OK, it wasn't too hard figuring out where to trim the fat in my budget. First, we have $300 per month that is "exercise incentive money"; basically we can "earn" extra spending money by exercising, and if we don't exercise enough, the leftover money goes into extra debt repay or fun-money savings. Cut that line item for the forseeable future; we'll just have to exercise of our own free will, and do with a bit less spending money.
Then, I cut two of my regular US credit card payments back to the minimum payment. That way, I only had to cut $150 out of the extra money I send to the UK each month. I really want to get that account breaking even without my help, so I can stop paying $50+ per month for the privelege.
Looking over my budget made me feel good. I mean, we may not think this all the time, but we have plenty of luxuries we pay for. High-speed Internet. Cable TV. Netflix. A generous grocery/household category. Monthly haircuts. Decent spending money. There are lots of places we could cut in a true financial crisis. We're really lucky we didn't have to touch any of these this time.
Anyway, if this is the LAST of my nasty surprises for awhile, my August UK transfer should still be pretty big and exciting, and may even push us to the point of breaking even in that account.
PS: I'll update my "Bills and Budget" page if anyone's interested.
Oh yeah, and if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my rambles. It really is so good to work these things out in writing.
Reconfigured budget
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 am 1215044683
July 3rd, 2008 at 01:43 am 1215049384
A year ago, his rental income was $400 short of covering all his monthly bills. Now it's only $77 short because I've paid off 4 of his debts. The more principal I pay off on his last UK credit card, the smaller the minimum monthly payment gets. As soon as his rental income covers his minimum monthly bills, I can stop doing expensive international wire transfers, so I'm paying his debt off as fast as I can.
July 3rd, 2008 at 06:14 am 1215065650
If you transfer $100 over every month, you only pay $50 on the debt, or $600 for the year. If you save $100 a month and then send that over at the end of the year, you are still paying $50 for the transfer but get to apply $1150 to the debt instead of $600.
July 3rd, 2008 at 01:29 pm 1215091790
Well, hopefully this last transfer will get the credit card balance down to where the bills shrink enough.