Time to get caught up.
First off, I have been super-sick for two weeks, and have felt like total junk. I have a summer cold, and it is totally killing my sinuses. Awful pain and hurt, plus throat pain and soreness. Anywho, I am almost over it, and am ready to jump head-first into my debt re-payment plans.
We had a slight setback in our debt payment schedule, due to my being sick, and the baby being sick a few weeks ago. Income was not exactly what we thought it would be. THANK GOD we have the emergency fund. I cannot stress how important an emergency fund can be.
Now, as for our situation with our bank. WoW…I cannot believe how awesome they were. I THOUGHT that they were going to charge me the 240 dollars in insufficient-funds fees, even though I tried on FIVE separate occasions to make a deposit. But, behold, they were totally cool and professional, and they refunded my ENTIRE fee amounts and the APOLOGIZED for the inconvenience. Now, because of their great service, I am going to name them. I bank at SouthTrust, which is soon to be merged with Wachovia. I cannot begin to express how pleased I was with their service.
As for weight loss, get outa here. I was on vacation for a week, got sick, and have been out of commission for 3 straight weeks. I will re-start on Monday. Again.
Check out the chart on the left for our debt payment update. Almost 20 percent of our debt paid. YAY! We are making great progress, but I am going to have to really, really look hard to see if I can “catch-up” with our original goal of being debt-free by 10/10/05. Do I think that it is still possible? Only time will tell, but I am going to crunch, crunch, crunch those numbers.
Lastly, a quick note on budgeting. I have noticed that several sites suggest categorizing your savings, and I think that this is a great idea. However, some people seem to be confused and think that you have to have an INDIVIDUAL savings account for EACH savings category. This is not so. Simply put all of your savings into a savings account, such as ingdirect.com, and keep a record of how much you are saving in each category. For instance, you might have 1000 dollars in savings for emergency, 100 for clothing, 100 for insurance, etc. These amount need not have their own accounts, they simply need their own categories on your budget sheet.