The Good, the Bad and the Neutral!

I must admit that I have really fallen off the wagon this month. Ugh!

Here are my sins:

1 – Said yes to a mini vacation which cost us about $50

2 – Said yes to a night out with my friends, $50

3 – Saying yes to those two things made my husband feel entitled to spend money on video game stuff.

So, in a nutshell we have already spent about $150 on stuff that we didn’t need to. The thing that really chafes my hide is that I don’t feel like I should feel guilty about these things. I have stayed out of the store, I have stopped buying things online, I have cut coupons and watched my pennies . . . shouldn’t I be allowed a little fun for all the work I do?

The answer is, no. We have already arranged our lives in such a way that we have no room for mini vacations and extra stuff because of the payments we have to take care of.

Which is where the raise comes to save us, and my job that I will get as soon as the kids start school.

But, we still haven’t heard about the raise and from the rumors around my husband’s work the possibility that it will be the extra fifteen grand a year he knows he’s worth is very slim.

We sat down and decided we would give his work until August 30th to fix his compensation or else he’s headed to another company. Truly, he’s vastly underpaid. The man implemented a computer system that saves the company 100 grand per month! They elevated him to a team manager and everything without changing his pay. People who do less than him make six figures.

Our budget, I have come to realize, is impossibly tight. There is no room at all for error. A bad situation that needs fixing soon.

Sorry About June God, I’ll do better in July!

Wow! I have not written in awhile so rather than doing a themed post I am going to go all over the place. Here are my money thoughts, woes, triumphs for June!

1. June has been a bad month for our budget. We’ve gone $140 over budget on eating out, while going $100 under budget for grocery shopping. Sure, that is only a difference of about $40, but if you remember, we don’t have $40 anywhere. Twice I had to literally beg my husband not to eat out when we could just go home and make a sandwich. I can’t say I am the most popular person. He even has the kids against me on this fast food riot. Usually I am not the battling type but this one is going down in the annuls as one I will win!

2. We spend more money on gas than we budgeted. Over $100 more. We figured this out by watching it month over month. So that amount has to go up in the budget. Of course, there isn’t an extra $100 for the gas. Are you depressed for me yet?

3. Yesterday we took our van in to get the oil changed. We also asked them to look at the check engine light. They told us the van is due for $300 worth of maintenance (I would list what it is but the moment they start talking engines I lose all interest, all I saw was the $300). I told them we didn’t have $300 so we’d have to do it in a month or two. My husband got mad and said without the maintenance our van will explode like one of those car chase scenes in the movies and I will be stranded on a dark highway somewhere with the kids and a dead cell phone and wolves howling in the distance and strangers with tattoos and peg legs coming by and all that. I stood my ground. I am DEAD DOG SERIOUS about this not using a credit card thing. We haven’t touched one since May!

4. Ebay is having a free listing sale for two weeks so I am pulling out some junk I know that is worth some bucks to pay for the rising costs around here.

5. CHASE card’s buyer protection program is LAME. In March I ordered some magazines via a web site called Dotcommags. It was two subscriptions to Sparkleworld (a magazine for little girls). Since it is only published eight times a year I knew I would have to wait for the magazine, but it being June and all I realized something was wrong. I went to the web site and it was gone and there were all sorts of online complaints. I called my CHASE card services and they told me it was just ten days past the 90 day fraud protection safety net. Then I noticed the charge came through Paypal as the credit card processing gateway Dotcommags used. Paypal was very helpful. They have a 30 day fraud deadline but the girl told me that she would reimburse the $30 anyway. So, moral of the story, CHASE Credit Card = LAME. Paypal = Awesome.

6. I had the garage sale and made $280. It was hard though. I gave tons of stuff away and yet I STILL have half a garage full of junk. I am going to have another yard sale sometime in August.

7. I found an antique ride on toy on the side of the road that is worth $300, according to ebay and various web sites. I am going to try and sell it on Craigslist since it is too big to ship.

8. Our yard is sucking my will to live. We have a half acre plot that takes us about four hours of maintenance a week. The water bill this month is going to be scary. I know that if we invested a little money into it we will be able to do less maintenance on it, but there’s no extra so it will have to wait.

9. An update on my father-in-law’s cancer. It turns out to be operable and that is the best we could hope for. His surgery is in August.

10. We find out about my husband’s raise on Monday. Let’s hope it is what he hopes for and deserves. This guy works 18 hour days for this company on salary. He deserves to be paid about 15K more than he is being paid, plus he knows he can find a six figure job elsewhere. This is very good because no matter what happens (either he gets a new job or gets an adequate raise) we will be in the positive by the end of it!

11. Kids are out of school and I have been super busy on a writing job I promised to finish by August 12th. I am not getting paid much but it is pretty fun. After that, it’s time for my DREADED NIGHT SHIFT!

All this money managing is challenging but I find it a little fun too.

Funny Story!

My mom called me today. “Do you remember about two years ago when we all ordered flowers off the internet for really cheap?”

Me: “Sortof, yeah, I think I do.”

Her: “Well, you might want to check your credit card because that company has been charging us ten dollars a month for two years!”

Me: “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Her: “Nope.”

Me: “Well, we’re not getting charged because we have been checking our accounts every week together and haven’t seen anything come through.”

Her: (Suddenly embarressed) “Oh, well, your dad and I don’t ever check the accounts.”

So . . . I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree! This just shows how being unconcious about your money leads to huge trouble!

Update

We’ve had a crazy week. This is the reason why I am blogging at almost one in the morning. There has been little time for it during the day.

We are not doing as well on the budget this month as we did last month. Mostly, I am to blame, but it could also be stress too.

For one thing, I didn’t go grocery shopping last week (I go once per week) and so come the weekend we were low on foodstuffs and went out to eat twice. Our eating out budget of $100 per month is already at $123, so you can see with lots of month left we are in a bit of a pickle there!

Then I bought a rug at IKEA for the new craft room. I used some of the leftover cash from my antiques business. Which, speaking of that, I had to pay the store owner a lot more than I bargained for, but finally my account is settled there and all the extra stuff is waiting with little pink garage sale stickers! I am finding that I don’t miss it all that much. The stress relief alone has been very valuable!

My husband thinks his raise might not be as much as he hopes for and deserves. We were talking about it all night tonight. Some of the guys on his team are only getting 3%, others are getting zero. My husband is vastly underpaid and he knows it so he is really interested to see if they compensate him for his work. If they don’t he will be searching for a new job and will likely find one quickly.

I got to thinking today. It’s downhill from here. As long as we aren’t hit with a major catastrophe then it is all down hill. We have already agreed to not use our credit cards (they are safely hidden and we haven’t touched them for two months!), we have already agreed to live within our means (which is going as well as could be expected!) and so as long as those three conditions are met (no catastrophe, no credit, living within our means) we can’t help but pay off all this debt. It is just a matter of time! Raises will come, other jobs will come. At some point we wont have to pay primary mortgage insurance. Everything will be alright as long as we are careful and pay attention!

Everything is Coming Together! Everything is Falling Apart.

It has been a most insane week with no hopes of getting better soon.

Credit Card#3 is kaput! Hooray! I just have to keep an eye on the card to make sure I pay whatever leftover interest is charged on the balance on the beginning of the month. That’s the good news of the week.

But other than that this has been a very tough couple of days. We found out my father in law has cancer, this while my mother in law is already suffering from terminal bone cancer. He is going to have to undergo surgery and other treatments that will leave him incapacitated.

Then, yesterday, a man that everyone loved in our old town, a man who means a lot to my family and friends, a man who is only 42, has six kids and is a local religious teacher died of leukemia.

So I’ve been bawling all week long. I’ve been scared. I keep thinking that if it can happen to them, it can happen to me. It makes me want to take better care of myself, and here I am looking for a graveyard shift that will surely destroy my health.

More and more I am realizing that life is like a huge scale with many trays. The goal is always perfect balance, but when you put a lot of effort in one tray (let’s say, the ‘finances’ tray) then other trays dip low. I can’t possibly pound down all this debt without some serious suffering in my relationship with my family, my home order, my health. The money tray is all out of whack. I have to steal from other trays in order to get it to balance. Once I get a job I fear the things I work hard to maintain will slip.

So these have been my troubles this week. I am trying to keep a good attitude though. Being scared and weepy isn’t helping anyone. I know that if I work hard on these problems in my life, everything will eventually balance.

Almost Done With Credit Card #3

On May 20th my credit card balance was $2,743.06

Now, thanks to a lot of selling the unused items around my house it is all the way down to $100. I suspect with a few sales I have coming through the pipe it will be gone by the end of Tuesday! Only took about two and a half weeks to pay off! That feels great!

As I have mentioned in previous posts my husband is due for a raise soon and he is hoping to come up in pay scale about $10,000 per year, which would increase our take home pay to around $500 after taxes, putting us in the black. He deserves this raise. Both of us know he’s underpaid for the work he does. He knows he can get a job in a week with another company for that much so he has a lot of bargaining leverage. We find out in a few weeks what the raise will be and I am nervous and excited!

That said, I can tell expenses will be higher this month. Car gas, food, the water bill, electric bill and so forth always go way high in the summer. We have a large lawn to water, a large house to cool, a large family to go see all across the state and a lot of fast food to eat on our adventures. I am trying to reign in at least the food budget. Yesterday we were out and about all day and I refused to stop at a fast food place to eat dinner. I made everyone wait until we got home at 8:00. We saved $15 that way and that felt good. Next time I will plan better and bring snacks or something. If anyone has any ideas for in-the-car meals (aside from sandwiches) please let me know!

Job Uncertainties

As part of our kill-the-debt plan I have to go get a job, a real 8 hour job. I haven’t had one in eight years so my resume is a little sad. I quit my job as a receptionist when I was 21 years old to stay home with my baby and started doing the antique booth shortly after.

I am a big fan of staying at home with the kids. Growing up my parents were never able to leave work and stay home with me when I was sick. They were never able to come to school performances or volunteer at the PTA or anything like that. Most of the time I was on my own after school too. I could have gotten into more trouble than I did, but I was a good girl.

So I am torn with the idea of getting a job. I know I have to but I don’t want to leave my two kids in daycare after school. Plus, the costs might not be justified. My youngest will start Kindergarten in August and so she will only attend school half of the day. Both kids go “off track” once every six to eight weeks because they are on year-round school, so that will be an added daycare cost too. If I only make about $10 per hour (which is apparently all I am worth on the job market, depressing huh?) then I can’t really afford daycare.

So, the answer, we have decided, is that I get a graveyard shift and sleep while the kids are at school. Even though this solves the daycare issue it will leave me severely sleep deprived (I will only be able to sleep four hours before my youngest gets home). Most graveyard shifts are from midnight until 7 a.m., so I would get home, fall asleep and wake up at 12:00 to get my girl from the bus stop. When they are off track then they will just have to run around the house until I get up at noon.

This isn’t an ideal solution. There are lots of problems with it aside from the sleep. For one, my husband is chairman of the board of a very important choir here in our state and he has to attend weekly meetings until late into the evening and he doesn’t want to give that up for my job. He also works at his regular job until very late many days, too. Another problem is that I will have little time to dedicate to tasks I really love like writing (I am currently finishing up a novel) and I will miss a lot of fun things like camping trips and family events.

But the human spirit can do anything if it’s temporary, right? I would only have to work this job for 18 months, barely a blip in my kid’s lives and my own. According to this plan it will take six months to pay off our car, six months to pay off Credit Card #2, and another half a year to pay off Credit Card #3 with the debt snowball. After that we will still have the student loan debt but it would free up enough income that I could quit and we can still pay it down quite rapidly with my husband’s income.

Now, if I can find a job during the day that pays about $13 per hour I can afford the daycare and would still get my precious sleep, but I have been looking around and aside from a call center job (a last resort, I HATE call centers) I wouldn’t be able to make that much, which is super depressing since I could work two hours at the antique booth and still make about 2K per month before taxes. But that was then, this is now. I have to face now.

I have only about a week left at the antique booth then I have a writing gig that will carry on until August. It wont pay much but I have promised to do it so I will. In August I will go to every place I can think of and give away resumes. I am thinking a good graveyard shift would be at a hotel as a night auditor. Rumor has it you can read on the job and do homework because it’s mostly quiet. I wouldn’t mind that.

Despite the above misgivings I am excited to start a job. I want to pound slowly away at this debt!