There's a Light

At the end of the tunnel, that is.  And it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down there.

Notice how I haven't bitched and moaned about money recently?  It's not because we won the lottery (I WISH).  Actually, things are still tight, but we've had a better handle on where our money needs to go which, really, makes all the difference.  I have a spreadsheet on my computer which goes all the wayt o the end of the year and basically tells me which bill I'm paying each week and how much (i.e. we split up our cell phone bill just 'cause we can and it's our largest bill...).  It's definitely helped us be more diligent about who we need to pay and how much we're going to set aside for rent and our car payment.

But at the end of August, Jerome's car needed $400 worth of work.  Money is still tight and we still aren't contributing ANYTHING to savings so we had to pull that from our rent money for September.  Luckily, we have amazingly forgiving landlords and were able to pay them half on September 5 and half on the 12th.  But now we're stuck in a hole.  That set us back a little bit on saving for NEXT month's rent.  Which could snowball into a lot of other issues.

I need a money tree.

Luckily, Jerome is putting in a LOT of overtime and I just finished a pay period at the bookstore with a LOT of hours so there is money coming in.  AND Jerome just got a new position at work; it's not necessarily a promotion but it does come with a decent pay raise.  That money will be nice once it starts coming in.  Yeah, you read that right.  Jerome has been in this new position for almost 2 months and hasn't seen a dime of that raise.  No, in case you were wondering, that's not legal.  But he will be getting retro pay for all of the hours he's put in since then without this pay raise.  This raise is like $2-3 more than he currently makes (or so we're expecting), so the retro pay should be very very very nice.  It's just a matter of being patient until then, LOL.

Just thought you were interested about where we stand on all that.  We're looking forward to being able to pay off a huge chunk of debt once that retro check comes in.  Until then, though, I feel like we're hemorrhaging money.  (Especially when I realize that I didn't click the "finalize" button on 2 of my payments I made last week... and we lose another $150.)

BUT don't think that I have forgotten about my pledge.  There's only NINE DAYS left of the 30.30.30 campaign and only NINE DAYS for you to comment on this post.  Do it.  Do it.  Do it.  Especially since Kait is matching whatever I donate.  And seriously $4 seems pretty wimpy right now...