Found Money

I recently came into some money through a most fortuitous way. You could say a relative gave me an advance on my inheritance! Anyway, this is so wonderful and so timely. S and I can breathe a little easier now. Half of it I'm putting away for next year's property taxes. Another portion is going into savings, natch. Another portion will go to a credit card, and finally I have a little bit left over to do something fun with. Because you have to have balance in life!

Credit Card Limits

Oh, the irony. The more credit I use, the more they give me. I currently have 5 CC's and the only reason I have that many is b/c of the custody battle. BCB (before custody battle) I only had ONE CC! Anyway, once I started charging a bunch of lawyer's fees to my one CC--b/c S and I had no other earthly way to pay for them--CC offers started popping up left and right. My bank didn't even ask me if I wanted a CC, they just opened the account and sent me a card one day! That pissed me off at first, but then I realized it could come in handy on occasion.

So once I had these 5 CC's established, I believe my total credit limit on all 5 was in the neighborhood of about $22,000. Over the past year and half, the credit limits keep creeping up and up and now I have a whopping total credit limit of about $59,000!!! (Of which I am currently using only $18,100! So this also helps my FICO score, but who cares.) Damn! No wonder people get in trouble with these CC's! They see you spending and want you to continue to spend. No, they encourage you to spend. It makes them money hand over fist collecting interest charges. Duh!

The only good thing about having these 5 CC's is that each of them is constantly vying for my attention and my business. So they send me these great balance transfer offers and these checks I can write for nice low APR percentages and I have used those to make the high cost of the custody battle as painless as is humanly possible. Most of the custody battle costs are being paid off at low rates of anywhere from 0% to 5.99%, so that's the best deal I could strategize with our limited resources and options.

Cash Only

We are trying to live cash-only. I had to confiscate S's debit card from him b/c he is just too careless with it. He just doesn't think, so it's just safer for him not to have it and he agrees. We each get $40 per week for our allowance, which includes lunch money. We've also allotted $50 per week for household "miscellaneous" which includes entertainment and misc. expenses. This week S went through his $40 in 3 days: too much Starbucks! I still have $30 left from mine and it's already time for the new allowance tomorrow!!! That's b/c I eat at home. I wonder if S is just hopeless when it comes to budgeting. I tell you what, if he wants a bigger allowance he better make more $. But he will, once he finished his schooling in May and gets a real job with a real paycheck with real benefits. Lord, I cannot wait.

Holiday Spending

We kept holiday spending down even more this year than last. That means that we did not get to get each other anything even remotely costly or frivelous, but I don't really want a whole bunch of more crap anyway. My mind is just not on "things" these days. I am over materialism. I guess when you become a domesticated responsible household head your priorities completely change. Stuff's not important anymore. Your future and the people you want to be in it are.

I re-did the household budget so that S can totally quit his job in January. I decided I don't even want him to work part-time. It's tight but with temporarily reducing my retirement contribution, picking up the maximum hours at Job #2, and saving on gas and entertainment expenses, we can do it. And we're supposed to go to trial in February anyway so after trial we'll be getting child support from the whore and then finances will really be gravy!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 Weeks Until...

S gets to go part/time at his current job. This is b/c I want him concentrating on the police academy. In order to do this, I am going to take Dave Ramsey's advice and TEMPORARILY reduce my retirement contributions at work. I'm currently putting away 9%. For the 5 months S is in the academy I think I'll go down to either 2 or 3%--I don't want to entirely cut it out b/c I simply can't stomach the thought. But that's the best plan we can think of.

Good X-mas Shopping Idea for the Baby

While at the Chirren's Museum on Friday, we stopped, as always, into the gift shop. They had a lot of great little gifts in the $1, $3, etc. price range. Educational, interesting stuff. So I think that's where we'll do the bulk of X-mas shopping for the baby. The budget for her gifts this year is quite low, even lower than last year. Hey, I'm spending $30K on a custody battle for her, so that's the best gift she could ever ask for in her entire life. SERIOUSLY.

I Can't Wait to Shop At...

...10,000 Villages! My fellow board member is having a fundraising night there where the store is giving her non-profit org. a percentage of the sales. I bought X-mas presents there last year for my aunt, cousin, and girlfriend. While I was there I lusted after the jewelry sets, but bought none b/c I couldn't afford it. This year I can probably afford to buy myself a couple of sets. I waited a whole year so it's time! The shopping night is Dec. 10. Ohhh, I can't wait. And this is shopping for a good cause at its best!