Saturday, February 28, 2009

Whoa!

Sometimes it seems like I'm here a LOT, and then I look and it's been days and days since I posted anything. Weird. Life happens, ya know?

Well, we sent the taxes off and the refunds are already in our hot little...bank accounts. We have been able to free up so much money in our budget since we paid off those little bills - we're able to send over $400 extra every month to the debts, which is amazing.

Dh and I need to sit down and go through things to make sure we have things set aside (our truck has a flat tire, so we need about $125 aside for that, in hopes that we can plug it instead and send that $ to the cc, too, and I need to set aside some $ for driving to Madison for classes - forgot to keep that out). Then, we can send a chunk to the smaller BECC, hopefully over $1000, and have that paid off next month. That will be...just freakin' amazing.

I have gone through some of the boxes of junk in the basement that I used last summer at flea markets & the rummage sale. I really don't want to do a rummage sale this summer - my life has enough stress in it at the moment. My mom & sister have booths in antique malls, so I've gone through 3 boxes, sorted & repriced things to go to their booths. The rest is going to my sister, who will rummage it this summer. Nice. It will be gone, out of my house, and I may get some cash from the antique malls, but otherwise, honestly, it's just nice to have it gone. I still have about 10 boxes to go through, though.

We've been doing well on the grocery budget, which feels really good. I need to get to CVS (they finally called about the raincheck from the day after Thanksgiving - the free razors), and Walgreens (they have free tin foil this week, gotta find my coupon...).

Okay - I"d better go hop in the shower. We're driving up to my mom's today to meet for lunch. Even though we all live less than an hour apart, we tend to let life get in the way, and I made a suggestion that we get together at least every other month for lunch. That's going to be nice. So today up there, Easter at our house, and then we'll see what we feel like.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Taxes...done!

It felt really good to get the taxes done this year and out of the way. Something else to cross off the list, you know? We are getting a small refund ($23) from fed, and larger ($1100) from state. Our state is weird -- if you do the same witholdings for state as federal, you almost always get a larger refund. I'm not complaining (much), but that $100 a month "extra" sure would be nice...I hate letting them have my money all year long.

Although it will be nice to get $1100 deposited into the bank! We should be able to pay OFF the smaller of the 2 BECC's! Woo hoo!

And...we will probably be doing a balance transfer for part of the bigger of the BECC's. We paid off Citi, which offers a 0% BT for 8 months, then 14% interest. 3% BT fee. Sounds high...but considering we're paying 30% interest on that card, it's a freakin' DREAM! I just need to get them on the phone and get it done. That would drop the last BECC to about $6500 or so.

Still no word on the new job front. It's all a waiting game. My friend has not heard if she is being offered her new position, which means that her position is not open yet. Wait wait wait.

About it on finances. We've been lazy this month -- physically, mentally & monetarily. I have kicked myself in the pants, and plan to get back with it (all three!). I just feel icky, and want to get to feeling better. Payday is next week, and I'll see a $50/month or so raise (before taxes) due to finishing a class last fall (which moves me along the pay scale), add that to getting rid of some of that debt and those minimums rolling into the snowball, and we have a pretty good thing going!