live within my means

For the second week in a row, I have gotten to the end of the week with $20 left of my spending budget, with which I have made a small payment on my remaining credit card balance. Not much dinero, but a significant change of habit. Seeing my balance go from $500 to $460 in a couple weeks makes me so very happy.

In my line of work we have a saying – if you are in Colorado driving full speed ahead towards New York, and you decide you want to get to California, it doesn’t help much to slow down. To be “less bad”. You have to do a U-turn and start heading in the other direction.

I have a little of the post consumer blues. Spent too much this weekend. Plants and shoes and eating out. When I know I have a chunk of money coming my way I always get a little carried away. Will have to have a frugal rest of the week. Tax refund and deposit from our last place should arrive this week and we can PAY OFF OUR CREDIT CARDS!!! And I am going to put mine away in the back of a drawer.

Got lots done tonight. Went through and made sure all our new bills are set up with automatic bill pay. Paid lingering bills from Christian’s knee and the old house. Wrote out a new budget for all expenses and compared to our income. Looks like we will be a-ok and will have extra to pay off the credit cards. Then I went through a play-by-play from our current balance to the next pay checks to make sure we won’t get in trouble again. We are much better off than I though and I feel so relived!

Now I’ll set my sights at eliminating the debt… that’s what it will take to really feel like we are accomplishing this one.

The damage: $4300 on my credit card and $1000 on his.

Payment plan:
- The deposit refund from our last place $1100
- Fitness benefit from work $150
- Taxes (though I am not sure we will get a refund if we need to count the art sales)
- $2000 = 2 months of $1000 payments from our income

Then the car payment the next month and we will be free!!! Relatively speaking. I don’t really count the student loans as they are cumulatively huge and just going to get bigger. Plus they have low interest rates so its probably smarter to just make monthly payments.

With this plan any art sales from here on out can go into its own account to be re-invested for frames, shipping, etc.

My personal checking went into overdraft from my credit card today. Why didn’t I see this coming. My credit card amount is already way way larger than its ever been and we just got a $700 cell phone bill! $700! I didn’t know that was possible. All those calls during the move, and I had to use my phone for work before we got set up at our new place. The move, grad school applications, its all adding up to be way more than I expected. Our rent will leave only a couple hundred left for the month before C paycheck comes in on the 31st. And Christian needs to buy a frame for his newest painting before he sends it off to Seattle. And his birthday is this Sat and I can’t think of something creative but affordable. Uggg. Its a sucky feeling.

Blew my whole bonus on moving and still managed to wrack up another grand on my credit card bill. Probably 500 on Christians. Ugg. These grad school expenses have really hurt. Still its all worth it. Looks like Christians got the job which will really help point us back in the right direction. My goal is to have both credit cards paid off by August. And some money saved for the next move would be ideal.