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"Spring" updates

March 31st, 2008 at 04:13 pm

It's blizzarding outside right now, so it doesn't feel very springy. Saturday and Sunday were in the 30s-50s with lots of sunshine, and we did lots of springy things, so this is a real downer!

It's been a great month, moneywise. I discovered we had some exercise-incentive money hanging out in the bank that we have not, ahem, had use of (been a bit slothful lately). So I put $150 toward my big credit card payment going out this week, and $150 toward fun-money savings.

Then, I got my 3/31 paycheck and my increased withholding didn't have as much of a negative effect as I thought it would, so that's $80 per month extra. NT got nearly $90 of overtime in his 3/31 paycheck. Earmarked another $150 to the now-massive ($1900) credit card payment! Can't wait to report that step toward my goal once it hits!

Also, I found out AS's enrollment in grad school doesn't technically end til July, even though her classes end in May. So that means both her deferred federal student loans probably won't start coming around until August. August is NT's first anniversary at his job, so good chance of a raise there, and my job (which could not give the usual annual raises this month) is hoping to be in good enough shape to give us all a small raise in September instead. So if our luck holds out, one or both of those raises will come through to partially or fully offset the student loan payments, and our budget will not be much affected.

Then, since I now know when our "stimulus" checks are coming, I thought I'd extrapolate our budget out a few months. We're putting one check toward debt, one toward savings and keeping one for pocket money. I realized as I was figuring all that out that AS has an extra check coming in July, so our budget through 7/15 shows quite a large surplus; $1400. I haven't decided where that's going yet; probably half to debt and half to fun-money savings. It's a ways away. Right now it's just sitting as a pleasant bottom line that I can look at whenever I update my budget.

Anyway, all that good money news is helping me keep a springy mindset despite the snow. Also, we painted our bedroom this weekend, with bright green and a very pale greenish white, and bought daffodils to display and vegetable seeds, and planted the first of the seeds in little soil cups.

We're anticipating our May England trip more and more (less than seven weeks now!), and we've been planning some other fun activities, like a garage sale (at a friend's garage) and a weekend in a cabin (that same friend's mom's cabin) both in June.

C'mon, spring weather! It's the only missing ingredient! :-)

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