Budget

I have 3 months to pay off my 4000 credit card, while maintaining my stringent saving and budgeting plan.  This is $100 over budget, because I charged my mani pedi instead of paying cash.  I also plan to go back one more time to this esthetician and have a facial along with my mani pedi - maybe right before we move.  I will make it up.  I received $107 from a class action settlement about billing practices for this licensing prep class.  I will add it to our cash stash - we are up to $800.  We want to have $1000 squirreled away in our home safe for emergencies.
I also have to buy another delivery of a couple of my supplements before I am in between addresses - so, that is another $200 I have to come up with.  I may have to see if the extended stay hotel will let me get a package.  I order a probiotic from Amazon that is pricey and has to be refrigerated, but if i go more than a couple of days with out it, I get incredibly sick.  I already put aside $400 for my last 4 months of parking.  So, I should be ok.  We have to pay $103 a month to park.  For the first 10 years I worked here at this downtown, I found free parking a couple blocks away.  It was sort of a pain, but I got used to it.  At another place in another city, I had to pay $50 a month 20 years ago and still walk further than 2 blocks, so walking 2 blocks for free seemed doable.  Then, we had a pretty cold winter this past winter and a friend and I decided to pay Jan through March to park in parking garage and we never looked back!  But, we did figure out that by parking free for 10 years, we had saved over $12,000!  $100/month x 12 = 1200 x 10 years = $12,000.  So paying for 8 months isn't so bad.  Hope everyone has a great Wednesday.

Money Matters

Money especially matters when you treat it with respect.  It is crazy how when I was a young adult and made twice the money I make now, I never had any.  Once I met my DH and we began sharing we realized we had some goals in common and some bad habits in common.  Having another person made me want to become more accountable and responsible.  So, we discussed our goals and I wrote down our plan to get us out of debt on a napkin early in our dating relationship, as a preparation to discuss marriage.  My DH was going to just turn it over to me, but I wanted us both to work on it.  Not just one dictating to the other - that would spell disaster.  If not sooner, then later.  So, we both have become much more about saving some and spending some.  Making some investments and eventually we have a path to retirement.  Looking back, I think that even just little daily poor decisions about money had a cumulative effect.  Similarly, making better decisions has a cumulative effect.  As a young career person, one presentation by our HR department at our Fortune 500 Insurance Company made me commit to a 401(k).  The concept of compounding interest is powerful  displayed in tables for comparison.  Today, I am all about the bucket system.  Some buckets are literally stashes of cash and some are virtual buckets online, but the idea of saving for something separately from a combined pool of money has been very helpful for me.  Little daily decisions turn into yearly decisions and that behavior becomes habit.  I have a friend I enjoy coffee with, he said that when he was growing up and learning the right way to behave, instant gratification made him consider everything as negotiable.  You are negotiating with yourself for what you value.  I relate to that a lot.  Today I can consider long term goals over instant gratification and having a little money put aside here and there is my new value.  It is NOT negotiable.  I told DH that when we pay off our retirement home later this month after our city house sells, I already have a years worth of home insurance and real estate property taxes saved up.  Then right away, I will begin saving month to month small amounts to pay 2019 amounts.  He was pretty happy when I told him our plan. 
Happy June and happy pay day everyone!