I got my first education incentive raise in July's pay check. It's $140 more per month then before and my last "real" raise unless I get another job. Which I don't see happening. The next ones will be only $50 a month annually from here on out until I reach the max and then I'll get nothing. A $600 per year raise doesn't even keep up with the cost of inflation. I'm planning on contributing more to 403b after we get back from Europe. I'm going to enjoy the extra cash flow for now until that trip's over.
For our hardwood floors and all of our renovations to date we paid cash out of our joint savings. I don't even think about bills that much every month. Everything is transferred to the appropriate accounts and all bills are paid automatically. For individual bills the only thing I manually pay is my Discover card and for our joint bills I only pay the Water and Trash (every other month) and the Gas/Electric bill monthly. Hubby is on the look out for a different position at work. If he gets it he'll get a 25% raise which is awesome. That will help him with his car payment and give him some extra wiggle room. As long as he's getting promoted and making more money that's definitely a good thing because chances are I'm not. He contributes more to our expenses then I do and I'll feel less guilty about that if he is doing well and not struggling.
I did more shopping then I intended to over the last two months. In addition to the capri pants and four sweaters from last month, I got a VS hoodie that wasn't on sale and the rain coat for my trip. The leopard print flats from DSW were $79.99 and cannot be justified whatsoever. I just wanted them and the free bag with purchase. I'm finally at the point where I don't feel financially stressed all the time and it feels really good. I'm not rich of course. Far from it but I'm in no debt aside from mortgage and 3k left on a time share and I have 3 savings accounts so I'm in a good position. When I want to buy something within reason I can. It's taken a while to get to this point. 2005-2008 were really rough. I was on my own, broke and depressed. I was working part time for about a year barely scraping by and without health insurance. In 2009 I was still broke. Hubby and I were together but he was out of the country for most of the year. 2010 we bought the house and had our wedding and honeymoon. Major money was being spent and I had to really be tight with money. I was so stressed out. Then I had even more to worry about because of the condo. I had a major rough patch last year trying to pay on two mortgages and the money anxiety started to grip me again but letting my condo foreclose took the pressure off. It's funny because people use credit cards because they don't have money but if you don't have money you really can't afford to have credit cards. I've never had much credit card debt and that along with being so OCD about saving money has always been what saved me no matter how broke I was.
Spending nearly $500 for car maintenance certainly didn't help matters but I'm feeling okay about being able to spend money on my trip without freaking out. The total cost was $2,300 for and it's paid off. I never in a million years believed I would ever make it to Europe. I would have been to afraid to spend that kind of money before. To afraid of what horrible thing might happen that I would need that money for. I didn't think I even deserved to spend that kind of money on anything for myself. I didn't care about what would make me happy. I was just worried about how to spend as little money as possible. Now I'm even thinking about trying to go to Rio to watch Gymnastics at the Olympics in four years. London team finals tickets were $50-450 so it might be doable. I know that things can change at any moment but for now things are okay. I wish I were rich but I'm not so I have to work with what I have. When you are not rich you have to be even that much smarter with your money because you have less to work with. I don't know what will happen in the future but I've worked hard and saved hard to get where I'm at and need to let myself enjoy it.
I'm so tired. I'm caught up at work and have even had time to work on my book. I went to the gym on Monday and Tuesday for cardio even though I felt like there was no point. I'm hopping on a plane tomorrow so those are my last work outs for the week. Next week I'll maybe get in 2 on the ship if I'm lucky. I'm so freaked out about eating and how much weight I'm going to gain. I hate being torn up over it. I hate that I obsess over it so much. I hate it that I've barely lost any weight but now that I'm finally making some small bit of progress it's going to get ruined. 116 today; but what horrible number will it be up to when I get back? Oh well. I'm going and I need to quit worrying about it so I can have fun. I've tracked my calories every single day for almost 2 years. Maybe it's time to break my streak. I need to just put it out of my head and deal with it when I get back.
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