Working 80%

Recently, well okay – more than recently, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I wish I could work less hours. I feel terrible wishing I could work less while there are others out there wishing they could work at all.

But then it got me thinking about this video I watched awhile back, that was talking about the idea of working everyone at 80% in order to employ more people, and all the benefits of working less in general.

At first, it seems foolish. But before you scoff at it, and think how it wont work RIGHT NOW, think about how it would work if we gave it a future?

Right now I struggle with finding time to do the following:

• Eat right or exercise. It takes time to plan the right meals, shop for the right food, prepare the right meals, and exercise consistently.
• Spending time with ALL of my family – individually.
• Spending time to pursue personal hobbies and relaxing.

In my pursuit of all of these things, I find I spend more money on time saving convenience items, consume more in general, and produce more waste. A great example is pre-cut veggies that are also individually packaged. This saves a ton of time, is more expensive, and produces more waste then if I were to do this myself. DIY projects are great for everyone, but no one has time for them – and don’t even THINK about repairs, just throw that broken chair away and buy another.

I know that there are people out there, working minimum wage and trying to support a family on a single income. This would not work for everyone without some real change in our working wage laws - but it can happen! This isn’t a “I want to be lazy and work less” kind of idea, this is “I want to work and have a life and family” kind of idea.

Busy is better than bored!

I’ve been really busy lately, really. I wrote an entire post about WHY I’ve been busy, but re-reading it, I realize its all very boring to someone not living it. So here’s the condensed version:

• Work, work, work. Training the new employee, taking on progressively advanced tasks, trying to fill some big shoes. Got an electronic kudos today from my manager, so I know that all my multi-tasking and hard work is paying off
• Improving health. It takes time to live a healthy lifestyle, I don’t care WHAT other people say. Sure, it get’s easier – but time consuming all the same. Food prep. Work outs. Sleeping (yes, I believe that getting an adequate amount of sleep is part of a healthy lifestyle). All while working & commuting for 11 hours a day. I wish I could workout, sleep, or prepare food during my commute (I work 30 miles from home – an no public transportation fits my schedule. I’ve tried to carpool – but again my schedule is hard.)
• Being a part of a family. I love my family, and I love being busy with family stuff. I have no complaints there. I love making time for my sister, I love spending my Fridays off with the kids. I love planning vacations with the husband. I’m very fortunate, and I try to never forget that when the schedule gets a bit crowded.
• Hobbies. What are those? I don’t know, I don’t have time! I’m still in a book club, but I’ve been too busy to read much other than the one book a month. I could not get into “Wicked” and abandoned that. Right now we’re reading Christopher Moore’s “Island of the Sequined Love Nun”, which is highly enjoyable – when I find a few minutes to read. I would really like to peruse photography some more, but when you spend 11 hours of most of your days in ONE location, it’s hard. I’ve been thinking about taking up bike riding, as that’s both a good physical activity and really fun!
• Extra income. Trying to earn some extra income by testing software – I got a few gigs straight away and earned some coin this past month, but I find that some of them only pay if you find bugs. I think I should get paid for participating at all, considering I provide a “clean bill of health” when I don’t find bugs and also tack on constructive feedback. I’d like to be picky in regards to which jobs I take, but I’m not offered THAT many. Plus, like any job – the more I take the better my tester rating is so I’m offered more.

I’m not sure I want it to get easier though, I might get bored again

I’m happy with “good”

It happened so fast, that its a bit shocking. We’ve officially paid off all of our credit card debt. Next we move onto a personal loan and then my car loan. Its amazing to see that we are making such progress because I feel we’ve been failing in regards to our budget no matter how hard we try. Obviously, it’s just not realistic – but we’re going to keep trying.

I signed up for Quizzle again today – because I remember they gave me one of my 3 credit scores for free – and was glad to see we’re finally out of the “fair” marker and are now “good”! That’s with two of our credit cards still having a balance (the report just missed the date when I made the payments), so I think our hard work is paying off. Only 20 more points and we’ll have “great” credit. Let’s see Sprint turn me down for 4 lines then!

I can’t wait to finish this

Last time!

We got our taxes filed yesterday.

It’ll, hopefully, be the last time we get back such a large amount. I know it seems silly to be complaining about getting a return, but the truth is that if you’re getting a return you’re paying too much to begin with. We were paying WAY too much. We didn’t qualify for renter’s credit this year – which means they either lowered the maximum or we made more this year. Paul worked a lot less, but I got my yearly raise so it could it either.

We’ve decided to use half of the return to pay our debt down, and then split the other half so that we can each do something special*. After a lot of thought I’ve decided that what I REALLY want to do is get our debt paid off – so I’ll be contributing my quarter to debt (minus a bit for some books from Amazon). Its exciting to see the amount that’ll be going to our debt on top of what I’ve scheduled for next month. Getting these debts paid off is such a dream of mine that I know all of this: moving into my parents, cutting back on all expenses, working longer hours – it’ll all start to be worth it.

In fact, after recalculating all my figures we’ll now be able to strike out on our own (rental wise) by the beginning of Sept 2012 and be in a house by October 2013. With all these dates settling into place, I just pray that nothing changes for the worst – income wise – or I’ll be very sad to see the dates drift further & further away.

* I know that some people might think we’re “selfish” to separate the money and spend it on individual wants instead of our collective goals. But the fact is that we do not have any separate accounts and sometimes adults just need their own money to do what they’d like without having to consult a budget and have a family meeting. We tried in the past to have a joint checking & savings and then individual savings accounts, but our finances just didn’t allow it.

What I'd Do With a Million Dollars

What would you do with a million dollars?

First, I would pay off our debt, which really isn’t that much – especially compared to a million dollars. Then, I’d see about investing it verses the immediate good it would do my family. I know there is some of my family who could use a bit of help now – but I also know that letting the money build will help everyone around us in the long run.

I would probably also buy a house, but not with the intention of keeping it – just with the thought in mind that not paying a mortgage/rent payment each month will KEEP more of that million dollars. So it would be something modest and fitting for our one child family – while we wait for money to build so we can build the perfect house in the perfect location

I don’t know if I would quit my job at first. I think that the cost of retirement and health/ dental/ vision insurance for the duration of my working years is more than a million dollars – no matter how well I invest it. I could be wrong though. I would probably wait until we were ready to build and move into our dream home, because I can guarantee you it would not be built in the Inland Empire of Southern California.

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Scratch that, 19 months.

Last night I got to thinking about the budgeting I did over the week and I realized that I shouldn’t just “estimate” our debt amount when we begin to pay it off – I needed to be specific. So I went online and found a amortization excel file that helped me realize, based on when I could start making extra payments and how much they would be, when my true pay off dates would be.

I cut five months off of our schedule – which is saying A LOT because those five months I was budgeting thousands to one account alone. Its amazing how much I over estimated what we’d owe. Now we’re on track for being in our own place again in March 2012. Hopefully our income levels don’t change too much in a negative way (by August of 2012 I’ll have received another 2 raises – God willing), because I’d really like to be able to buy a home in 2013.

24 months.

In my free time over the last few days I’ve been recreating what the Budget Sketch website does, but in an spreadsheet. It’s taken me a few days, but I’ve budgeted out as far as August 2012. It’ll take us that long to A) pay off our debt B) complete our emergency fund and C) move into a rented home/apt. Its a bit daunting to realize that it’ll take us a year to break even and another year to secure our hard work with an emergency fund. Haven’t budgeted it out yet, but it’ll take us another 12-14 months to get a down payment ready for a house (even while renting ourselves). By then Evy will be a year away from kindergarten! My how the time flies when you’re planning your future.

Of course, this will all change if… Paul gets the job he interviewed for last week! We’re both really excited about it, but trying not to be too excited because so often before it hasn’t worked out. If he does get the job, I have no idea how it’ll speed up our TMMO* because we’ll have to pay for full time childcare rather than 3 days a week and we wont be able to carpool anymore. But, he’ll be making about 1.5 times more money than he currently does so I’m sure it’ll still speed it up. They said they’d let him know if he got the job by the end of this week so we’ll see!

Even without a new job, as long as he doesn’t lose his current job we’ll survive.

*Total Money Makeover

Just imagine what we could do.

Last night went really well! (In my opinion at least. Paul is a little less enthusiastic about the whole idea of “financial planning”, he has a lot of trust issues)

We were running a little bit late, due to traffic, but he was really nice and didn’t seem put off at all about it. Originally, I told him we were going to bring Evy because we really don’t have a lot of options for childcare – but then I realized that we’d be driving right by my parents house and they love watching Evy. So when we arrived with no little girl he explained he’d set aside a really large conference room so we’d have space to stretch out. How nice was that?!

The meeting took longer than we’d expected, but like I said – I think it went really well. Both Paul & I are now well insured and while it’s startling to realize we just committed to paying $100 a month for the next THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, it’s nice to know we’re covered. Next we have to put a will into place so that Evy is fully cared for – not only financially.

Leaving the meeting I felt amazing.  I have a whole new outlook on my job. Before the meeting I saw my job as something that was keeping me from being happy because I really wanted to be a stay at home mom & wife – and no amount of money was going to change that. I have to be there because of our bills and there is no two ways around it. But now, I feel so much better! My thoughts are now, “If I’m going to be working – I want to make the most of it!”

I’m gazelle intense! I can’t wait to move, start paying down our debt and start KEEPING our money and building our wealth. I was saying to Paul, imagine what we could do – 10 or 15 years in the future with our house paid off and needing to pay nothing but utilities & property tax. Think of the life we could live with good financial planning when our income is ample & steady. I may not work until I’m 55, in which case I need to make the best of it NOW.

Seems like FOREVER!

We’ve only been on a budget for TWO full weeks, but it seems like a lifetime ago that we were spending money without thought and eating out every night.

What a change! I feel so much more in control and confident when I pull out my debit card. I know that what I’m paying for is needed, budgeted, and best of all guilt free.

We’re successfully on track for having our “starter” emergency fund completed by the end of the month (Dave Ramsey says it should take no more than a month) which means we can start deferring our savings into paying down our debt.

We’re also going to start being pro-active when it comes to other expenses for the rest of this year such as car maintenance, Christmas shopping & moving out (which will be in the same month as Christmas so planning ahead is REALLY important!)

In another move to get our finances in order, we’re meeting with a financial planner tonight. We’re only going to be purchasing life insurance for Paul & I right now, but I’m hoping that we’ll have a great experience with him and we’ll feel confident about using his services when we’re ready to start investing for our retirement.

Let’s hope we can keep this momentum and success going!!!