Another Tweak...

Well, our spending was a little out of control for March. I did a few budget tweaks on paper and decided that as long as $950 of each paycheck was deposited in to the checking account there would be no reason to not have enough to cover the entire spending plan. So today that's exactly what I did, I deposited $950 and kept the extra $11.23...well I kept $11.00, #3 asked for the $0.23 to add to her March for Babies fundraiser for next year that she has decided to make an ongoing project.

This year our team placed second overall at the Grand Forks, ND event with one of our youngest members being awarded with the Top Youth Award. As it was my #4 who received this honor, #3 has decided next year it's all hers!! Should be an interesting season of raising funds next year with the three of us! It's pretty hard for people to say no to a five year old asking for money "For the March of Dimes and Babies because they helped #5 be healthy."

Anyway...back to my original reason for this post; changing how much money is deposited each pay day. We have not yet figured out the discipline part of sticking exactly to the budget, even if we have a few extra dollars. The extra money is supposed to go to the baby emergency fund and then when that reaches $1000 (again) then the excess should be gong to the debt snowball. So now, the money is going to be put in to an envelope and put in a drawer for now until it reaches a significant sum (whatever I decide significant means).

Hubby has what is considered an irregular income because he's paid per mile plus a fixed dollar amount for every stop he makes to load or unload freight. At $1900/month we have everything covered except for placing money in an account for annual expenses such as property taxes and insurance. Fortunately our insurance is less than $600/year and is due in July. He has three paychecks in July so that will cover that expense. For property taxes my plan for right now is to focus on the baby emergency fund and that should be built enough by May to pay the first half of our taxes and to repeat the process for the second half due in October. Eventually I would like to pay our auto insurance annually as well. One less payment every month is fine by me!

Our student loans are another cause of concern for me. We owe crazy amounts to student loan companies. I don't even have them listed in our debt snowball yet because they cause me to lose all hope of ever getting things paid off! We probably owe as much on student loan debt as we do on our home! They are all in deferment currently but that can't last forever...can it??