Money - Financial Savvy

Here I am making incremental progress on getting rid of my various types of debt. I'm trying to be good - spending my money wisely, paying the right bills at the right times, ever conscious of my income.

But, time to time, I slip up.

It starts with living in NYC, where everything is more expensive. Buying lunch a couple of days a week will kill a good budget. Needing a last minute gift for a friend, plus dinner and drinks out, will derail you for a month, if not longer.

Luckily, I have finally gotten over the first hurdle. I have eliminated just enough of my debt that it isn't strangling me, just incredibly heavy. And I've been able save just enough that if I have an emergency purchase, I won't be eating ramen for week(s).

But this last week, I still found myself in the danger zone. I had over-committed my dollars. So when I got to the 7th, I already had no cash left. I needed my next paycheck, badly. But had to wait until the 15th to get the cash injection.

This is where having even the tiniest savings account helps out, as well as having a linked line of credit. I was able to use a little bit of savings and a smaller bit of credit to get by. (I paid off the credit the next day, when I got my paycheck. I still need to set up a savings program to refill my savings.)

Two things I'm doing in the long run to keep this from happening again:

1) My husband and I are reconfiguring our bill paying.

I'm moving from paying the rent and utilities from my account to our joint account with both of us transferring a monthly sum to the pot. This will help me by making my variable budget amounts into fixed amounts. I will know exactly how much I'm spending each month every month in bills.

This also allows me to reconfigure my bills entirely. I have set aside a certain amount of money each pay period for paying down debt. And I recently cleared one debt so I had set new amounts almost across the board. Now that I ran into this "glitch" I will reexamine and reset the amounts so that I don't encounter this again.

Better budgeting makes for better finances.

2) Cooking smarter dinners and bringing lunch to work.

I started cooking more and specifically bringing lunch to work more often. I was really in the groove for a while there, bringing lunch 4 times a week, with a treat day once a week. But I've been so busy that cooking was infrequent, let alone making sure there was enough left over for lunch. But now I'm making it a priority again. So far, so good.