Today was a rough day. Plain and simple. I think the reality of it all is sinking in. Or maybe not. Nevertheless, it was a rough one.
I woke up this morning to the sound of rain. That’s not too bad. I like the rain. But this didn’t sound like it normally does. This sounded more like rain sounds when you are outside. And that was a little bit disturbing. I looked around to see if I was outside, and I wasn’t. So I got up to go investigate. Outside it was raining so hard I could only see about twenty feet, and the wind was blowing so hard that the rain was coming in sideways. And the front door was wide open.
The dog was in the living room, so I knew that nobody had come in the house. So I checked on the kids and they were both nestled all snug in their beds. So I just shut the door and locked the deadbolt. It seems that the wind was too much for what’s left of our doorknob. The little part that holds the doorknob latch part into the frame is very old.
So I knew I would have to replace it. That’s not so much of an issue. I’m really handy around the house. It was just a matter of having the money to get a new doorknob. And I think that was the root of my bad day.
Having already had to fill my wife’s prescription, I was left with about fifty bucks left in my checking account. Of course, that’s enough for a doorknob, but I still have to go to work all week, and I have to pay to park at work, which comes out to about twenty five dollars a week, and I will still need gas money. I think we are still OK on food.
So I faced the reality that I wouldn’t have enough money to fix the doorknob and still make it through the workweek.
It’s not that I haven’t been broke before. I’ve been very, very broke before. It’s just that this time it happened to occur to me that I was a lot happier day in and day out when I was blissfully ignorant and in debt, as opposed to sending in all of my extra money to get out of debt.
Ignorance is bliss, so it seems.
But of course, I have a thousand dollars in my EF, and I think that front doors qualify. And gas money probably qualifies, too. In the end, I transferred a hundred dollars from my EF into checking, and I’m guessing that will get me through until payday. And I guess that’s what the EF is for, after all. It’s just a lot different than how I am used to doing things, and it takes some adjustment.
(shrug)
Today is Payday. That’s why I wanted to make sure to get this blog online last night. It’s my first payday of the year. I get paid every two weeks, on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I wanted to make sure to start the year off right, so I stayed up late and worked on the blog.
And it turns out to be harder than I thought to post all of my own dirt online. My respect for the other PF bloggers, and especially those in debt, has just gone up tremendously.
I’m sitting here looking at the blank page and wondering just how much information to post. It’s amazing, putting all of your finances out there for whoever wants to to look at.
But WTF.
By coincidence, I’m listening to Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield being sung by a girl on youtube. It’s amazing how applicable it is.
I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
Oh, oh, oh
I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can’t live that way
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
And so here we are. It’s the first payday of the new year. Let’s see what’s going on then.
As I said already, I get paid every two weeks, so one paycheck goes to pay the house note and the car insurance, while the other goes to utilities and credit card payments. Today is the one for utilities.
My utilities for the month including electric, gas, water, cable, and cell phone totaled $682.00
It’s a lot, I know. But my cell phone bill is typically $200.00/mo. The reason it’s so high is because I have included my mother on my plan, so that she could cut her own land line and cell phone, and save her some money. I could lower my bill by cutting her from the plan, but it’s not something that I’m willing to do. In addition, we have a couple of iPhones added in there, so that adds $40 to the base price ($20/mo each) for unlimited multimedia access. It’s not optional when you sign up. The cable bill is the other one that I could cut. If I were single, I wouldn’t have cable at all. I almost never watch TV. But sometimes I work long hours, and my wife does watch TV. I’ve never really even considered cutting it, because I think she deserves to have it, just for putting up with me. I also have high speed internet mixed in with my cable bill, so it increases the bill as well.
Nevertheless, my utilities come out between 6 and 7 hundred every month. And that’s down from nine hundred.
After that, my MINIMUM debt payments are $694 this month. I’m carrying almost exactly 20k in CC debt, plus there is a $6k air conditioner that I financed, which is in deferral and I haven’t even started paying on yet. So it will actually go up in another month when the deferral ends. I have six CC’s that have balances on them. I also have a car note that is $266/mo. There is somewhere around $9k balance on the car.
And last but not least is Sallie Mae. I’ve been paying her since ‘96. I started with a student loan debt of about $36k and it’s down to $8498 right now. Last year I increased my monthly payment to $850/mo on a two year schedule, so it should be paid off somewhere around Halloween this year. That payment is automatically deducted and I never see it. So my net pay is after student loan payments. Yeah. If you are a student, I have a tip for you. Don’t ever fall behind on your student loans, because Sallie Mae is a vicious biatch.
So anyhow, my minimum payments to debt total $694.00 this month, including the car but not the student loans.
In the plus column, I have a paycheck. Under normal circumstances, I will usually take home around $2700.00 after taxes and student loans. That’s more than enough to pay everything and still live quite comfortably. But things haven’t been normal lately. We had a slowdown at work and I haven’t had a full check in a really long time. I’ve been taking home between fifteen and eighteen hundred dollars every two weeks for the last five months. So it’s been pretty tight around here lately.
But things are picking up lately. I’m actually getting all of my hours this week, and I hope it continues. In fact, I’ve even gotten some overtime in. If things work out, next paycheck should be REALLY good.
But today’s paycheck is in the OK category. I have $2421 today. After paying the utilities and minimum payments on everything, that leaves me $1044 in cash to live off of until next payday.
Shelley usually gets anywhere from fifty to a hundred bucks in cash just to blow, and I will need about $150 for gas and parking at work, little things that people need during the week (milk and bread), and any miscellaneous expenses. All told, I usually will keep out about $700 to cover these things, plus food and household needs.
That leaves me with $344 left over after everything in the budget is taken care of. That’s what I currently have to work with to work on my debt. Sucks, doesn’t it? I’m really hoping that things will pick up at work soon.
So I’m putting this over to my Emergency Fund to move closer to the $1000 that I will keep in there. This gives me a new balance of $457.55
There. You wanted dirt. You got dirt.
