2010 goals and challenges part 2

I just got my first pay for this year on my day job and I want to let you know that I increased my savings to my emergency fund by 200lps monthly (100lps quincenal). Since i'm having problem building my freedom account I have increased my contribution to the company coop by 400 lps (200lps quincenal).

 

In the back of my mind I know that january meant something different paywise. I wasn't sure if it meant more or less. Actually it's less. I have to pay 850lps quincenal , deducted actually, in municipality taxes for 2 months. So that will be a punch to my finances.

 

I guess the good news is that I have a gig finishing up and I will be able to pick up some extra money. I'm not sure if I should use that money to pay debt, pay stuff in advance or save in my emergency fund or my freedom account. I think I will probably sprinkle it around.

 

Also I got a call today from relatives in the US and they are interested in restarting the selling of nostalgic honduran products in the US. for example cigarrettes, over the counter medications, snacks..etc. So I have that line of income that might start. If anyone has ideas on how to to better do this I would appreciate your comments. I'm not talking of big containers, i'm talking about small packages of 1 to 10 pounds each, shipped possibly by regular mail since it would be the cheapest. I think I could involve my wife in this since she is out of a job and have her make some income on her huge lumps of spare time and maybe make herself feel useful and rise her self esteem.

 

If any of you know of "honduran" or "catracho" stores in your city in the US or anywhere in the world please let them know that I could ship them honduran products or help their customers (Hondurans living there) contact their relatives here thru alternative means to phone calls. Leave comments about this too if you want to help me.

 

I can say that 2010 feels to me like a year of opportunity for me to pay more debt and get closer to my goals of being debt free. I owe so much money, but I think it will owe a lot less.

 

The one thing I continue having a problem with is actually writing down the debt numbers here in this blog. I have most of those numbers either in paper on thru my online banking. But putting them here for the same period is a bit complicated since some debts have different cut dates. However I will make an effort to put an update here..it should be for own good too!

 

See you soon.

 

 

 

 

2010 new goals and challenges , part 1

I wish I could sit down and write all I want in one post. But for some reason time for this is hard to make. December is very busy time and this past week i've mostly been catching up in both jobs and the extra gig I have with the cellphone repair shop.

 

I have goals for 2010. Big goals as in paying down one big credit card debt, and little goals as in saving my spare change instead of losing it. I need to find something to put it in.

 

I have challenges in 2010 too. Like an impending devaluation of our currency that will probably increase living costs. My boss of my morning job hinted that he was a little bit concerned about my health since I was putting almost 40 hours per week for that job when he knows I have another full time job, plus he reminded me that they had budgeted me at 20 hours per week. So I'm trying to cut back my hours to 30 per week to keep him and me happy, but it does affect my payment plans.

 

The immediate problems I neeed to tackle is to lower my cellphone bills again because the card with the lowest balance is the one that has autopayment of my cellphones on it. So if I don't pay it in full it increases my balance on that card. I had taken out a cellphone for my daughter but after her mismagement of it by too much text and too much buying codes on it she and I agree it would be better for her to use her prepaid phone and that would help me and help her.

 

Next I need to get wife to control her phone usage. I think her bill will naturally go down from $65 to $50 because about $15 was spent on partipating on christmas raffles during december (sending $1 text messages to raffles for cars, trunks and other prizes). I too am guilty of that and I too hopefully will see my bill lowered.

 

My wife text's very little but she talks a lot. I've purchased her the $7 free nights and weekends promotion and the $5 "call 3 numbers for free" promotion too. So her base bill is $12. The rest of the bill is mostly calling. I think she forgets or plainly doesn't care that both promotions limit calls to 10 minutes. After that you should hangup and call again. I explain that to her and she gets upset at me, but when I hear her talk I don't hear her hanging up and calling again.

 

So another big 2010 challenge will be to try to get my debts paid when my family is only helping me 50%. My oldest daughter is with me about 70%, youngest is about 40% with me in practice but I attribute that to her young age. My wife however swings wildly, sometimes helping me save and sometimes asking me for trips and expenses that I haven't budgeted for. They are always emergencies and if I don't give her the money then I'm some inconsiderate husband that earns a ton of money and is treating her like crap. Yeah she says that.

 

I do look forward to a pay raise on my day job hopefully in about 20 days. Also we will now get a vacation bonus which will be a percentage of our monthly salary to be given to us on the month that we joined the company. For me it's september so that's still a long time to go.

 

I plan to save more, specially automatic savings. I'm having trouble funding my freedom account because asking the company to send money to a 3rd account is a bit embarrasing to me as I know my boss and the secretary would start asking questions. So i will increase my contributions to the company's cooperativa. Even though i'm the treasurer on it, I hadn't realize that it pays better rates that a bank's saving account!

 

I hope to elaborate some more this week. For now I have to get back to fix some bugs on that cellphone repair shop program.

 

Have a good 2010!