Totaled my Car!

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This is the first post of my 2005 yearly update on my road to becoming a millionaire.  Follow along over the next few weeks to see what I did in 2005 to help me become a millionaire before I was 30.  Also please continue following me in coming months to see the full picture as I lay out all of my personal financials.

 

We lived in a rural area in New York’s Hudson Valley.  The trip between my house and work was picturesque to say the least.  Not a single stoplight, nothing but rolling hills and vegetation.   With the exclusion of the beginning and the end of the trip all the roads where 55mph, even though you would not dare go 55 on some of these winding roads.  So with all of this beauty and splendor there also comes…….

DEER!

One particular day I had to head into work for a meeting.   It sucked having to go back into work for a stupid meeting, especially when most of these meetings never accomplished anything and really had no purpose, so I was pressing my time at home hanging out with the family.  I left just barely enough time to make it to the meeting but I had to push my speed a little.  I was heading around a corner, I am sure going faster than I should have been and there it was…

Several deer right in the middle of the road.

SMASH!

Between the curve in the road, my speed, and hitting the dear I lost total control of the car.  I slid all over the place, ended up smashing through a few trees and going down into a deep ditch.

It was a two lane road with no shoulder and I was driving about 50 on a corner that I should have been driving closer to 30.  Even if I was going 30 I still would have hit that deer, it just wouldn’t have been as bad.

I remember sitting in my car, almost upside down, in the ditch for a bit thinking what the heck just happened.  Then someone drove up to see what happened. I climbed out of the car in a bit of shock still not totally sure what was going on.  It was a crazy experience for sure.  I was very lucky that I made it out untouched.

Once I finally got my head straight I was pretty bummed out that I just lost a car.  I had full coverage on the car but I was worried about the dealing with the insurance company.

Would my rates go up?

What was the deductable?

Would they cover all the damages?

Would I lose my insurance?

Being the first time I ever had a car accident I was over worrying about everything.

But everything worked out great in the end.  All my worrying was in vain.  Since I hit a deer it didn’t count against my insurance so my premiums stayed the same.  The deductable was only $500 and they appraised the car for a lot more than I paid for it.  In about a week I got a check for six thousand, it was sweet.

At the time, living out in the country, we felt we needed to have two cars.  So Corinne and I went out looking for a used car.  We ended up finding a used 2000 Chevrolet Impala that was in great shape for less than the 6K.  Of course I talked him down a bit.  Once you account for the cost of the car, registration, and taxes we ended up spending $4,200.  We took what was left over and put it in the bank.  It felt good adding to our cash reserve.

We had around 40K in the bank and we could afford any car we wanted.  Instead we found a cheap car that worked great and made money off an otherwise bad situation.

So with a six thousand dollar insurance check what would you do?

Would you put it as a down payment on a more expensive car?

Would you see how much you have in the bank and add it to the total to get a better car?

Would you just go without and bank the money?

I could go on but leave a comment below with what you would do.

2004 Net Worth ($73,734)

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This is the final post in the series for our 2004 net worth.  If you missed any of the posts leading up to this one here are the links so you can go back and check them out for additional information:

My Job Sucks

Starting a Job Search

Job Search Part 2

New Job

Selling a House, Buying a New One

2004 Budget, back in New York

Here are the numbers-

Net Worth

2004 Networth

 

Now to explain them a bit-

Gross Income:  This is the total amount we made taken from our 2004 tax return.  My income from work was closer to 55K for the year and the rest of it is business profit we had, which kind of sucks since we put all the money we made on the business right back into the business, but we still had to legally pay taxes on some of it.  At the beginning we did pretty bad at claiming business expenses and stuff like that as well.  I was more focused on creating a profit and less focused on tax write-offs.

New Business:  Much like last year we did not realize it would turn into something yet.  At this point we still didn’t really know what was going on and the business was not really worth anything yet in our mind, so this is just the money we put into the business this year.

Amount Saved:  This is how much we managed to save from my full time job over the course of a year.  This is a lot higher this year for a few reasons:

  • We had a decent tax return from the prior year that we just saved, I had not changed the dependents on my withholdings at work yet.
  • Before the move we did not buy as much so we would not have as much to move.
  • We had 3 months of not having to pay for food, housing, gas, cars, entertainment, and more.  We also filled our fridge and pantry for free.  Thank you amazing relocation package!
  • When we did settle into our new house we didn’t really leave it for a while, after living on restaurants, going out every night, and living it up, it was nice to finally sit back and do nothing for a bit.

Profit from house #1:  This was the final profit we made after selling our house, not a bad investment for owning it less than a year.

Vehicles:  Back up to two vehicles.  We still had the 96 explorer.  I had also managed to pick up a 2000 Malibu for an amazing price at an auction.

House:  This is how much we purchased the house for, so I am just putting this as the value.

Cash:  This is the total amount of cash we had on hand at the end of the year.

Student Loans:  We just made minimum payments; the interest rate was so low that we just let it be.

Mortgage:  Our new house.

Net Worth:  This was a pretty big jump over last year.  It felt good to see that we held onto this much.  Also keep in mind we had a business with a decent amount of inventory that we are not even counting yet.

 

So that is our 2004.  Let me know what you guys think.

2004 Budget, back in New York

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Here is our budget numbers for the end of 2004.  These numbers where compiled for our actual purchases for the last two months of 2004 to be exact.  Our budget for the first half of the year was pretty much the same as the 2003 budget.  There was about 3 months in the middle of this year that all of our housing, living, entertainment, and food expenses were taken care of for us during the move, that was awesome we saved so much money during that time.  These numbers are a look at our expenses after we were settled into New York.

I was disappointed again that we were not saving 50% of my take home pay but we did still have a business on the side what was making us money and did save about a third of our Net.

psycho money budget

2004 budget

Gross Income:   This is the monthly income we had before anything was taken out.

Taxes/benefits:  This was the total amount taken out every month for all that government stuff and insurance.

401K:  We finally started a 401K, the only reason we really got going with this is because my employer matched what I contributed up to 2%.

Net Income:  This is the take home amount.  The total amount I actually see.

Mortgage:  This included our mortgage and property taxes.

House Insurance:  Insurance for our house.

Water, sewer:  Another expense for homeowners.

Garbage:  This was pretty cheap.

Electric: Electric was more expensive in New York than it was in California, but this was still very low.

Natural Gas:  New York is much colder in the winter than California, this was a big jump.

Cell Phone:  At this point our cell phone was 100% business expense.

Phone/internet:  Our business wouldn’t have happened without internet.

Student Loans:  We kept contemplating just paying this off but it was only at a 2% interest rate so we let it be.

Car Insurance:   We had two cars at this point.

Gas:  We lived a lot closer to everything here so we did not drive around as much.

Groceries:  Seems to be going up every year for us.

Entertainment: After the house and the new baby we did not go out as much, so this was a few pizzas basically.

Target/Walmart:  These are stores we never really went to before having a house and kids.  Pretty much all of this is baby stuff and home stuff, all those monthly things you need like diapers, and the unexpected things you had to get like a ladder.

Misc:  All those random things like prescriptions, car parts, Lowes stuff.

Tithing/Charity:  Both Corinne and I always paid 10% toward tithing since we were young.  We have always done this and will continue to do this in the future as well.

Savings:  So sad, we saved nowhere near where we wanted to.  But do keep in mind our business was going at this point, starting a business.

 

So there it is for your viewing pleasure.  Let me know what you think.