My pay day is on Wednesday, the 30th, but we can check our pay statement 3 business days prior to our pay day. So I checked my paycheck and it is $500 more than I was expecting.

Being that I'm part commission, my last paycheck of the month is usually unpredictable. It includes any overtime I've worked, plus my regular 2 weeks of pay, plus my commission for the previous month. I can usually come up with a ballpark figure and I budget off of that. I knew my paycheck was going to be pretty nice, more than it was for the summer months, but I wasn't expecting what I saw!

I always aim and budget for lower, that way if I do get more, it's a surprise. I thought maybe it'd be $100 more than what I had budgeted for, but it's $500! I double checked it to make sure it wasn't a mistake and everything matched up. They just didn't take out as much as I expected for taxes.

So what am I going to do with my extra $500? Well, since I'm already putting extra toward the BofA loan anyway during this paycheck, I decided I'm going to put $400 in my Emergency Fund, an extra $80 in my slush fund and an extra $25 in my Christmas Fund. I'm so glad to be able to put more money in my E-Fund which I have ignored for so long!

Labels: budget, christmas savings, emergency fund, savings

J paid me back for the $210 credit card payment I made for him last week. In fact, he gave me $10 extra! So after plotting for a week how I was going to spend the money, I decided the best thing to do was split it up into a couple different accounts. I really need to beef up my savings a little, especially since I have nothing saved for Christmas and I've taken so much out of my emergency fund lately. Here is how I'm dividing up my $220:

• $100 to Emergency Fund
• $50 to Christmas Savings
• $10 to Vegas Savings (not really doing much with this account, just tired of seeing it at zero)
• $30 to Slush Fund (the money is going to my hair appointment I have next week)
• $30 to Nordstrom credit card

I thought about putting it all toward a credit card payment or all to the Emergency fund, but I decided that putting some in each account was a good idea and I'm even putting a little toward debt too.

I'll update later on my weekly spending and current balances.

- Bank Gal

Labels: christmas savings, debt, emergency fund, savings

So I haven't updated lately because frankly... my finances are just depressing and it sucks to write about it. But I feel like if I keep writing about it and tracking it, things are bound to get better. Lots of things are happening in my life lately.

My unemployed future-husband is considering joining the Air Force, which I totally support 110%. He is a wonderful man, but unfortunately he has no education and has been out of work for the last 13 months. His younger brother recently joined the Air Force and loves it, so my fiance (who I will call J) have discussed long and hard about the Air Force option. Honestly, there aren't many options, but this seems like the most logical. We are in our mid-20s and while I have my career established, he does not. I know we want to get married and have a family within the next 3-5 years, but we can't do that until he gets his career set. Unfortunately, the Air Force doesn't need recruits, so they are never in their office and don't return J's phone calls. In the mean time, J's dad in Boston has some work for him to do where he can make $600 a week, so J is leaving on Tuesday to go back to Boston for a month to earn some quick cash.

Aside from that, on Wednesday, I received a phone call from a collection agency. At first I thought it must be a mistake, so I called them and they said I owed $133.25 to PGE from my old apartment that I moved out of back in April. So I called PGE and talked to them and they said I owed $91 from a February-March bill I never paid (WHAT?!) and another $31 from a March-April bill I didn't pay (SERIOUSLY?!) and $11 from a small April bill. I tried hard not to cry on the phone. I couldn't believe it. I've never missed a payment or made a late payment to anything in my life. And now I was being sent to collections?!

So I looked at my bank statements and low and behold, I totally missed those two payments they said I owed them. I never received any information from PGE because they didn't have my new address, but they did have my current phone number, yet I never received a single phone call from them. I am just furious... at myself for forgetting those payments, at PGE for not calling me, and at the stupid collection agency.

I had no choice but to pay the debt, so I called the collection agency and made a $133.25 payment (plus $4.50 fee for making a phone payment). I'm going to call them on Monday and request that they send me a receipt for payment in full so I have it for my records. But I'm utterly furious and upset about having a collection on my credit report now. I've worked so hard to have perfect credit.

I also did a $2000.00 balance transfer from my Nordstrom Visa to my bank's employee credit card which offers 0% interest for 12 months and after that the rate is only 5.25%. That still leaves about $300 on Nordstrom. My BofA loan is down to $6,500 and my Chase credit card is at $3980. So it's getting paid down, just not fast enough. My savings has taken hit, especially after the $133.25 I just had to pay, plus I had another emergency I had to drain my savings for back in July.

As far as my finances go, things aren't going very well at all. And it just makes me depressed. =(

- Bank Gal

Labels: collection, debt, emergency fund, finances, savings