Sunday, January 10, 2010

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!

3 comments:

Dylan said...

AJ, regarding lowering your cell bills, I though I'd mention that I work in the consumer advocacy division of the Houston-based company Validas, where we electronically audit and subsequently reduce the average cell bill by around 22 percent, or about $450 annually, through our website, http://www.myvalidas.com . From regular people to top companies to huge entities like the State of California, an incredibly varied group of wireless customers uses Validas to slash their wireless bills. In other words, Validas works, and it can probably work for you too.

You can find out for free if Validas can modify your plan to better suit your individual needs by going to http://www.myvalidas.com. Also, check out Validas in the media, recently on Fox News at http://myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/consumer/conlaw/lower_cell_phone_bills_072409 .

Good luck on retaking control over your wireless expenses and potentially freeing up some extra cash in this new year!

Dylan
Consumer Advocacy, MyValidas.com

La Gringa said...

Take her and kids cell phones to work and lock them in a drawer. Your wife has a phone at home and doesn't have a job. Cancel their plans. Simple. You can't afford it. Get them off the plans. Give them L.100 a month and tell your wife if she needs more to get a job and pay for it.

AJ said...

Took my kid's cellphone and locked in my drawer as you said. She now has a prepaid.

Wife keeps her phone but I lowered her monthly limit to somethin acceptable and added the 3 friends she calls most to the "unlimited calls for $5 option".

I know that you mean good in what I should tell my wife. At this stage she's a big obstacle on my road to being debt free. She's very sensitive when I take stuff away from her because she feels I just want to show how much I control her life. So stuff like this usually leads to heavy discussions and threats of serious stuff.

If you think paying up debts is hard, picture it with someone pulling under half of the time and complaining why debts aren't paid the other half.