April Monthly Spending Recap

So I have about $500 something leftover for the end of this month. That's good but it's about to be gone. I just found out my front and rear brakes have some issues and I have to get those taken care of. It's going to cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 when all is said and done but I'm actually going to split it up doing the front first then the rear. I don't wanna spend the whole thousand out of my next paycheck so I'm going to get the most crucial pieces fixed first. That'll be about $600. I also need to send off a car payment sometime this month. Me and Boo are planning to take a road trip in about another two weeks to go to New York and scoot up to Boston also. We're trying to see these places before we head back down south here soon. I'm also trying to save some money for the move and a deposit on a new place. Decisions - Decisions!

Weekly Spending - April Week 4

Not too bad this week. Had to get small grocery items like bread, rice, chips, and etc. I still have meat leftover from the last shopping trip. Yay! The biggest expense was the hotel reservation deposit. We're planning a trip to New York for one night and they actually take one night's price for the deposit to hold the reservation. I wasn't expecting that but oh well, it is what it is.

Weekly Spending - April Week 3

Not too bad this week with the exception of Boo. He went home this weekend and we underestimated the total costs of the trip so I ended up transferring $620 to his account to cover some of the extra. The gas was the biggest expense costing somewhere around $275 both ways so approximately $550 round trip. I made my first payment on my student loan this week. Yea! It's been in deferrment for the last two or three years now. I plan to continue making the payments every month even whenI start back to school hopefully in the fall. Other than that, it wasn't so bad of a week.

Things to think about

This past weekend was pretty uneventful. I did my grocery shopping Saturday and Sunday mornings. I've started going to one store to purchase all of my meat since they offer quite a variety and are much cheaper than the other grocery stores in my area. Then I go to Walmart for my other items like paper towels, toilet tissue, water, fresh veggies and fruits, and etc. I'm seeing that I'm coming out way cheaper this way. I can spent somewhere around $40 on meat at the one store and that will last me and Boo the whole week plus maybe a day or two. Then the sides are pretty cheap at Walmart. Sometimes I'll find cheap stuff at Family Dollar too. This should help cut down on the outrageous grocery spending we've been doing.

Me and Boo got into a mini argument Saturday night over finances. Mainly the planning aspect of it. As I've stated before in this blog, I'm the primary breadwinner. Boo just recently got a job and it doesn't really cover much other than a utility bill or two and his discretionary spending. I'm thankful for that cause every little bit helps. Boo is having to go back home at the end of this week for court. He hates flying so he's choosing to drive home. This is about a 10 hour drive. He's not sure if he wants to stay by his momma's house or rent a hotel room. Well he just got paid and I told him I don't think his check is going to cover everything (hotel, gas for the drive roundtrip, eating out, and etc.) while he's home. So I asked him to hurry up and figure out what he was going to do as far as where he's going to stay. The reason I said that is because if he doesn't have enough, obviously I'm going to help cover it and me, being the planner that I am, I'd like to know how much I'm gone have to come up out of pocket beforehand. Of course, he doesn't like to plan for sh*t so he got irritated about me asking him that. So I told him he needs to figure it out before he leaves or else he gone have to ask his momma for the money to get back up here. It really irks me to be the only one worried about the future and planning for anything. It makes absolutely no sense to me to go somewhere with no plan on where you're going to stay and just wing it. To me, that's how you end up spending more money because you could've found a good deal beforehand. Am I wrong for that?

On another note, I had a Capital One credit card that's now in collections. The balance is a little over $1300. I really need to do something to update my credit fast so today I called the company and offered to settle the account for $600. This money would come out of my savings account if they accept the offer. Do you think I should do it? I know it will still be a ding on my report but at least it will start updating as paid/settlement instead of over 120 days late and a separate collection account that are updating every month dragging my score down more and more. Once that's paid, I'll only have my student loan, my car loan, a few small bank overdrafts, my mom, and a friend to pay back. Only the first two in that list are on my credit report.

Hmmmm, so many things to think about.......

Weekly Spending - April Week 2

This week wasn't so bad. I paid all of the utility bills and the cable/internet bill. We went and bought Boo some new work shoes. He's been complaining about his feet hurting since starting this new job and I figured it was because of the shoes he was wearing. Turns out I was right (as usual!). We got him some mountain/hiking shoes built for support and working on your feet for long periods of time. They're a knockoff brand shoe but so far they've been working really good. Not too bad a purchase for $50-something dollars. I also bought us some much needed blinds for our living room from Home Depot. They were $10 a piece and the window is pretty long so I got two. The reason we needed them is because the curtain over that window came with the house but it is very sheer so at nighttime, you can see all up in the house and very clearly. I hate to drive by people's houses at night and be able to see what they're watching on tv or doing so I'm kinda paranoid about it. The blinds are up and work great now so that's one less thing to worry about. Being that curtains can be very expensive especially for big windows, I didn't want to pay that much to cover it up. The blinds are actually exterior roll-up type blinds. It only took me 10 minutes to hang them up and they're great. On another note, my paycheck was a few hundred dollars less this time because I adjusted my automatic savings allotment to $200 from $100 and I also upped my savings to my TSP account from $50 to $150.

Weekly Spending - April Week 1

Way out the box this week! Majority was on having to make constant trips for groceries. I also bought some plants and fertilizer at Home Depot for my patio garden set up. And I bought some household items from Ikea. I'm really going to have to clamp down on spending this month and every month from here on out with this extra spending. I would like to put away as much as I can for the moving expenses coming up which is going to be a lot.

I hate city life - Big news!

Hey folks! Today's post is more of a rant. As you all know, me and Boo moved up here from the south for a job promotion for me. This is both of our first time living in a big city and guess what? We HATE it! I am so for real about that. I've been here about 6 months and Boo has been here for 4 months. My salary increased by about 20K due to cost of living adjustment but my actual take home pay is only $200 more than what I was taking home back home. But now I'm paying more than double the rent, gas costs are higher here, food costs and any type of entertainment costs are way higher, plus I'm having to pay over $100 out of pocket just to commute to work. I hate being on a train more than an hour each way going to/from work everyday. I hate that depending on what time of day it is, it might take an hour to get somewhere that's really only 15 minutes away. I hate that it's so conjested with people here and it's such a hassle to get anything done. And to top it all off, most of the people I've encountered outside of work are just rude! Maybe it's because everyone's in such a hurry to get where they're going that common courtesy doesn't apply here. I could never get used to this way of life and don't want to.

So I've said all of that just to really say that WE'RE MOVING BACK HOME! Yea for us! I put in for a transfer about a month ago at my job and it's been approved. So in about another 2 1/2 months, we're packing it up and heading home. I won't lose my pay grade but my cost of living will adjust. I've already seen what my new salary will be and it's still a very high salary for where we're from. Now this poses many new dilemmas concerning debt payoff and such. Obviously now I'm not going to have enough time to pay off some things and work on my credit like I'd like to. Plus now there's moving expenses that have to be factored in. Me and Boo have been talking about housing arrangements when we get home and we're thinking we want to do some sort of lease/purchase so our rent payments will go towards something while we continue to pay off debt and work on our credit scores. From what I've seen with lease/purchase deals, you usually needs some sort of down payment to be approved for it. In our area, that's usually anywhere between $2K and $10K depending on how big/new/nice the house is. We'll see how that goes but I'm definitely going to be aggressively putting money in savings for that purpose from here on out.