Decisions

Ugh, I have quite a few decisions to make soon. I am not exactly sure what I should do on the first one. The second decision is kind of a no brainer, but I still have options so I guess I have to decide what is most important... money vs. sanity!

Anyway, the first thing is snowballing my car payment. I will have my car paid off this year one way or another. I have a $366 snowball to add to my regular payment monthly now that my last debt has been paid off. However, I get part of the money about mid-month and the other half right when the payment is due. If I pay my extra money on the day my payment is due it all goes right to the principle. If I pay it half way through the month some of it goes to interest. My problem is, I don't really know how this works. I am not sure if I am better off paying one payment mid month and another on the due date, or doing it all at once. If I was making a huge payment then I could see doing it as soon as possible because it would lower the principle amount such that I would not owe as much interest. But, with only a small payment, I don't know which is the best option. If anyone has any experience with this, I would appreciate some info!

My other decision is whether or not to teach summer school this year. I have done so for the past few years because it seemed like a good deal to me... 4 hour days, $100 a day, for 20 days. I take home an extra $2000 for a little work during the summer.

However, this year they have made a few changes. It will be 35 days, 5 hours a day at $125 per day. Now, that is obviously more money, but it is also pretty much my entire summer. I was miserable last year, the kids are horrible, but how can I pass up that kind of money? With those rates I would take home an extra $4375! That would leave my car paid off and would probably go toward paying off my next loan as well. Obviously this is a decision no one can help me with, but I will probably still do it. It is really hard to pass up that kind of money. I don't care how miserable I am!!! We will see though, the 5 hours is not set in stone yet, and if it were only 4 hours a day, I would definitely do it. The problem with that extra hour added in is that I would not be able to get things done in the afternoon before picking my kids up from daycare. I am sure I will update on the situation as more info is available.

Also, if anyone has any info on the interest thing please comment!!

Decisions

https://picturewealth.blogspot.com/2009/04/decisions.html

Getting too comfortable?

I think I am getting a little too comfortable with my finances again.

The more bills that we pay the more room we have to "breathe". I know I am overspending, but it isn't really causing a big problem right now because I have the money to do it. However, I am using money that could be snowflaked to my debt.

1. Snowball- using money from a paid off debt toward your next debt. You continue paying the minimums on all other debts and just work on one at a time this way.
2. Snowflaking- bits of money you save from other areas in your budget which are then added to the monthly snowball amount to pay debt off faster.

For instance... this month we charged an additional $40 on our gym account! We have to charge $25 a month that is built into the monthly fee, but we went WAY over. Yikes!!

Then I bought some additional supplements that I could have done without... we won't talk about how much those were. So, you KNOW it was too much!!!

If I honestly looked at this month's budget and last month's I could probably find and easy $100 or more that could have gone to my snowflake efforts.

One thing fueling this is that DH gets a lot of overtime some weeks. I LOVE when that happens naturally, but I give him extra pocket money and a lot of times some of the rest goes to cover our overspending. (I feel he deserves the extra money for working the extra hours, but I sure don't!!)

I am going to start really working on this for the rest of this month and next. I want to try to actually track it and see what happens. I will let you know soon!

Oh, and I haven't been TOO bad. I paid an extra $100 on my car this month, I have $200 to add to the snowball payment at the end of this month, and I hope to add to that on Friday. BUT, think about how much I could have added to that if not for the overspending!! I probably could have made an entire car payment with the money I have overspent with!

I am going to do better though!!

Getting too comfortable?

https://picturewealth.blogspot.com/2009/04/getting-too-comfortable.html