Yesterday, I received the first $500 portion of my overage check, designed to allow me to buy books while I wait for the remaining portion to come.
So what did I do with it?
I drove straight to the bank and deposited it, then I bought some groceries. It's nice to buy some REAL food for a change rather than beans and rice all the time, but I didn't go overboard. I stocked up on a few things (toiletries, cat food, dishwashing liquid) that I wasn't out of, but I knew I'd need to replenish, so I figured I'd buy them while I had more disposable capitol.
I did splurge just a smidge, I bought the materials to make homemade buffalo wings and a can of Red Bull. But really, the cost of that was like $7, back off! LOL!
Then it came to repaying a brief loan from my sister, who gave me $20 for gas money after reading a recent blog post where I mentioned that I wasn't sure how I'd get through the week. Thanks sis.
But today I hit a milestone. I feel like I'm on my way. It's a road full of baby steps, but I took the first step a few minutes ago.
My weekly paycheck this week totalled $443.24. I just took exactly 10% of it ($44.32) and transferred it to my online savings account. This means that I'm replenishing my savings finally, which at this moment has less than $1 in it!
I've decided to do a couple of things with the overage, other than buying books and slapping the remainder in savings. Those include changing my car's oil (a necessary maintenance expense), and turning back on my iPhone (which for me is both a luxury AND a business necessity...just before the iPhone was turned off, I recieved an email on it that got me a live recording gig for The Pushers later that night, but I'd have not recieved that email when it came in if I didn't have my iPhone because I was away from home when it came in...). But once those things have been done, the rest of my overage is going into my savings account. Period. This money has to help create a more stable financial environment for me. Period.
But at any rate, I'm proud of the fact that the ball is now officially rolling on growing a savings, and keeping my bills paid. I'm excited, and things are looking up. Let's just hope that the bottom doesn't fall out of my finances again anytime soon. If I can hang on to this job long enough to build a savings, I can survive another job loss with ease.
Another important note is that Sarah has achieved something that will make things much easier to get under control. She was able to barter with the folks at Citi to get her credit card with them closed, and now only has to pay off the principle without continuing to acrue ANY interest.
I won't go into how much is owed, because it's in her name and not mine, and I don't wanna share any more of her financial business than that. But the point is that since there is now no interest, and she's been given a set amount of time to pay off this card, this lowers her monthly payment on that card, which in turn lowers MY monthly payment to HER!
This free's up an extra $59 that I can put on my Mastercard each month! The cool thing about this is that my minimum payments to that card are $22 each month at a 26.99% APR. With a balance of $500 to pay off, if I'm able to funnel an extra $59 to the principle of that card each month (according to the Debtinator app I put on my iMac last month), I can have that card paid off by around April of next year! Then, I close that, and put the $22 minimum payment + the extra $59 I now have available and pay all of that toward the Chase Visa card I have! The chase card has an APR of 29.99%, and the minimum payment is $25 each month. If I pay the $25 each month, but also include the $22 I WAS paying on my mastercard, and ALSO include the extra $59 I now have available, I can get the Chase card paid off relatively quickly as well! This is referred to as "Snowballing", and I mentioned this in my last blog titled "Digging out". I'll let you read that if you want a more in depth explaination of my plan to get out of the hole.
But this basically means that I now have an opening to funnel more money toward these debts, and will have the opportunity to get myself out of debt even quicker! That, coupled with the fact that I'm now starting to replenish my savings account, I'm back in school to build my marketing and business skills, and am enjoying the thrill of an amazing relationship, have all left me relatively confident about the way my future looks! Up til now, 2011 has had a very bleak outlook for me. With luck, responsibility, and planning, I can put it back on the right track!
So now that Phase 1 is in action, I need to brainstorm on what Phase Two will entail. More posts to come. We'll see you in 2017!
No comments:
Post a Comment