New Year, New Resolutions
Okay, so there’s actually a lot to report about this month, because I’ve made quite a few changes in my life that have had financial impact.
My debt repayment has been drastically slowed because I’ve cut my work hours. I went from working 3 days each week to 2 days each week, and I’m working towards quitting my job entirely and staying home to improve my family’s home life.
I have NOT accumulated any additional debt. My cash based living experiment continues to work well, but as yet, I won’t be able to actually quit my job for quite some time. I’m down to about 16 – 20 hours a week. I want to go to about 11 hours a week, but the budget just won’t allow for that yet so I’m still picking up some extra work hours from home through the week. (I work from home about 50% of the time for my job as it stands right now.) The 11 hours would allow for 2 days of work while the kids are at school.
So that’s where I’m at.
There is some bad news in all this. Last year my husband was receiving a miscellaneous payment from his employer that related to a health insurance rebate of some kind. That payment stopped on the first January 2010 paycheck. I knew it was only for the one year, but when I had reduced my hours from 3 days to 2 days, this money helped cover that gap. Now I don’t have that nearly $200 per month of income and it’s seriously hurting my budget.
Steps I’ve taken to ease the crunch
Got rid of caller ID and call waiting = $6 per month savings
Turned off the data package for my smartphone (I don’t have cell service at home anyway so the only place I could use this was when I was taking the kids to and from school so this wasn’t a big hardship for me) = $31.00 per month savings
Downgraded my satellite TV package = $22.00 per month savings
That’s $59.00 per month and I’m still looking for other cuts I can make.
I’m going to reduce my grocery budget but it won’t be by much, because I’ve always been pretty efficient with that anyway.
I’m about to read “America’s Cheapest Family
Unfortunately, to pay off my debt faster, the only choice for me is more income, and that’s not on my agenda just yet. I need to take care of family and home first. However, I am still paying as much as possible and still have payoff of debt as my overriding financial goal.
Come bonus time for my husband (and he’s been assured that bonuses are coming) I plan to use that to pay off as much as possible of the only credit card debt I still have.
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