Looking forward to 2009

I'm feeling a little down because last quincena's payment hasn't been credited in my account yet. I know from previous payments that sometimes it can take a week but last time it only took 3 days and it was in December!

 

Anyway. I'm trying to write down things to look forward just to feel a bit more positive this weekend. For some reason I feel the weigh of my debt during weekends more than during weekdays. I guess it's an unconcious feeling of guilt of not working that haunts me, or maybe just that I have more time to thing about things.

 

So let's see some things that will happen that are positive:

 

1) There's been a change in the income tax law, so I will have to pay 300 lps less every quincena in taxes. that's about 15 dollars less every 15 days.

 

2) At my main job we all expect a 7% or so raise during january or at least february. I've been advice by friends not to let my wife know about this extra money I will get but she has a sixth sense about this things, at least this time around I have some more control about my money and won't give her more just because i'm getting more.

 

3) Some little things: I cancelled caller id and international call blocking on my two landlines. That means $5 a month in savings. On this area caller id doesn't work as it did on my previous house and my wife doesn't have anyone to call the US now and talk for hours like she used to do in the past.

 

4) I got a high cellphone bill (about $70 on mine) and I noticed that I called about 4 numbers a lot. And these numbers are not in my corporate plan. I can call numbers in my corporate plan for free on calls of up to 10 minutes each. So I took a special service. I get charged $5 per month to register 5 cellphone numbers that I can call for 2 US cents per minute. Regular rate for that in my plan is 10 cents per minute. To not increase my bill I cancelled the insurance on my cellphone which is also $5 per month. I expect to cut my bill about 40%.

 

5) The government has stated that the electric bill will have a discount of about 10%. They had a fuel surcharge fee which was about half or more of what I pay each month. They will no longer have that. Don't get confused, they will not have that as a separate fee but they will still charge it and the total will get a 10% discount. I used up 90 kilowatts in my last bill which was very surprising to me for all the cooking that went on during the holidays. It was almost half of what I usually use monthly. So this last bill instead of being 240lps (about 14lps) it was only 86 lps (about $5). An added bonus is that if I keep my consumption lower than 150 kilowatts I will get no bill. Water bill is another story!

 

6) My wife got called for a job interview next monday. I hope very much that she gets it.

 

That all I can think of right now. But there might be more and I write about it when I remember them. Next week I will write the starting balances on January for all the money I owe. That way you and can track how I am lowering my debt.

 

I hope you will keep reading my blog this year.

 

At least this blog is free, and hopefully my electricity will be too!