Slowly rebuilding savings

On another blog I talked about rebuilding my savings. It's a very slow process that's for sure. Right now the majority of my "cash" resides in my house savings account. I did have a cd but I had to use that to repay for the work I had done on my car last year.

As far as regular savings, I have almost none. Like literally none. Now I'm starting to save a small amount each pay. Once the summer is over I think I will be able to save a lot more than I'm saving now.

By the end of the year I hope to have a minimum of one month of my salary saved. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere!

At least I paid off my loan

I did use my certificate that matured and paid off my loan. The loan was money that I had used to have major work done on my car last year. I was supposed to use the excess to pay off a credit card but that didn't pan out. I can't even tell you what I did with the extra money that was left over. I pretty much just frittered it away.

Now it's time to rebuild those savings. It's not going to be easy either. It will take me almost a year to get back to where I was this year. Of course I will not have that personal loan hanging over me so that's a good thing. On the down side, it's going to be so painful saving almost all of my excess income.

It takes so long to save and it's so easy to blow it all.

I figured out how to pay off some of this debt

And let me tell you, I am not happy about it. I have a cd that is maturing at the beginning of this month. Actually it matures in about a week. I'm going to use all of the proceeds and pay off a secured loan that I took to get work done on my car. I had figured that I would have some of that money paid back by now but things haven't worked out as planned.

Anyway, there will be several hundred dollars left after that loan is paid off. I plan on taking that money and paying one of my credit cards off. The plus side is that debt won't be hanging over my head any longer. The bad part is that I won't have the savings to fall back on.

Now I have to figure out where I'm going to get this money from. I do not feel comfortable not having a savings account. Especially since my credit union will let me take secured loans against the money. That way I can pay off a debt but keep my cash all while paying a low interest rate.

Oh well it's time to get on my savings grind.

I still don't have a clue about getting this debt paid off

I wrote at the beginning of the month that I needed nearly $100 dollars to retire my smallest credit cards by the end of the year. I stand by that except I still have no idea where to get the money from.

I was trying to come up with a plan but I haven't figured anything out. I mean my budget is already so tight that I don't think I can cut anything else. So that leaves coming up with more money every month. I really don't want to get a second job but I think that may be in my future.

Honestly as long as it's cold outside I do not plan on working another job. So that means I have until the end of April or beginning of May to find something. That also means that I'll have to readjust that number and I'll need more than $100 to get all 3 of those cards paid off. But I'll burn that bridge once I come to it.

Where am I gonna get a extra hundred bucks per month?

Ugh. I have no idea. $100 extra per month is what it would take to have 3 of my credit cards paid by the end of the year.

I did say extra. I just want to make sure that people understand that I'm making my regular payments but I want to pay extra to get the cards paid off by the end of the year. Right now I need about $17 for one card and $73 for another which is $90. But since I didn't send anything extra for January, that's where I get the round $100.

I've been battling the flu for almost the entire month of January and this early part of February so I don't see a second job in my immediate future. Especially since I've already missed so many days from my main job.

I hope to figure something out by the end of the month. I want this debt gone!

My debt snowflake isn't going as planned

Mainly because I have a bunch of small ticky-tack bills that keep coming up. While I've saved a lot of money from bringing my lunch and keeping costs down when I do go out, I keep getting these ridiculous small bills that I have to take care of first.

Starting in February I'm committed to getting at least 2 cards paid off by year end. Of course that still leaves me with debt but you gotta start somewhere right?

I'm going to snowflake my bills away

I have 2 credit card bills that just won't seem to go away. Minimum payments are not helping even though the balances are pretty low. I've decided to just snowflake them away. Since I can make as many payments as I want to every month, I'll just send whatever extra money I get when I get it.

Usually I save between $5-20 dollars from my lunch money. If I bring my lunch every day and stick to my plan, I save the top amount. Random purchases, especially snacks, brings me closer to the lower amount. Whatever is left once the pay period is over will be evenly split between my savings account and my credit cards.

I would love to have these two paid off by July and get started on my larger bill. Unfortunately I have a lot of debt to snowflake away. But as long as I stick to my plans, I should be ok.

I only have 3 vacation days left

And I didn't use them for fun things. I was so sick last week that I missed Thursday and Friday. I did come to work Monday but I almost left at lunch because I was still feeling bad. I didn't feel better until Wednesday. I think that was the first day that I didn't sleep almost 10 hours either.

I don't have anything planned for the days, mainly because I don't have any money, so it's not a huge deal that I don't have a lot of days left. It's just nice to be able to randomly schedule a day or two off and be able to sleep in and watch tv all day long.

This year sure has sped on by.

I still have 5 vacation days left

Or in other words, a cool week. In a way I wish we could sell the days back like at some companies. I don't have any plans and I really don't need the time off. I also have a ton of work and I really need something to keep me busy.

But don't worry. I will surely take those 5 days off and be a happy camper. The only thing I really need to decide is whether I want to take it as an entire week or if I want to break it up and take a day here and there.

Either way, it's time off that I'm really looking forward to.

Stop tempting me Groupon

I get the Groupon Getaways email every week. A lot of the time, you will see the same vacations over and over until they sell out or the sell by date arrives. Infrequently they will have something that will totally sell out which usually means it was a great bargain.

Lately I have been seeing short vacations for little to no money. The vacations do not include airfare but I have frequent flyer miles that I could burn for that. It's so tempting to just buy one and plan a mini vacation or even a vacation into next year. Most are 3 or 4 day vacations which is usually just enough to get away and recharge the batteries. The vacations are often all-inclusive which means tip money and go.

Ugh I need to get my finances together and quick.