The new numbers on contributing 3% more

Ok, the truth is that I'm horrible at math. This is bad when one of your obsessions is money management. But all I can do is try harder and keep listening to the experts and things should fall into place. For example, today I got my first paycheck after upping my retirement contribution another 3%. I had no idea what my takehome pay would be after I did that, but knew it was still a good decision to make. Here's the best picture I can figure out, which I deduced by doing basic arithmetic (percentages make me sweat):

These figures are per paycheck and rounded

New retirement contribution: $55 more than before.
New withdrawal amount for taxes: $8 less.
My new takehome pay: $47 less.

Ok, I can deal fine with having $93-94 less a month. Especially if it helps lower my tax bill next year (I'll be sending the KGB I mean the IRS $737 this weekend) and my retirement account continues to compound, compound, compound!!! At the age of 34, I definitely need to be getting to David Bach's recommendation of 12.5% asap.

One thing I'm definitely going to have to do next year is up the amount of our FSA! I budgeted $750 this year for medical expenses for me and DH, and I thought even that amount would be a stretch. I figured I'd supplement it with bandaids and Benadryl and the like at the end of the year if necessary. Well, it's only April and we've already spent $497, leaving only $252 and change left for 2007! Next year the baby will be living with us full-time and so her medical expenses will count as well so I don't see why I shouldn't just max out the FSA contribution, whatever it is. That'll help the tax bill too!

Now that I've transferred that $7,000 custody battle/credit card amount over to a card with 6.9% interest, I'll be paying off the Discover card by the time its 0% interest deal runs out in September! I'm going to go ahead and start using the Discover card to buy gas again now that there's room on it, and pay off the amount each month thereby getting rewards back at 5%. Too bad I can't trust DH with the Discover card and it had to be confiscated. He uses only the Valero card and debit card to get gas now, and Valero gets paid off in full each month. I just wish he could use the Discover card to help with rewards, but he just is not disciplined or observant enough to play the credit card game. Oh well, at least he is not offended at my confiscating his cards, and agrees it is more trouble than it's worth for him to have them!

It's a wise man who does what he can to prevent fights with the (smarter) wife. This is definitely NOT a Latino/Hispanic philosophy but DH is white (and wise about things like this) so I lucked out.