure that we capitalize on this interesting time in our lives?
A: That must have been one massive mortgage you were carrying. You may feel positively giddy when those payments are gone, but don’t let it go to your head.
It would be easy to ratchet up your spending now that you have so much extra money in the bank, but resist the urge. Concentrate first on wiping out your credit card debt; then focus on building up your emergency savings. The discipline of paying off debt and building savings will help you learn to live within your means, something that you obviously weren’t doing when you took on that home loan and built up credit card debt.
You also should be saving aggressively for retirement, if you aren’t already. Take advantage of any workplace retirement plans: Contribute at least enough to get the full company match, and consider funding Roth IRAs for both of you. Roth contributions aren’t tax deductible, but the money is tax-free in retirement, and you can contribute up to $5,000 each as long as your modified adjusted gross income as a married couple filing jointly is under certain limits (in 2012, the ability to contribute phases out between $173,000 and $183,000 for married couples filing jointly; for singles, it phases out between $110,000 and $125,000).
You can learn more about the basics by reading Eric Tyson’s excellent primer Personal Finance For Dummies (Wiley, 2012).