I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Tell All Tuesday - Emergency Fund in Danger

Well, the emergency fund is untouched for now, but I’ve been adding up the budget numbers and it just doesn’t look good. But first, the debt numbers.

Current account totals:

• Credit Card: $4,959.11 (snowflaked $90.50 this past week)
• Student loan: $12,038.71
• Spouse student loan: $12,308.71
• Car loan: $3782.67 (made monthly payment of $228.32)

Debt at start of blog (6/19/07) : $36,451.71

Current total as of 10/16/07: $33,088.87

Principal paid to date $3,362.84

% Debt paid off (from NCN Network Chart): 9.23% (last week 8.38%)

So, two accounts dropped into a new thousands level and that makes me excited! The car loan is under $4000 and the credit card is under $5000! Yay!!!

I snowflaked the surplus from last month ($82.80) plus the remainder of the ebay profits ($2.70) and a survey payment ($5) for a total of $90.50. I’ll be making my standard $200 payment when we get back from our trip. This however paid over the minimum due because that was only $75. Tricky. I also have $37.20 in pending survey payments and $7 in survey payments in my checking account that are also for snowflaking. Whatever I’ve gotten paid by the time we get back from vacation will be snowflaked with the $200 payment.

And now for the bad news. I’ve added up the numbers again and again and we are going to be somewhere between $400 and $600 short this month. This is due to a number of factors: my contracting check was smaller than usual by about $250, the tires that cost $370 and I only had $100 saved, and our maintenance contract on the furnace, water heater, and a/c was due this month ($190) and I only had $80 saved so far due to some unexpected annual expenses. And we also have to pay the gasoline for our trip up front and be reimbursed, and I’m not sure that we’ll get the reimbursement before the end of the month (that is what would push us into the $600 area of shortfall vs the $400 area). I have been trying to cut back and not spend money as much as possible but there is only so much I can do with what we have. So, there you have it.

So all I can do is wait until we return from our trip and then see where we are at after I pay all the bills besides our mortgage. Then I’ll know how much I need to transfer from our emergency fund to pay that. No, the mortgage is not an emergency unplanned expense but basically the transfer will pay for things that were (like the new tires) that I didn’t transfer right away for in an effort to preserve the emergency fund as long as possible. And here we are.

See you next week!

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