Back to School

The good: Paid for all of my girls school supplies and tution fees with money saved, no credit card put on it. Cool!

 

The bad: Emergency fund almost wiped out, at least i'm rebuilding it as fast as I can. I didn't pay 2,400 lps due on the Bac Loan, I will pay it all next quincena.

 

The bad bad: Wife flunks another of her master's degree classes. Another Lps 2,600 down the drain. She is upset about flunking the class but says she doesn't deserve that grade and that it's everyone else's fault. In any case the school will probably let her take the class again with a simple online course, no test but they will sure want the $$.

 

Back to 6:30am drives to drop girls at school. Wife won't help because at that time she says she is not alert enough to drive safely.

 

Another good: I'm back on schedule with the Promerica loan which was the biggest payment.

 

Another bad: I'm behind on the Bac Loan, see above.

 

Another good: I now have a budget for the money I get from my morning job, most of it goes to debt payment. a small portion goes to wife, girls and me, and the rest is now budgeted for Emergency Fund and Freedom account. Specially since my emergency fund is almost depleted.

 

 

 

Emergency fund refund and the Freedom Account

A week of vacation went by so fast and it really just meant working with a different window view as I worked the same hours but more on the morning job.

 

I had to do mayor car repairs and registration for the other car and unfortunately I had to dip into my emergency fund. So in order to re-fund it, I increase my automatic deposit into that account from 1000 lps to 1500lps.

 

Also this week i'm going to open my freedom account , which should be the one to have the money for the non-monthly expenses that I should know about. I'll start it off with 500lps and try to put 500lps into it every quincena.

 

I had a couple of tough love comments saying that I should face reality and put all my debts in one page, and keep track of my spending. Well I guess i needed that. I've opened a simple spreadsheet and the first credit card bill that came this month is already posted there and I will keep putting the others up as they arrive. As I'm covering for a coworker right now I can't go out to get some of the info I need to write it down faster (i'm writing this between tasks and calls).

 

I think I do need to write my debt down to make sure i'm actually moving forward to reducing it. I know that it's not increasing but on my HSBC card I'm not sure i'm reducing it as I would imagine.

 

Thanks for reading!

Freedom Accounts and recent events

I was reading this interesting article. One important point I got from it and it's so true with me is that when I add up my monthly expenses there is always a lot of money left and I wonder where it goes. Selective amnesia is what it's called. We forget the non-montly payments or those informal montly expenses (like hair cuts and daily grocery purchases).

 

They talk about setting up a Freedom account and I was surprised that basically that's what I was doing with an old account I have in Banco Atlantida. I was putting money in there to save for expenses on the big things that are comming like my girl's school tuition fees this August.

 

I will ask for another automatic deposit on that account. On my emergency fund I have authorized L 1,000 every 15 days. I will start funding my Freedom account with lps 500.00 every 15 days too. For some reason when it's under 1,000 I feel it is less of a hit.

 

Why did this jolted my mind? well I have to pay lps 3570 in registration fees for my wife's car by friday. this is a once a year payment. Then I have a lower one for my car in November. There's also the car repairs , actually maintenance that I've found out i'm not budgeting anywhere. In any case these are expenses that throw me a curve ball in my attempt to pay off all the money I owe. This time I will have to dip into my emergency fund to pay for the registration fees. But i've managed to put in more hours in my morning job (do you notice that i'm not here or even in twitter that much any more) and hopefully I will use some of that to take my emergency fund back to it's previous level in a month or two.

 

Other non-montly expenses are doctor visits, non-prescription and prescription meds not covered by my insurance. Books and other similars for my wife and kids. I hate to say etc because it means I don't remember other non-montly expenses, so i'll leave it at that and list more of those here when I have them in my mind.

 

On other topics the crisis in my country continues and even though we are living peacefully there is tension in the air on how this all will end. Directly to me it affects me because either my boss, my wife or myself make me waste time by talking about it. Who did what, what was discovered, another deep research article to read, etc.

 

As much as I support the cause, it takes about an hour or two of my day every day just to keep up with events, as I don't dare be in the dark about it. Just yesterday we had a meeting from 11am to 3pm, a four hour meeting we spend 75% of the time talking about the crisis, that's three HOURS, and about one hour actually talking about work stuff. I hate so much when my boss goes off in a tangent that way. I feel the minutes breezing away as he talks and the others talk back, probably just being polite. Then I had another meeting, and fortunately the work stuff was dealt with in the start and then the crisis talk took over and I excused myself and came to work...an hour later that meeting ended.

 

My morning job was delayed in sending my payment and I've had HSBC and Citibank calling me since last week about payments and until a few minutes ago I didn't have the money. So right now i'm off to keep both of them at bay.

 

I still haven't written down the numbers on the money I owe or the money I spend. I think sub-conciously I don't see the reason for it as I should know where my money is going. I know my credit cards are frozen. I know I don't carry then, they are cut up so I think deep inside myself I don't understand the reason to put up in a single page all the money I owe (once again), I think it might even discourage to look at the big number and feel that I can't overcome it. Same for the expenses, but I think that part would probably help me cut down (more!!) on them. My biggest problem is that my wife and to a lesser extend my girls are not on the same boat with me 100%, they are more like 50%. So it's hard each month because of that. How ironic, the oldest and the youngest women in my house try to get the most money from me. My oldest daughter doesn't ask me for money as much as my youngest daughter and my wife.

 

I've talked a little about this with male friends, coworkers and boss and they all agree that their wives are about the same, any money received they want a piece, a big piece (if not all of it). A bit of relief to know i'm not alone but no real help except facing the reality that I have to become a tougher husband and dad and say "NO" more often that i'm already saying now. I think that is the hardest part about my financial problems, having to face them mostly alone with little help from my family and thus I become a sort of enemy to them when I don't buy them what they want. Sad but that is my reality.

 

Anyway..I gotta go before they close. Otherwise I will get a call tomorrow. Off to owe less!

The Emergency Fund

Well, I can't live every day of this political crisis expecting someone else to come fix my problems. So back to talking about the money I owe and the progress i'm making.

 

I have a lot of ideas about stuff to write, like how i'm failing miserably at keeping records of my expenses or making a budget. I mean a detailed budget, because I already have a general budget. I will post my "general" budget soon I just have to copy it from my cellphone's to-do list.

 

One thing I had to touch on today was the emergency fund. I was read the debt kid's http://www.debtkid.com/why-you-need-an-emergency-fund article about it and I felt myself on his shoes.

 

Previous I used to think I was missusing money by saving it on an emergency fund when I had outstanding debt. I should put every penny I could towards paying debt.

 

Then as it happens to everyone the unexpected would hit, a car repair, a higher than usual bill, someone gets sick ,etc. Any unplanned or overbudget expenses makes one whip out the credit card if you don't have other way to pay for that thing.

 

So the emergency fund came to be after considering that it would take me several years to get out of this debt and probably the money in the fund wouldn't be missed so much compared to the satisfaction of self-financing in times of crisis.

 

Two things have made my emergency fund grow now to about L. 7,000.00 ($350) . One is the automatic payroll deduction that goes straight into my emergency fund bank account. Two is the help of a dear friend in keeping for me the ATM card for that account and thus protecting me from the temptation to use it in non-emergency situations.

 

I have done something else. Every time I take money out of the emergency fund to pay for some emergency I make a note on a sticky note I keep on the savings book for that account. I have made a strong effort to repay the fund and not just let it organically grow thru the money I normally put on it from my paycheck.  Right now I have 1000lps to repay. This is down from the highest of 2800lps some time back.

 

I think if I were to advise someone on things to do to get out of debt I would say that an emergency fund should be one of the first things to do, even if it sounds like going against the nature of paying up debt. It took a lot of meditation of my part to convince myself to do it, and now i'm glad I did it to keep myself from pulling credit cards (which I have destroyed anyway!).

 

Think about it and take my advice..it's free.

 

 

Hardship has it's privileges

It is strange, and then it's not.

 

Having a curfew makes one plan a lot more in advance. Having the curfew time change makes it hard to plan.

 

This week i've spent the most I remember. I didn't write down everything I spent but I know that I didn't spent much money because most stores where closed when I went home from work. That forced to cut on spending on snacks and stuff for my girls. I did buy medications for me and gas for my wife's car and 200lps on repairs to a manhole cover on the sidewalk of our garage.

 

My wife says that she spent more on groceries, but she hasn't asked me for money because she can't go around freely as she is afraid of driving into a protest either pro or against what is happening in our country.

 

And then today I got paid at my morning job. I immediately paid my loan with BAC and my platinum credit card with them too. Tomorrow I plan to pay my loan with Promerica and see how that leaves me. The other money I owe is my HSBC card and my loan with Citibank.

 

I haven't kept good records of my expenses, payments, income, etc. Trying to send messages to the world to let them know the truth about what's going on in my country in this time of crisis has taken priority.

 

However I have remained frugal even in times of urgency. Maybe not to the extreme but at least buying rationally and being creative.

 

I hope I can concentrate back on telling my finances to you as soon as possible. In the mean time I just hope that my country's crisis ends soon.

 

Thanks for your support

Frugal in times of unrest in the country

Imagine not being sure if you will be able to buy gas or groceries tomorrow. Imagine if power is out and you are not sure when it will be back. Imagine if you don't know if there will be curfews that will restrict your travel to places you prefer to buy. You would be buying foods, probably fast foods, at any price. Filling up your gas tanks at the closest gas stations, buying groceries at any open store. Travelling long distances or waiting in long lines to buy things to supply your family with shelter, clothes and foods. Price comparison and buying frugally take a back seat to fullfilling the sense of protection and people turn to cover necessities at any cost.

 

Last week concluding today has been one that has had me with those fears in my mind. On thursday we were sent home early as things in our city were feared to turn chaotic and they didn't. Today sunday we had our president removed from post and the city panicked for a while. However order remained and so far there are no curfews.

 

How has this affected my debt plan? I am happy to say that for the most part it hasn't affected as much as I feared. We got paid on friday and we had filled our car's tanks as regularly scheduled.

 

We did have to go to another supermarket, not the lowest price that we usually go to, but not overtly expensive. We had to do that because the low priced one had no power today as all the city awoke with no power. We purchased about the same amounts of groceries we usually do. We didn't go to the wholesale supermarket today but we plan to do so later this week when we hope things get more back to normal. Thankfully the supermarket was not running out of most things and even though we had to stand in line at the register for about two hours we were able to purchase what we needed not at the lowest price but at least at an average one.

 

As power came back I was also relieved that I would be able to work this sunday for my morning job.

 

However, as the new president and the ousted president will probably clash this comming week, I fear that some of our freedoms and rights might suffer temporarily and will make me spend more money that I would usually spend.

 

So, if you think you have trouble being frugal, imagine living in a country that makes it even harder by changing the rules of the game from one day to the other.

 

Right now, I feel calm and in peace, but I ask you to pray for this to continue for my country, my friends, family and me.

 

Well, back to work now.

Its monday

I have a throat infection that was really bad last week, was a little bit better last week and it's the same this week.

 

I have a morning job in which the urgent tasks don't let me get to the important tasks. Urgent tasks like keeping internet available to the programmers when the main connection goes down...switching to the other provider is not easy. Important tasks like figuring out if we can reboot a box without locking everybody in or out of the office in phoenix. Important stuff like wondering how to remove Internet Explorer 8 and put Internet Explorer 7 back into a very busy server without disrupting service. I wonder if my boss is as patient with me as he seems to be. I sometimes feel I would've at least had a talk with myself. He's a really nice guy and I hate not completing the tasks he assings to me the same day.

 

I have an afternoon job on which we have several projects going on at the same time, fiber lines being installed at locations. Calling people to get access. People calling me for a meeting to look at their product. A team meeting to decide which company will get $250k worth of contracts for software and hardware. A new version of a system that at face value is the same as the previous one but requires a meeting with users to explain the subtle differences, oh and that one has a deadline to go live by July 1st, otherwise we will feel it when we try to get the monthly reports consolidated from the old and the new system. Topping this off is a boss that is a time-hog, he keeps me in his office to fix an email problem, but while I want to know what is wrong he is taking landline and cellphone calls, so I wait. Then he tells me war stories about the things he's done and the places he's visited. And we always go back to his farm. Then he asks me what I do with all the time at the office.

 

I have a side project with a cellphone repair company. It's an old piece of software that requires a couple of fixes here and there. They've used it for almost 7 years now and it's a monster to support. Early last year they fired their IT support guy, so guess who gets calls now when they can't connect to the application. Or when they can't find a backup that has 30,000 level 3 work orders. And they had the never to ask me to come in the morning cause at 6pm they already wanted to leave as I was searching for the files I would need to figure out if there was a chance to fix the problem later tonight.

 

Well at least I have work, it beats not having anything to do!

 

During the weekend my car leaked oil like crazy. The fix was so cheap but the oil was so expensive in comparison! Wife had a flat tire. Repair shop says I have to change all tires on that car soon..like in a month or so. It's a heavy car for the tires I think. Mine still has good ones and we bought them almost at the same time.

 

I have friends I haven't been able to call since two weeks ago when I said I would call them "tomorrow" and then tomorrow said "no, you are going to be neck deep in work...and sick too".

 

Well at least my morning job payment came and I was able to pay off my credomatic platinum card, finally paid off my extrafinancing on it. I was paying $315 for that. Now I only have $550 balance on that (on the dollar side) and about 90,000lps on the lempira side. The minimum payment on the dollar side will now drop from $350 to $95. That will allow me to pay off more debt in other places while slowly paying this one off.

 

I have tons of emails comming in and luckily most of it is spam. The other I read quickly and file or delete. I have avation news I haven't read since january and catching up will probably imply deleting every other email while I read some during my sleep or something.

 

Well at least it's monday, how bad could tuesday be huh? (I know I'm asking for it, I want to know how bad it can get).

 

Enjoy your monday