How sweet it is ...

Happiness is ....

Realizing that no matter what's been happening .... WE ARE SURVIVING!

It looks as if my husband's job is back to normal swing. My job is at normal swing plus a day. The overtime I worked that I thought was going to kill me -- didn't and I have two really sweet paychecks to show for it.

Through the darkness - we never used a credit card. We never fell behind in payments. We never once felt as if we were strapped or stuck.

With our stashed cash (extra paycheck, tax refund money etc) and overtime check we were able to:

1. Send an extra $2000.00 to our lowest debt in July.
   
2. Pay Extra towards what we owed for Property Taxes due in July
3. Put aside some Play Money for summer (Summer Fest and Brewer game)
4. Did all of our annual outside maintenance.

For those still wondering if ENVELOPES are a good idea:
So far this summer we needed -
$200 for lawn repair
$200 for an air conditioner replacement part and labor
$45 for driveway seal coating
All of which came from an account already funded for Household Repairs and such. The only inconvenience I had was transferring the money from my Savings acct to my checking!! Thank goodness for thinking ahead! That would have been $445 on a credit card if we hadn't planned ahead!

I'm truly thankful for the lessons I am learning!

Has it really been that long since an update?

Hello Wendy! Where have you been?

Looking back - it's been almost two months since my last update. Where the heck have I been? Working for one. Spring means leading the training classes above and beyond my normal work load. With that also comes some nice overtime hours - but less time for other things. More news on the work front - I have been (maybe temporarily) been given an extra day a week. I haven't noticed that so much because with the training, I've been working 6 days a week anyway.

What does this mean for the financial outlook?

We used some of the extra income to re-fund envelopes that had been neglected, did our outside spring maintenance and flowers, put some aside for summer entertainment (you know what they say about ALL WORK AND NO PLAY) and put some aside for our real estate taxes next month as I was a tad short.

My husband's hours are still shortened. They can't seem to make up their minds between 32 and 40 hours. It's been a week to week thing. So my extra hours is also supplementing our regular income when he's not working 40.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel!

It's funny. With the economy being in the shape that it's in - the theme seems to be: Cut back, make concessions, spend less, save more. I've seen so many people struggle with this "new" concept. Since our family has already been doing this, it hasn't phased us. We had the stockpiled groceries to fall back on, stashed cash for a "rainy day" that we haven't needed to use and the knowledge that we needed to stay out of restaurants and bars. You'd be surprised how many people I work with who are complaining - yet go out to drink, eat and I won't even start my rant about those who still smoke with the prices as they are! The truth is the economy nonsense hasn't really touched our business too much. We are still thriving in our tourist town because of the obvious - people will still take day trips even if they can't take week long vacations.

What's next?

As soon as my husband's hours get a little more reliable I will be sending our "stash cash" to debt number one. All our efforts will go to batting that puppy down if not off before the 0% APR special wears off in September. It will be good to get on the "more than mins" wagon and start going gazelle like we were all last year. There is big fun with that! I really miss watching those balances fall.