Wednesday, February 18, 2009

What happened to the extrafinancing?

I know some of you would wonder what happened to that money.  
 
Well, I got the 66,000 lps or so. right off the bat I paid about 42,000 to my Alianza-Bac-Unitec credit card. That's the one that gives me my good cellphone plan. I also paid 9000 and 5000 on the two pay arrangements I had. I did that so as to not fall behind on my payments because this quincena I earned a lot less on my morning job because I spent most of that quincena's mornings on my day job with the consultant that was over here doing work and required my presence.
 
I wish I could say that ALL the rest I went ahead and put it on my credit card debt. It would be easy to write this. However it's not true. Between lempira and dollar balance I know I paid about 9000 lps to my Bac Platinum card. I did this because since both card are issued by BAC if I miss a payment on one they will block both and I need to have at least one available for my trip to Phoenix next week. I don't plan to use it but in a foreign land, in a place i've never been before it's a safety rope I case I need something urgent. More on that trip soon.
 
The rest, 3000 lps or so. I spent it. Yes I spent it. Not proud about it. My wife's car had a tire that needed replacement and some fixing to the steering. The rest was spend on mundane stuff that was "necesary" at the moment, things like school supplies or money for activities, medicines (which my wife seems to always need plus my own that I bought extra for my trip), etc. I know I should track those small purchases but they all seemed required at the moment. There was maybe a couple of fast food purchases, but the rest all was "urgent". Maybe I do need to track it just to make sure it was actually required spending.
 
My daughter got robbed near my house and he cellphone was stolen. This would've been a shock in itself, but it was more of a shock to know that she had racked up $200 in calls up to the day her phone was stolen!!! I had a serious sit down with her and she told me she called several friends a lot and just didn't keep track of time. I'm still waiting for that invoice to show up, but right there I told her that I was cutting her from our post-paid plan. I got her a simple 200lps phone (actually got two cause it was a 2 for one promo) with Digicel. It came out well because all her friends use Digicel now and for 10lps a day they can talk for four hours every day. Putting her on the plan was a mistake. I also took my wife's and my own phone's credit limit down to $60 both, and that's still high with the mini rate we are both enrolled in but I can lower it more if I want.
 
Well I'm trying to keep it short, and I hope blogspot keeps this blog free.  

3 comments:

wolfie_cr said...

have you updated the 'debt amounts' that you keep on the right column? hopefully some have gone down

keep it up and gl

AJ said...

I'm going to update the columns ASAP. I too hope that some of those have gone down. I know that I haven't used them so all i'm being charged for is membership, insurance and interests.

La Gringa said...

Sounds like the girls need to have a strict phone budget. Maybe you should decide on an amount per week and when it's gone, it's gone until the next week.

You may think of the girl's phones as a safety/security/emergency thing and I can't argue with that. However, a $200 bill tells me that it's being used as a very expensive toy that you really can't afford.

Even $120/month for you and your wife sounds high, considering the good rates that you have on your plan, and the fact that your wife can make calls from the home phone.

-LG in nag mode ;-)