<$Wednesday, October 10, 2007$>
The food thing, debt progress, and breathing freely once again
| Wow. I sure didn't mean to go another entire week without posting, but things got kinda hectic around here. The good news is, I've got a lot of overtime coming to me on my next paycheck, which should help us get back on top of things, so YAY! With our emergency savings fully funded again, I'm feeling much better about life, the universe and everything. Including our food spending. Between utilizing coupons and store fliers and a little restraint, I've managed to cut it back to a more respectable level, and Husband and I are finally on the same page about extra treats coming out of our personal allowances once the food fund has run dry. But I've also lightened up a bit about it all. We're foodies. Food = entertainment for us, and it's not like we spend much on other entertainment avenues--Netflix and the extremely occasional, must be seen on a big screen movie outing are pretty much our only non-food (and I count alcohol as part of the food expenses) entertainment. We really don't get out much, especially since the fall semester started. Besides that, Husband has special dietary needs, and we're both health-conscious enough to make many "cheap" food options off-limits. Realizing all of this has helped me feel better about the fact that what we spend on food for just the two of us is more than what some families of four get by on. I think we've figured out a balance between knowing what's worth shelling out for, where we can skimp, and knowing what the rules are for handling the budget that we can both be comfortable with for the time being. In debt news, applying my blog revenue to my credit card via weekly payments is proving a lot more productive at knocking down the debt than just tacking $50 or $100 on to the minimum payment was. My blogs don't really bring in that much on a weekly basis, but it's added up to reduce my debt this last month by about $100 more than it would have been reduced otherwise. So that's a method I'm liking and sticking to. All in all, things are looking up. The financial aid check was a huge help, and after several relatively small paychecks (thanks to short pay periods and a lack of overtime) in a row we've got some larger ones to look forward to again. If we can just be careful with our holiday spending, we ought to start pulling ahead for the rest of the year. After a couple of months of living paycheck-to-paycheck and treading water, it feels great to finally be making some headway again. Labels: credit cards, frugality, money management, personal, spending |
