Kris10leigh's Personal Finance Blog

I couldn't sleep last night because I kept playing with numbers in my head.

This week is going to be difficult. We have to work within the money my husband cashed yesterday and it has to stretch pretty far. I need to root through the freezer and figure out what we have and better yet, what we can eat for lunches. I actually have dinners figured out, not lunches.

It seems I only blog when I'm feeling good about things. Ha!

We just paid off some bills that made it possible to be back down to just one CC again. It seems pathetic that in a whole year's time we've only paid off about $4,000. But we're in a better place now than we were. Then I was so hung up on putting every penny we got into the CC payment that I was leaving nothing in our checking account forcing us to use our CC to buy groceries. Sinced then, I've stopped doing that. It's been about 5 months since we used a credit card at all. We were going through a cycle of having nothing left over at the end of the month, putting Christmas on the card and then starting all over. Now I am putting money aside for Christmas and am not spending every spare penny we have toward the card.

So I am optomistic that this is the year. My plan is to pay off $1000 every month, and little windfalls will help in addition to that. Worst case scenario, I'm hoping for:
May: 15300
June: 14300
July: 13300
August: 12300
September: 11300
October: 10300
November: 9300
December: 8300
January: 7300
February: 6300
March: 5300
April: 4300
May: 3300
June: 2300
July: 1300
August: 300

I've joined a challenge for the next 6 weeks in which I have agreed to be pretty perfect with my diet and exercise. This means I have even given up my dark chocolate!

I am following a strict phase 2 of South Beach. I occassionally slip into a phase 3 style, but for the next 6 weeks, I will re-acquaint myself with a true phase 2! In addition to that, I am going to hit the gym hard! (As opposed to just slapping it. LOL!) Seriously, no more sauna because that time eats into my workout time. For six weeks, I'm doing the full hour with intensity! No whining allowed! Can't wait to record the end results.

On the finance front...not much to report. I just need to get more organized. Like we forgot to pull out cash for our son's lunch this morning. I need to remember on Friday to pull out cash. Go back to the cash system...it worked.

Just sent another payment of $348 to the CC. We used $50.00 worth of coupons to pay for this weeks groceries. I think our grocery bill totaled about $27.00, so not bad for the week.

My intentions for journaling were good. I got sick and so I haven't really been thinking about finances this week.

But today is payday, so I thought about it.

Yesterday's frugal thing came in a little card I found on my desk! I was cleaning out a file on top of my desk at school and I came across a Christmas card, which I almost threw away unopened. But I opened it and it was a card from one of my kids with $6.00 worth of Wendy's bucks inside. I was so surprised!! Someone stuck it in this file and I never found it! I felt really bad though, because I never thanked him for it! So I wrote a quick thank you note to him. I had been lazy that morning though and hadn't packed a lunch, which is very rare these days. I always pack now. And my plan was to go to Wendy's for a salad. So that is what I did and it was free.

The remaining CC is down to $1500 and should be paid off within the month.

I get an extra pay in March and I'm trying to decided what to do with it. I want to put it in the savings account and use it to completely pay for daycare next year upfront. That would relieve stress for me.

I am down 29 lbs now!

LOL! Well, the weightloss is still happening. I'm glad to see that my Bio shows 21 lbs lost since last I was here because now it is 27. And that is where I spend most of my typing time now...in the weight loss arena.

I am going to try to make it a daily habit to come and saying SOMETHING!

My 3 goals for 2007 are:
Lose total of 77 lbs
Get my house in order
Erase this debt

Despite my lack of journaling, I have actually been successful in all three areas so far.
27 lbs down

I just got the house in order and am following the principals of Flylady again. It feels so good too!! And now with the house in order and the weight on near auto-matic piolet, it's time to face the finances!!

I've done two things finance related today.
1. I menu planned. I copied out a bunch of South Beach friendly crock-pot recipes and am going to plug them into days of the week and create a shopping list. Tonight and tomorrow and I can pre-prepare these yummy dishes and freeze them for the week ahead. I did this same thing last week and was very pleased with the results!!
2. I called the credit card company and bank to track down a missing payment. I hate the way they make me feel like it's my fault. The CC company was actually very nice. It's the bank that annoyed me.

I'm off to finish my grocery list!

Ok, so I just went and I added up the ugly truth and it's not as bad as I thought. Our current debt is $20,115.42. Christmas basically had us remaining steady. And actually, the $116 more than when I quit in October is gas and groceries that I just haven't paid off yet. We really didn't use the cards except for convenience.

So, here we go! I faced reality and I'm ready to roll! DH got his church pay last night and the entire amount goes to the cards as soon as he gets it in the bank.

Hello all! I am back! I took a little break as Christmas hit hard! I wasn't prepared for Christmas at all and as it turned out, all our extra pennies went to Christmas. BUT, I have come out of it not too far behind, though not at all ahead. LOL! This journal entry is my first step getting back on track, so I haven't even faced reality yet as far as how much I owe on the CC. I send a little more than the minum each month, so I know I'm better off than I was, but...well I just haven't checked in a while.

My goal for this month is to regain the obsessiveness I had before! LOL! My obsession has transferred to my weight issues, which is good, but now I need to be diligent about both.

So I am back 21 lbs lighter around the waist, but not so much lighter in the wallet.

Here's to January and 2007!

I seem to go through major ups and downs when it comes to debt reduction. This is a particularly bad month. I am looking at one full month, possibly more, of paying very little down on debt. Christmas and other things are throwing a real wrench in my plan.

I need to do some no-spend days to get me back into the swing of things. I need to get DH on board with this too.

I don't know what is so different about summer vs. school year. But it seems the kids are always bringing home something I need to buy! And they're making it hard to say "no"! (The school, I mean.) For instance, I have every book I have ever owned plus the many we have purchased for our kids. We have a massive collection of children's books, so many that even though we read very nearly every night, we still have not read every book we own. The kids are always finding new ones. So I chose NOT to buy any books at the bookfair. Well, the teachers take the kids to the bookfair as a class and pair them up with older children. They write out a wish list, take it home, and then go a second time to purchase books with the older child! How do you say "no" to that?! I told my son it was fine if he wanted to purchase a book, but he'd have to use his own money. He did. He got two books for $15.00. What a rip off.

If it's not books it's t-shirts or Market Day food or some other fund raiser. A few days ago it was pictures. And now, not only do they hit you up for $50 in the Fall, they come back for more in the Spring!! I'm sorry, but I don't care to spend money on pictures TWICE per year! Once per year is enough!

I fall prey to keeping up appearances. I don't want people to know how much we are struggleing. Now, I'm not going to go buy a hot-tub because the "Joneses" have one, but I do buy just about everything at the school. I haven't participated in Market Day yet this year, but everything else is hard to say "no" to.

I knew it was too good to be true! I need to slow down on our debt repayment, at least temporarily. We just have expenses lately! I made a list yesterday of what those are.

We still owe DH's parents $473 from a loan several years ago. We steadily made payments for 5 years and then paid all but $473 off in one lump sum in August. We were short $473, and since we had just given them $2000, they were fine with it. The original loan was to be paid in full by October, and here we are in October, so we need to pay it.

Ring bearer tux: $47
Parental loan: $473
College course: $400
Birthday gifts: $75
Camera: $300

The camera is a Christmas gift to DH and me from each other. My step-sister is getting married at the end of October and I'd really like to have the camera before then for that and Halloween. Our current camera doesn't take good pictures at night or inside. It takes beautiful outside/daylight pictures, but inside/dark pictures all have ghosts! I'm tired of it and want a new camera! We keep wasting our money on disposables whenever we want inside/dark pictures!

I think we can recover on all these expenses by the end of October, but only if I slow down on our repayment. Happily, as of right now we are only $600 shy of our goal for the month, so we won't be terribly far off. In fact, $200 still has to go out as our minimum payment on our CC.

It's official! I just paid off CC1! Only $20,000 left to go! Obviously, it doesn't take much to amuse me. *sigh* No, really that is a big accomplishment, especially since now, I can move forward with part 2 of my plan.

From here on out, I will make just over the minimum payment on my one and only credit card at 0% interest. Everything else gets transferred to my ING account where it accrues interest. This is a good plan!

Even better, technically I owe only $19,723. My ING account already has $275 in it. As soon as that number matches my CC balance, I will send it all at once. I have until October 2007 to accomplish this. (Really September. I don't want to cut it too close.) But I think this is manageable. Furthermore, I think we can do it by summer.

I'm struggleing with wanting to take another college course. I've now taken and paid for 2 classes. I need to take just 4 more by October to bump me up the pay scale. I really want to take one now because I've have some down time at work coming up and more down time over the holidays. It's a video course...super easy. I finished the last one in four days! I'm just not sure how to pay for it. The funds aren't there. After Christmas, the funds will be there. Right now, Christmas is tieing up all of our funds.

I could relax my CC payments. I am hitting the payments really, really hard. I just want this gone!

I'm ready to take a look back and another look ahead!

CC payoff goals:
My goal for September was: $2,768
My actual amount was: $2,984

This is a difference to my benefit of $216! Pretty good!

October's goal is: $1300.
Additional goal is to pay off CC1!

I just hit "send"! $2000 off to CC1! That leaves $748 remaining on the card and if I had another penny to pinch, I'd do it. But I don't, so I just need to be patient. It will be paid off within the next two weeks if I get my money in the mail. I can not wait to be down to just one card.

It was suggested that I split the large card into smaller parts. I considered that, but I have another plan instead. The large card is 0% interest, so having the balance sit there is not a problem. We are going to pay a tad more than the minimum on it each month while stockpiling as much as we can into our ING account. So now instead of PAYING interest, we will be EARNING it. And according to the calculator, we'll be EARNING it to the tune of $848 from now until June. I am very excited about getting to watch our money grow instead of deplete.

Tomorrow is the day I have been waiting for! I get an extra paycheck tomorrow, and that along with budgeted money from DH's other job, I will be paying off...[drum roll please] $2000!!! [and the crowd cheers wildly!!!] That will leave us with only $700 on CC1! That will easily be paid off in the near future. DH's job owes him money for our cell phone to the tune of $400.00. (4 months worth) I just need DH to send in the information!!! I'm getting really aggravated with him about this. My job owes me $425 reimbursement for a college course I took. I just signed up for a second course that was $400, so $25 can go to the CC. In other words, I just put the new class on the CC, so this reimbursement will basically cover this course. My point is, of the $700 remaining, $425 is coming to me soon. And within the next 2 weeks I see $516 coming in from income. We will basically have CC1 paid off very soon.

I don't know why that's so important to me exactly. Once this card is paid off, we still have a card with $20,000 on it! That's no small potatoes. I guess it's just that it's a goal I set, and my plan was to accomplish that goal by the end of October and we are accomplishing it early in October.

We are struggleing to stay within budget now that I am back to work. I went out to eat with co-workers yesterday. It was the entire speech group, and we only do that once or twice a year. While there, I ordered an extra appetizer to bring home to DH. I like to do that for him. I'm tired and just don't feel like cooking or I don't feel like eating what I have, so we order out. It's a horrible habit. Life is stressful at the moment, and I am one who turns to greasy food when I'm stressed. Bring on the Chinese! Why is that comfort food? I'm not sure, but it is.

Tonight I've asked DH to return home from his church job with a coke. I just really need a coke. LOL! Most women would want a beer! Me? I gotta have my Coke!

I'm looking ahead. My goal for September CC payoff is $2,818. So far, as of next Friday, my actual payoff will be $2,934. So, I am counting my chickens before they hatch, but I am track for reaching my goal! It may be even better than that. I'm afraid to send the amount I should today because my bank is not showing the amount I think it should. I have to wait until Monday for the dust to settle.

I just can't wait to get CC1 paid off! We are so close!!! So close I can taste it! I just have to wait it out. In fact, I think that in 3 weeks it will be paid off.

I'm not updating my debt tracker yet though. I need to have a little more patience. I really should wait until I actually hit the /send/ button before doing that.

Ok, so back to work...

Ooooh, free time on my hands. What to do? What to do? Oh yes! I can blog!

I've been playing with numbers again! I'm so excited! We're going to start to see some progress now!

Upcoming payments:
Friday (tomorrow): $300 from DH's pay
Wednesday: $316 from church pay
Friday: $1500 from my pay! ! So excited! It's a three pay month, so it's extra money in my budget!

That is so exciting! I also just transferred $1400 from our high interest card to our 0% interest card. The 0% card is now officially maxed out! But, after next Friday, we should be down to $400 on the high interest card. That will leave a maxed out card of $20,000 and I'm excited! Only one CC! One very large CC, but still...one CC.

I also just payed for a college course using the CC. I know, I know! Throw the book at me! But here's my reasoning. The card is almost paid off and we're going to use it for gas once it is paid off. I get rewards for using the card, including $.15 off each gallon of gas, but only if I use the card. My school district is reimbursing me the money in October. The time is just slightly off, which irritates me, but what can you do? I am expecting reimbursement for my last class (which will cover THIS class) in October. I have to sign up for the class now. And, as far as classes go, I am trying to get all of my +30 hours in before January of 2009 to get a $10,000 raise. If all goes according to plan, at that time we can live off one salary, invest the other, and be completely debt free except for a mortgage payment. And the mortgage is on track for paying paid off by 2013. Not bad for a family currently sitting on $22,354 in CC debt!

I got paid for my September flute lessons today. I sent another $45 to the CC. I'm starting to get confused. Right now, I send off the money and then immediately come and track my progress before the money clears. So the CC company says I owe $22,600 (or so), but I know I owe $22,354.02. Sometimes I can't remember if it is reading what the company thinks I owe or what I think I owe. I should probably only record what the CC says and just be patient.

Anyway you look at it, the numbers are going down and that is a very good thing!

I am such a planner! I sat down and wrote out my monthly goals again. I said I wasn't going to...but I did it anyway. I put it all in an Excel worksheet, which is my favorite program in the world! I typed in how much money was going to come from each source and how much it added up to and put in some formulas and (VOILA!), I have a beautiful, easy to follow plan! It keeps track of all the figuring for me so it doesn't have to be in my head! All I have to do is plug in the numbers every time I send a payment to the CC's.

I also made a spreadsheet to show me exactly what I will have in my checking account through November by tracking my salary and bills. It's very easy to do from that account because 95% of the bills that come out are fixed and my salary is always the same.

That first CC of ours is going away so very slowly. I know that my goal is to have it paid off by the end of October, but that just isn't soon enough for me.

Today is pay day! I changed my W-4, changing it from married-at-single-rate to just "married". What a difference! My paycheck was $100 more. That's $200/mo! So I just went to my bank site and set it up to automatically pay the 0% card's minimum payment of $190. That way, I will never default on it.

Also, I have decided that once the other card is paid off, I am going to throw everything I can into my savings account which now earns 4.55% interest. So now, I have the minimum payment set up and can just throw everything I can into savings, which earns interest, until I have enough in there to pay off the debt. All must be paid by October 2007 to keep the 0% interest.

Everything seems to be falling into place and my goal money seems to keep increasing. I think my budget is a little too tight right now though. I think I am not going to increase my previously posted goals because they are just GOALS. It will feel good to reach them...and better to exceed them. My plan gets me out of debt by this time next year or better and that is good enough.

Two weeks from today I get to send my entire paycheck to the CC. I can't wait! It's a "three paycheck" month, so next week's is extra the way that account works.

Oh my goodness! My neighbors had conflicting schedules tonight and needed to me to watch their children. Combining their children with mine, I had ages 2, 4, 5 and 6...all boys. The 2 and 4 year old are their's and they ran me absolutely ragged! I fed them all dinner and that went fine. It was when we were heading out the door for my son's ball practice that things got horrible. First, the 2 year old wouldn't come upstairs from the basement. When he did, it was because he had pooped in his pants. At the same time, my 5 year old cut his finger (just a papercut) and was crying. Poopy pants....crying 5 year old...poopy pants...crying 5 year old. Which was more important???? So I plopped the 2 year on the toilet, ran upstairs for a band-aid, cleaned up the 2 year old and then put the band-aid on my son. Crisis averted.

At the field, I couldn't keep the two year off the field or out of the mud. The 4 year old ran into the parking lot while I chased his brother. My son kicked their son. It was just a barrel of laughs!

Right now, as I relax and type, my 6 year old is reading to my 5 year old. Is that sweet or what? I just really needed a break.

Today was not entirely frugal etiher, and I feel guilty. I had a stressful day at work. My supervisor called a mandatory meeting for all speech therapists and psychologists and I couldn't make it because I had parent meetings scheduled for the same time. I couldn't cancel with one day's notice. I explained it to my supervisor and she said it was fine and just to come late. So in the middle of one of my meetings, my supervisor's secretary called wondering where I was. I had to re-explain myself, and though she understood, it made me nervous for the rest of the day. I stopped at McDonald's because I was feeling the need for something bad for me. That was the splurge. I'll feel better after I tell DH I did that. I haven't seen much of him today. He's off at his second job at the church right now.

Well, I need to go listen to my son read. I can hear him from here and he makes me so proud! He's such a great reader for such a little guy!

I decided to take on another flute student. It's a huge decision because I'm basically only doing it because it's more money to throw at debt and it's easy money and it's something I really enjoy. But, I have to be committed to this student as long as she wants to stay with me and she's in the 6th grade. This could be a 6 year committment. But, I know her mom really well and she assures me that her daughter is a good student.

So, that is another $60-$75 per month. I may just put that money into my savings account so that it is there when I need it. I have over extended us with my high standards for paying down debt, which is what gets us into trouble. There is no room for error in our budget. I could just cut down on a payment one month, but that does bad things to me psychologically! LOL! $60 wiggle-room every month is nice. And yet, that's only $15/wk wiggle room. Perhaps both my flute students should be wiggle room money. No, I already figured that money into my monthly goal money.

I will get there! I just have to keep plugging along! Rolling, rolling, rolling!

Today is going to be a difficult day, and I can at least take comfort in knowing I am not alone. I work in the schools and the children in 6th-8th grades have only a vague recollection of the day. The staff keeps up a happy front and I have a hard time doing that. I feel like I'm in a fog.

Our son celebrated his fifth birthday yesterday. I've heard so many people say "Has it been five years already?" We will never say that. When my son was one week old, it had been a week since 9/11. When my son was one month old, it had been one month. I marked each month for the first two years of his life, as mothers do with their infants. Now I mark each year and even each half year.

I have yet to celebrate his birthday AFTER 9/11. Like if his birthday were to fall on a Friday, most parents would celebrate Saturday or Sunday. I just feel an intense need to celebrate BEFORE 9/11 because my baby was born before that time. He was born into a world of security and peace.

I will never forget waking up in the hospital bleery eyed with my newborn who had slept in my arms all night. My husband flipped through TV channels looking for something to have on in the background while we couldn't take our eyes off our new son. We came across a news story about a plane that hit one of the towers and I told him to turn it off. He didn't and five minutes later, we watched live as the second plane hit. It was horrifying. My hormones were all off as it was and I just kept thinking about what kind of a world I had just brought my newborn into.

I didn't like being in the hospital that day at all. It was such a big building and everyone had a fear of public places that day and for a long time after. We heard a sonic boom around 10:00 AM and could only imagine what it was and it seemed so close. We were in a fairly large city and it scared us. Later we learned it was the sound of a couple fighters leaving the nearby air force base.

My heart is certainly not in my job today.

I'm feeling depleted.

The finance charge came through on the 0% interest card. We switched to 0% interest but it came with a one time 3% charge of $550. So the balance went up. That's frustrating, let me tell you. But in the end it will save us money. To stick with my plan, somehow I have to come up with an extra $550 and I'd like to find it this month. On an already very tight budget close to Christmas time, that is not going to be easy. I already came up with $100 though in the form of a check from Verizon. Sometimes nice surprises come in the mail.

And sometimes not so nice surprises come in the mail! Like city taxes I forget about year after year. I always forget that taxes for the city I work in come from my pay, NOT the city I live in! Doesn't that suck?! So I owe taxes quarterly to the city I live in and the bill came yesterday.

AND I overdrew on my account by a whopping $1.39!! I am so angry! So I now we have a $9.00 fee on an error of $1.39. That's what I get for taking my checking account down to nothing between pay periods all for the sake of throwing every penny at the CC's.

I'm feeling very crunched at the moment. We were down to absolutely nothing in the house to eat last week, so we ate out several times. I went to the grocery store yesterday and spent $120 of my $200 budget and then gave another $20 to my son for school lunches. That leaves $60 for the rest of the week should we need something.

I have many, many financial things to figure out in my head right now. I'm not sure where a lot of things I need money for are going to come from with the budget so tight. I may need to loosen up a bit and not expect to be able to throw so much at the CC. We need money to keep up with what we have too.

I was obsessing while riding as the passenger to Gatlinburg and came up with monthly pay down goals to get us out of debt by June of 2007. Here' s the breakdown:

GOALS:
September: 2645
October: 1260
November: 1260
December: 1545
January: 1260
February: 1260
March: 2825
April: 1260
May: 1260
June: 1460
July: 1760
August: 1510
Total: $19,305

This does not include our tax return or DH's raises, so I am confident that if we meet or excede these goals, we will achieve pay off by this time next year!

This is all possible because DH took on a part time job. Thank you DH!

I have a plan! I love plans!

Current totals:
CC 1 $-138.42 (Yes, that's negative)
CC 2 $4,666
CC 3 $18,200
Total: $22,727.58
(It's actually less...my last payment hasn't cleared yet)

1. Transfer $138.42 from CC2 to CC1 which brings CC1 to a 0 balance.

2. Pay $2,745 to CC2 over course of September.
CC2 $1782.58

3. Transfer CC2 balance of 1782.58 to CC3
CC2=0
CC3=$19,982.58

This plan gets me down to just one card by the end of September and that one card has 0% interest until October 2007. Phew! It's working....we're getting there.

I am hard at work trying to figure out this whole couponing thing. Right now, it is fun. But I can see the fun waning and then where will I be? It takes me forever. I don't feel like spending money on a coupon organizer when I am not even convinced I will continue. And I am not patient enough to stick each coupon in its own sleeve of a photo album. Therefore, I am spending forever hunting through my coupons and matching them to sale prices. I haven't found any truly great deals yet except things I will never use. But, like I said, the search is amusing me for the moment. But I am spending way too much precious time on it.

I think I wrote that we fixed the drippy water problem. We turned off the water underneath the sink. Today I did even better than that. I figured out that I can leave the cold water available and it does not drip. So it is only the hot water that is the problem. I wonder if my energy bill will now go down since hot drip water is not running down the drain.

I hate these days when no money comes in. I feel inactive in my money quests. I think that is why I enjoy the couponing. I feel as though I am doing something.

We just got back from a 3 day weekend in Gatlinburg! I didn't want to write on line that we were doing that. I have been dreading it because I knew we would be spending money, instead of throwing it at the CC's. But, we have come back not too worse for the wear.

We had a great time! Our biggest expense was food, of course, and Christmas gifts. Gifts were budgeted for the first time ever so I had a blast at the ornament section of the Christmas store! If any of you were there, I was the one holding up the line to get them all personalized! LOL! DH bought some gifts for me at the Boyd's Bear factory and in downtown Gatlinburg, so I know this is going to be a great Christmas for me too. We really did have a great time. We took cash and almost made it on cash only. We put the rest on the CC BUT as soon as the charges show up online, I am ready to transfer the exact amount to the card from our savings account where our Christmas funds sit. It's a plan!

I am excited about September's pay off!
August goal was $630.
Actual August payment was: $1030.42! Really great!

September's goal is: $2645 (I get an extra pay this month)

We finally figured out how to turn off our kitchen sink, so no more dripping water! LOL! I was disappointed that with all the collecting of drip water this month, my bill was $1.00 higher. Oh well. Now it is not dripping and will hopefully go down.

We came up with an idea for our first grader. He now has the option to purchase lunch at school, as a big first grader. We decided that at the beginning of the week we will sit down with his lunch calendar and decide which meals he would like to buy and which days he would like to pack. Each week he gets $10 regardless. If he packs all week, he keeps $10. If he buys all week, he keeps only $1.25. This motivates him to make some decisions and it makes him responsible for his money and his eating choices. Just like I have to decide if I am willing to pay fast food for lunch or keep my money and pack, so must he make this same decision.

So far, this plan is working well and has raised some good discussions. At first he wanted to buy lunch every day, but he didn't like getting only $1.25. Then he changed it to packing every day. We talked about how it is ok to splurge sometimes and that this money is budget for lunch. He can do what he wants with it. Eventually, he decided to buy three days this week, because the menu options were pretty good.

The best benefit to me is I get to encourage him to choose mostly healthy lunches. I hate soft pretzel day! What kind of lunch is that? And French Toast sticks with syrup????? Come on. If he wants to eat pizza once in a while, that's fine, but let's stay away from the absolute junk.

My regular readers are getting a glimpse of my personality. I get obsessed with things, but these obsessions never last. In fact, they are generally short lived. A lengthy obsession for me lasts about a month.

Finances was my obsession. Thankfully, I have stopped what I would call "obsessing" about it, but the thought is still there. This is good because now it is a healthy battle rather than an obsession. If I can keep finances on the back burner, it will continue to cook. If I continue at the pace I was, I'll end up burning it, to keep up with the cooking analogy. I'm content with where I am with the finances right now and proud of myself for not having let it go all together.

My new obsession? Gardening. I get so frustrated when an obsession hits at the wrong time! LOL! Here we are approaching FALL and I am obsessing about gardening. To fulfill my needs I have been doing a lot of reading, researching and tending to houseplants. LOL! I decided yesterday that my office at work needs plants because I read (while researching) that plants absorb toxins. How cool is that! And my office is toxic! Saddly, most schools are. I read up on plants that will survive with very little light, because I'm in a dungeon. I went to the nursery and came home with a Potho (I think). I also bought a Venis Fly Trap for home and the boys are enthralled with it.

Now, true to my obsessive nature, I spent last evening repotting and making cuttlings from my new Pothos and my beautiful Spiders that I am so very proud of. I am filling my home with plants now, and rather frugally too. The spiders have all been completely free, made from cuttlings. I cut a new cuttling for a plant I got from my MIL. It's a very common plant, but I don't know what it is. LOL! This is all new to me! The Pothos and Fly trap I paid $14.00 for, but I can make as many new plants as I want from the Pothos, so I don't mind the investment. I have two offices at two schools and a home to fill with toxin removing plants! LOL!

In the meantime, I am researching for a garden in the spring. I learned that if I lay out cardboard boxes on my grass it will kill grass and weeds while creating rich soil for my garden. This is good. I can do this. After that, I have about 15 things I want to plant! LOL! I don't do "small" well. I am going to try to scale back to my favorites and build from there though. Otherwise, this obsession will wane like all the others and this one, like the finances, is a good obsession.

I am a planner! My plans don't always work, but I enjoy the process of planning the plan.

I just did some figuring with my salary and pay scale. If I can complete 5 more course between now and the Fall of 2008, I will be bumped up to a Master's +20 pay which works out to about $280 more per month after taxes. If I can complete an additional 3 classes by Fall of 2009, I will be bumped up to a Master's +30 pay which works out to about $480 per month after taxes. And that is without taking into consideration cost of living increases, because they aren't a sure thing. (These are very rough figures not taking into consideration things like tax brackets. I simply figured the difference between my gross monthly pay and my net monthly pay is 30%. I figured the rest out accordingly.)

Here's another "if". AFTER we eliminate our debt (not IF, but AFTER), and IF we can pay off our car loan by Fall of 2009, we will have approximately $1200 left over after all bills are paid for living expenses. This is exactly what we are used to right now eliminating what we pay out toward debt. This is good news! This means we can live entirely off off my salary within 3 years!

My goal all along has been to eventually live off of one salary and invest the other. There is a light at the end of the tunnel! The light is 3 years and a pretty specific plan away, but it is there, none-the-less.