Last night work = extremely tiring morning. But also means extra $$$

So it's not really that late right now.. it's only 10:30pm, but I haven't started my work yet.  Once I do, I suspect I'll be up for a couple hours.. maybe a few hours.  Last month we lost a couple team members (moving to a different dept and company) and so there are some gaps in our work coverage.  There was an email sent out to the team asking if anyone was interested in working Tuesday night.  Normally I wouldn't volunteer but I knew there would only be one other person who would volunteer and I also knew that they were already working on OT on the weekend.  So I decided I would help the team out and volunteered to work OT tonight.  Because it's been so long since I've worked a late night like this, I'm struggling to stay awake and I know that tomorrow will require at least 2 cups of coffee.  At the same time I know that tonight's work will be at least 4 hours of OT and I've decided that from now on I will start working any offered OT to help pay down some of the credit card debt.  It really isn't hard work and will only be one every week or two.  Even that can add up to a couple hundred extra dollars each month which will make a huge difference in paying down debt.  I'm very excited just thinking of it.  I also know that the next couple weeks at work are going to be very hectic at work so I may even offer to work OT.  It won't be fun to give up time with the kids in the evenings, but the good news is DH is at home in the evenings for the next couple weeks, so this would be the best time to work OT.

On a completely different topic, I learned 2 things today:
- for a female my size, it will take approx 1 month to gain 1lb of muscle
- humans are tallest first thing in the morning, we shrink by a couple centimeters throughout the day (gravity, pressure on the spine)

Oh, and I received my Amazon.ca book order today!  Can't wait to start reading the book, and what's even better was that I used my Swagbucks to redeem Amazon.ca gift certificates, so the book was FREE!  I have to admit, reading this book series (Black Dagger Brotherhood) is my guilty pleasure.  Even thinking about the storylines makes me blush.  I can't believe I'm even admitting that I read the books.  But once I get started it always a struggle to put the book down.  I've read all 9 books and am on the 10th book.  Once I'm done this book and now that I've finished the Hunger Game trilogy, I'm definitely going to need to find another book series to read.

I'm still feeling very lost with our budget right now but it's getting a little easier and I do see a light at the end of the tunnel.  By the end of the month I am 100% committed to getting the numbers and budget figured out.  Luckily DH is receiving a signing bonus at work so that will give us some extra wiggle room in the budget and May is a 3-payday month, so that will definitely help as well.

We got our taxes done last week, and although I'm not 100% confident that the lady did the taxes correct I know that DH and I are both getting money back.  Good news is that I will be able to set money aside for the destination wedding I am part of in January 2013.  And I will be able to put money into our EF.  I have a tendency to spend extra money very quickly so I need to ensure the money is set aside and untouchable.

Ok, I think it's time for me to start my work.  Hoping for a good day tomorrow and that I make it through the work day.  With the extra hours worked tonight I could easily go home early tomorrow but then I'd lose the OT hours and that wouldn't help the debt situation.

Car maintenance... appointments I never look forward to

A couple weeks ago we took our vehicle in for an oil change.  When we went to pick up the vehicle, we were told that there was a transmission leak via the cooler line and that this would need to be looked at and repaired.  Ugh!  Just what I needed, a vehicle repair.  Our budget just included a car repair fund, which I failed to transfer any money into, so any expenses for this upcoming cost would have to come out of the other budget line items.  I dreaded making the follow up appointment, hoping to delay the repair until I could save some money for the cost of the repair.  DH insisted we get this looked at as soon as possible, so I called to make an appointment which is now set for this Saturday.

I wasn't 100% sure if the appointment was to investigate the issue further or if they were going to go ahead and do the repair.  I was expecting they would investigate further and provided us with a quote and ask whether we'd like to proceed with the repair.  So I decided to call the Service dept this morning.

"Your vehicle is still under the service contract, so there are no costs on your end for this work"

Music to my ears.  It was a great way to start the day.

I also worked on our weekly budget and it looks like we'll have $97 left over once all bills are paid, the vehicle is fully fueled and groceries are purchased.  I'm also going out for lunch today for a co-workers farewell lunch.  Can't wait!  It's a good day!

How much for a 3rd birthday?!!

I hate to admit it, but we went overboard with J's 3rd birthday celebration this past Sunday.  We had 2 separate parties, one for friends and kids and one for family.  The first one cost me a bit more than I had expected, due to additional guests that I did not anticipate.  The second party didn't cost much but because we were doing a party earlier in the day, I had no time to cook so all the food was ordered.

I went over the birthday budget by double the set amount.  Also, this past Saturday we were invited to a birthday dinner at Red Lobster, which set us back $65.  I would consider this our family meal out for the week, but it's still much more than we normally spent.

This week work has been kicking my butt.  I've been putting in a couple hours of OT each night and J decided he wants to give me a very hard time when it comes to finishing his dinner.  On top of catching up from the extremely busy weekend, the busy work days I feel low on energy and today I missed my work out which really sucks.

I could have done a work out and put in maybe 50% effort but I decided to perhaps try to get to bed early and catch up on reading some blog posts and to even update my own blog.

I'm definitely looking forward to March and trying to get back on track.  I don't feel like I've made much progress financially, but I just need to look at the numbers again and figure out what my plan of attack is.

Can't wait for March!

Well HELLO! “Insufficient funds” nice to finally meet you

Up until last night, I’ve not had the pleasure (throw in sarcasm) of meeting “Insufficient funds”. 

It was pay day for me on Tuesday and as I’ve always done in the past, I logged into our online bank account and started paying bills that were due.  My flaw in budgeting is not knowing the details of when automatic payments come out of the account.  Maybe I think that the house insurance comes out on the 5^th of each month, but it’s actually being withdrawn on the 2^nd of each month.  I never really paid attention to the actual dates, I just know that it’s withdrawn the first week of each month.

I knew that DH got paid on Thursday, so I believed that there’s be enough money in the account to pay for the groceries we picked up last night.  Luckily I had gone through the Self-Checkout line at the supermarket, it would have been quite embarrassing to have my debit payment declined and have the cashier tell me that the reason was insufficient funds.  Although DH was with me at the supermarket, he didn’t notice that I had to retry the payment, this time using money from our savings account.

I was very surprised with the insufficient funds message.  It caught me completely off guard.  Immediately my thoughts went to what other payments I may have forgotten and whether or not I caused any automatic withdrawals/payments to be returned, resulting in a $35 NSF fee.  As soon as we got home, I logged into our online bank account and saw that there was still $20 sitting in our chequing account.  The grocery total was $24 which obviously is more than what we had.  I looked at the detailed transactions and saw that there were no returned automatic withdrawals/payments.  PHEW!  That was a huge sigh of relief.  I would not have been very happy if I logged in to see a $35 NSF fee.

This is an eye-opener for me and has validated my feelings that more attention is needed on our budget.  Although our credit card use is very rare, I’m not proactively tracking our cash spending.  it would be very beneficial to be able to post a weekly spending recap.

“insufficient funds”, it was nice meeting you and there are lessons for me to take away from our encounter, and I hope I don’t hurt your feelings too much, but I am determined to never cross paths again.  It will be the best thing for everyone.