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Archive for June, 2008

Offer Letter Recieved

July 1st, 2008 at 04:41 am

Tomorrow I start my first day in my new position. Today I finally got my offer letter. It's been a yo-yo thing. First my former boss asked if I had received the letter last week, I hadn't, so she emailed the head of the dept I'll be working for asking him to get it for me.

Then by the end of the week she told me she was just going to write it for me and that I'd be very happy about the result.

Today I almost went to ask her about it since I still hadn't gotten it yet but she was never in her office when I went to ask.

Just before lunch the head of the dept came by my desk telling me that he needed to get a hold of the CFO to a sign off on my salary so he couldn't tell me the amount but that I would be getting a raise.

Finally at the end of the day it came finally. I got almost a $4k a year raise and after comparing it to my last paycheck at my last job it works out to $600 more a year than I was making before.

However, the net amount that I was making at the cut I took to work my first position was enough to pay bills and have $100 left over to pay on extra things. So I'm super stoked about this first paycheck even though only half of it will be at my new pay rate.

This is why I have a 100 cushion

June 22nd, 2008 at 07:50 am

I am just off this month. I marked two bills as paid, one for $81.97 and another for $58.47 but I neglected to actually mark them in Quicken. I caught the first one before my CC payment actually went through so I was able to cancel and resend minus the $81.97 but I didn't catch the second til this morning. It's ok though, it's why I have a cushion for that random 'just in case whoops' moment.

Spending Spree.

June 20th, 2008 at 05:16 am

This is why I can't have a credit card. I do great with having an empty one for emergencies if need be but then once that emergency comes up it is easy to spend more.

I got the work done on my car, paid off about half of it with what was in my savings and had every intention of paying the rest of it off and rebuild my savings by December.

It was a good plan.

Then I got my new position. And realized that to be ahead of the game I need to learn a few things before I actually start. Which required a better computer than what I had acquired years ago from a former workplace in order to run the software that I need to master by July 1.

So I looked around and got what I felt was a decent deal on a laptop, also on my credit card.

Then I got a little frivolous. I found more computer equipment to make my wireless network even better and decided to splurge. Again, on the card.

Which all told brings my current total on this once was empty credit card back to $2,000.

If I'm lucky, I'll have it all paid off by end of this year.

I also found out that I should be receiving an offer letter for my new position so there's a chance of a raise. Plus I will no longer be having a transportation allowance taken out so a little more coming in there.

6 months.

June 9th, 2008 at 12:41 am

I am planning on everything being 'back to normal' in 6 months. By back to normal I mean, CC paid off again AND EF back to $1500. Not bad really all around but still longer than I'd like to take off of my regular debt reduction.

What to do...

June 4th, 2008 at 06:00 am

I did think long and hard before I made the decision to authorize roughly $2k worth of work to be done on my car. I waited to take it into the shop, knowing some of the work needed to be done, until my one credit card was paid off. Since my money is scattered in different banks I figured it would be easiest to charge it and then by the time the money came in from my banks I could pay it off.

However if you look to the left you'll see that I do not have enough in my EF to pay the entire thing off, even with draining it.

So I am left with the 'what to do' dilemma.

I have three savings accounts with roughly $500 each in them. I do not want to leave less than $100 as a balance. With what I have in savings (leaving $100 in each account) and what I have in checking I could pay off $1341 immediately. And about $200 more of the balance on the 1st.

That would still leave about $700 on the card and drain my EF to $300.

The one savings account has an auto transfer of $75 a month so that would start building back up immediately. Once I paid off the CC I would put all extra money into my EF accounts until they got back to $500 each and then start putting that extra cash to my bills.

Originally I was just going to pull out all but $100 out of my brick and mortar savings account and leave the online ones alone. But that was back when I was anticipating only a $800 charge.

I'm afraid if I pull so much out of my EF that I won't be able to recover. But the thought of paying interest doesn't appeal to me either.