My Journey From Debt

I sure do like getting paid, and yesterday was payday! I received $485.44 from my full time job, $294.45 from my part time job, and $163.93 for some other part-time work. This puts me in what I feel is a pretty good position for the rest of the month. I’m pretty sure (hoping anyway) that between this pay period and the one that ends right before Christmas, I should be able to get everything paid and not fall behind or have to wait for a January paycheck to pay December bills.

Subtract from this payday my $25.00 automatic transfer to savings, which puts my savings account at $454.05, and I am left with $940.95 in my checking account. However, the two checks I wrote last time I paid bills for my cable/landline and internet bills still haven’t gone through so there goes $225.00 and my rent check of $355.00 hasn’t gone through, this brings my actual amount that I have left to $360.95 so perhaps my previous excitement was a bit premature, especially considering that I still need to purchase some Christmas gifts.

I am paying one additional bill with this current paycheck and that is my electric bill that came in the mail recently. While I could just enter it in sentence form, I will follow the format that I have used previously when paying bills:

$100.00 – Electricity – Amount Due $59.26

This leaves my current cash available in my checking account at $260.95. I also feel it is worth mentioning that I spent $11.21 on lunch-for-two yesterday bringing my total cash-in-wallet to $29.00 and I may need to get more cash from the ATM before the month is over.

Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, the money isn’t quite stretching as far as I need it to right now. I currently have $72.13 in checking and the $50.00 check I wrote to pay my cell phone bill has not gone through yet. This means I actually have $22.13 right now.

Also, I have yet to pay my Landline/Cable TV and Internet bills as well as rent. Luckily, I get paid from my part-time job tomorrow and my full-time job on Friday. From this money, I will hopefully have enough to pay those bills that I have left.

I did recently receive my next electric bill, but I’m not sure if I am going to be able to pay it with this week’s checks or if I will have to wait until I get some more money again. Fortunately, it isn’t due until the 23rd so I have a little bit of time to figure that one out.

At this time, an observant reader will notice that there is a bit of a discrepancy between my current report of account balances and my previous report. Previously, I was a bit short but not by this much. So, where did the rest of my money go?

Well, this isn’t an exact itemized list, but a sort of summary of what I have spent money on lately and the numbers are approximate rather than precise.

$140.00 on vehicle maintenance/repair (new battery and a few other items)
$25.00 at a local hardware store where I got a new extension cord and plier as well as a couple of other items
$75.00 on gas for my vehicle
$40.00 on fast food/eating out
$100.00 on items that I purchased on behalf of my dad and he will be paying me back for

I did make my $400.00 payment on Credit Card 1 so that I wasn’t late on that, took $60.00 out of an ATM. I think this pretty much gets this site up-to-date with how my finances currently are and I just have the three bills left to pay from last month that I should be able to take care of by the end of the week.

Last Friday was payday so it’s time now to pay some bills as well as update my debt meter. I have a few things that I can’t pay this time around, but looking forward I will have some more money coming in within the next few days that I will use to pay my rent, cable, and internet bills. This will leave me with about $180.00 in my checking account so that I will be able to put some gas in my vehicle and cover any other expenses that may come up in the mean time.

I will, however, probably need to borrow at least some of the money from my savings to make the $400.00 payment on “Credit Card 1” because I have to do that by the 8th and I don’t foresee having that much available until probably the 12th.

Moving on to the numbers, on payday I received $452.01 from my full time job and $124.16 from the part time one. From this, immediately subtract my $25.00 automatic transfer to savings and that leaves $551.17 for paying bills along with the $182.09 I already had.

$100.00 – Store Credit 2 – Amount Due $10.00
$100.00 – Credit Card 2 – Amount Due $88.00
$ 50.00 – Cell Phone – Amount Due $28.83
$100.00 – Student Loan 1 – Amount Due $56.15
$100.00 – Student Loan 2 – Amount Due $70.29
$100.00 – Revolving Credit Account – Amount Due $89.00

There are two other bills that I have the checks written and in the envelopes. I just am not dropping them off until after I get a little more money. I will list them here because it is a fitting place, however, I will try and remember to make a post after I drop them off.

$125.00 – Landline/Cable TV – Amount Due $107.49
$100.00 – Internet – Amount Due $86.97

An update to my progress counter shows that I have made some considerable progress and this is very encouraging. This large jump (from $66,137.45 down to $64,771.01) is likely due to my previously not keeping this site updated and because the way that I keep it current is looking at the remaining balance on each statement that I receive and using that amount as the amount I still owe. This also means that my current payments are not accounted for in these figures.

Well, as I reported before, I had a little bit of money in my checking account that wasn’t spent before I got it. It was nice to have a little bit of breathing room and I also took advantage of the opportunity and spent some of it on some stuff that I didn’t really need. In some ways I kinda feel almost irresponsible because of it, but at the same time I haven’t really spent money on random stuff for quite some time.

Since I last posted here, I have spent $43.51 at Wal-Mart and bought some batteries, two bags of chips, a couple of things for the kitchen, and some toilet paper. There were a couple of other smaller random things in there as well, but all-in-all it was not a huge amount and it was all things that while not necessary will be used. I also spent $29.67 at Target on some entertainment, there were a couple of movies that were on sale that I have been wanting to get and I also bought a Wii steering wheel to use when playing Mario Kart with friends.

Finally, I am becoming more involved with my electronics lately and spent $61.48 at the local Radio Shack. I have made a couple of different purchases there and it did total up to more than I was expecting to spend on the couple of small projects that I am working on, but I also replenished my supply of resistors and diodes as well as purchased a new breadboard (used for testing and prototyping circuits before building) so looking back on it I don’t feel too horrible.

The worst thing about all of this frivolous spending is that it really starts to add up if your not careful! I have realized a couple of additional parts I am going to need to finish up one of my projects so I foresee another trip to Radio Shack in the fairly near future, but other than that I am thinking that my frivolous spending should be done for awhile. Also, since I am more caught up on everything now I should be able to just go out and get these types of things (well, except the Target trip) as the need arises instead of spending $134.66 all in one week so it will be much more spread out and not as big of a hit to the accounts.

In the positive category, however, I received a 1 penny deposit into my checking account as an interest payment. It’s not much, but nice to know that the bank wants to give me money just for using their services and doing what I normally would with my meager amount of money. Oh, and it’s payday this week too and I will have some bill paying to do that you will see posted about probably next weekend.

Ok, I promised you all that I would post in more detail about my trip to the grocery store on Saturday and here it is. I know it seems like I spent a lot of money, but at the same time I probably won’t do any serious grocery shopping for another 2 months or more. I might stop to get a loaf of bread or gallon of milk, but that will be about it.

As you can see, according to the calculations on the receipt, $22.40 which comes out to about 11% off of what the price would have been had I not purchased things that were on sale and used that $0.50 coupon that was available at the store. However, that is not everything that I purchased.

As I was loading all of my groceries from the shopping cart into my vehicle, I realized that I had forgotten to buy bread, for whatever reason I just walked right past that isle and didn’t even think of it. So, I went back in to get a couple of loaves of bread.

This completed my shopping trip and I now have food in the house so that I will not be as inclined to eat fast food as often. Perhaps I should buy fewer groceries at a time and go more often, but I think for now I will continue as I have been doing and just go when I need food and can afford to buy a bunch of groceries.