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7.9 Earthquake Near Tonga Sparks Eruption

Last week, a volcanic eruption close to the South Pacific nation of Tonga has destroyed rich birdlife and vegetation, leaving a wasteland of black ash and tree stumps, witnesses said Friday.  The volcano, on the small, uninhabited islet of Hunga Ha’apai 63 kilometres (39 miles) northwest of the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa, began erupting Monday.  It continued to spew Friday even as a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 rocked Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu.

Tonga’s chief geologist Kelepi Mafi, who inspected the area Thursday, said the volcano has two vents, one on Hunga Ha’apai and another around 100 metres offshore.

The volume of the rock and ash coming from the vents has completely filled the gap between the offshore vent and Hunga Ha’apai, increasing the island’s land mass by hundreds of square metres.

What Are Your Financial Underwater Volcanoes?

When life brings a little trembling, there are many financial issues that lie just beneath the surface that can erupt at a moment’s notice.  There is no doubt that life comes at us fast, and it seems as if we’re always playing catch-up in some regard.  If tragedy or just plain life happens unexpectedly, what areas of your financial life would you not be prepared?

Today I offer a pretty simple challenge.  Identify those Financial Underwater Volcanoes in your life today.

For me, I’d have to say first & foremost is estate planning (a will).  This seems to get pushed to the backburner — and I’m an attorney who can write up my own will for free!  Perhaps it is because I know I can write a decent will that I’m waiting for the time to construct a will that is taylor-made for my family.  When in reality, I should get a basic will in place and fine-tune the details later.

Another area of potential Underwater Financial Volcano eruption would be our emergency fund.  But we are working on this one — we just paid off our car and are now building up our baby emergency fund to at least 3 months’ expenses.

As you can see, I’m not perfect either.  But once we can identify these “hot-spots” (yes, pun intended), we can go about rectifying the situation.  I’d hate to see your island be destroyed when you could have minimized the damage.

What are YOUR Financial “Underwater Volcanoes”??

photo by The Sunday Times

MyMoneyMinute — Identify Your Financial Underwater Volcanoes

Personal Finance baby emergency fund, earthquake, emergency fund, estate planning, life insurance, Tonga, underwater, volcano, will

We paid off our car!

It is definitely tough economic times out there for everyone, so I wanted to share a bit of positive news on the home front.

While the Lovely Miss H has permanent employment, I have been working in project-based, temporary employment.  The bad news is that it is temporary.  The good news is I can work nearly as many hours as I want.  So the past few months I’ve worked a lot of hours.  I finally figured out how much we had spent compared to our February budget, and the surplus was enough to finish paying off my wife’s car, a 2004 Saab 9-3.  I just logged off of an internet chat with a bank representative confirming we had paid in full, and that the title will be mailed within 10 business days!

Consumer debt is gone

Just want to send a small thank you to Dave Ramsey and his debt snowball methodology.  Yes, there may be mathematical flaws within a particular snowball of debt, but the psychology of “quick wins” in reducing debt cannot be denied, particularly when you’re married and you need two people to consent to a financial plan!

After 26 months, through full employment & layoffs, over-spending & saving, emergencies & good times, our consumer debt is now gone.  We haven’t been the best at paying down our bills, but we remained true to the overall goals & financial principles.

So now you’re rich, right?

No, far from it!  We’ve got so much educational debt, that I think our student loans took out student loans.  A married couple both going through college and grad school without a financial plan will do that to you!

Our next step is to build up an Emergency Fund to a reasonable level.  My car has 185,000 miles on it, hers is over 100,000.  We both commute about 75 miles round-trip each day.  We will need those replaced at some point, so I’d like to be ready with enough money to pay cash for our vehicles.  Now that our vehicles are paid off though, it makes me want to drive my lovely 2000 Nissan Maxima until it dies.  Instead of impressing people with a nice car, I’ll be impressing myself with how long this car can stay around.  This shift in thinking is much easier on the pocketbook.

The Journey Continues

There are always hiccups, bumps, and bruises along the way, but we will enjoy this minor victory, and use it as motivation to keep focused on our long-term goals.

What about you?  Have you had any financial victories or setbacks lately?  Tell me where you are in your journey.

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photo by dreamweaver1619

Personal Finance baby emergency fund, Budget, Cars, consumer debt, dave ramsey, debt, emergency fund, snowball

Pet Emergency

Odie, a 2 year-old runt of a mutt, is our youngest of three dogs.  Earlier this week, he began to refuse food and not hold it down when he did manage to eat a bit.  Tuesday’s trip to the vet resulted in a few prescriptions, but not any diagnosis of the problem.

Yesterday, with Odie still rarely eating, and having dropped about 5 of his 33 pounds, we took a 2nd trip to the vet.  Bloodwork was done that eliminated pancreatitis.  Then, after two x-rays, they found an obstruction in his intestine.  The vet said it was probably a hard piece of plastic, or possibly a piece of metal.  Odie had swallowed the object, it had traveled through the stomach, but was lodged in the intestine on the way out.  The only way to retrieve the obstruction was to perform a surgery called a gastrotomy.

Odie’s gastrotomy surgery was yesterday afternoon.  The vet said it went well.  Oh, and the obstruction blocking his intestine?  A SOCK.  Not a hard plastic, not a piece of metal, a SOCK; apparently one that’s 12-18 inches long too!  I guess our lovable mutt skipped over the smaller ankle socks and went straight for the quality threads.

Odie is staying the night at the vet, resting comfortably, and we hope he makes a speedy recovery without any complications.

Life Happens

All this stress with Odie reminds me that life happens, and we can’t control when we will have emergencies.  Kids break arms, cars break down, and funerals happen three states away.

While we can’t prevent emergencies, we can do our part to plan for them.  WHEN (not IF) emergencies will happen, we need to be prepared.  An adequate Emergency Fund has 3 to 6 month’s worth of your household expenses.  We all know this is a down economy and we’re battling through a recession.  But even if you don’t yet have an adequately-funded Emergency Fund, anything is better than nothing!  It’s never too late to start — do what you can to put aside some money to help WHEN the bad times strike.  This will help you avoid credit card debt or medical bills, which drag you down with monthly payments.

Diversifying our Emergency Portfolio

Luckily in our situation, we have a few options to help cover the costs of Odie’s sock surgery:

• Any extra money remaining at the end of the month that would have been applied to our debt snowball.
• A line-item in our monthly budget for our dogs’ medical care.  Any remaining balance each month carries over to the next (kind of like cell phone “rollover” minutes), which helps us build a dog medical fund for annual check-ups and emergencies like this one.
• Stopping our debt snowball payment for a month and applying it to our vet bill.
• A $1,000 “baby” Emergency Fund.

Do you have a crazy pet story?

What options do you use to prevent debt accumulation when emergencies happen?

Pets, emergency fund baby emergency fund, Budget, debt snowball, emergency fund, Pets