Irregular Payments

New here and like what you read? Subscribe to my RSS feed for more. And thanks for visiting!

So it looks like we’re in collapse and people are killing each other in the streets. Oh, wait, no, not really.

Sure, the markets are having a fit, which makes it painful to look at our retirement accounts. Except that we aren’t planning on touching them for many years, so eh. Feel a little bad for the baby boomers inching up on retirement, but really, not much. Yes, I know that schadenfreude isn’t exactly a positive emotion or anything, but many of them have defined their lives by excess so they shouldn’t be surprised when it comes around to bite ‘em. A little frugality isn’t perhaps a terrible thing.

photo credit: missdesigndiva

Meanwhile our politicians are tripping over themselves trying to do, well, I don’t really know. Looks like they are hellbent on trying to find a way to spend my son’s future income in an effort to stave off what will be an admittedly painful correction. Personally, being a free market kind of guy, I say go ahead and let it correct. But I am probably missing the big picture.

That said, at least in our household, things are certainly not flying off track. In fact, despite the supposed tightening of the credit market, we just received notice that one of our credit cards has substantially increased it’s limit. Thanks, but we really don’t need it. We won’t mention that to the government, because they may just decide they need that as well!

We did a decent job of killing off more debt this month. Broke well past the $1000 mark. And honestly are still living quite comfortably even with that kind of progress. We could probably introduce a little more pain and get the ball rolling a little faster. But that’s a budgeting issue, not a reporting one.

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently with my side business, and it’s beginning to really take off. Right now it is not adding any to our debt attack plan, as I am stockpiling cash right now in anticipation of further expansion. The holidays are rapidly approaching, and I have a feeling I’ll be spending a fair amount on advertising soon!

Oh, and oops, I will take a cue from Wall Street and restate some debt. I misread a medical bill statement and understated that debt by around $800. Where’s my bailout?

photo credit: StreetFly JZ

As expected, we suffered a little setback in debt reduction progress this month when a batch of medical bills arrived. And just as expected, there is no such thing as a cheap medical procedure, so of course we maxed out my wife’s portion of the deductible. Since the deductible on the plan I get through work is fairly high, well, likewise our final bill.

The first obvious lesson is that going without health insurance in this day and age is a sure route to financial ruin. I’m not thrilled with a fairly large bill, but it could have been far larger had we been without coverage!

And since health insurance was forefront in our minds, the wife and I decided to do a little comparison shopping to see what it would cost to get a decent policy on our own. One with perhaps a better deductible. Maybe look into a HSA to get a little tax advantage. That sort of thing.

We used the health coverage comparison engine at eHealthInsurance to look into a pretty broad range of policies. One things was obvious from the get go: we could — assuming we qualify for the plans, of course — get health insurance for a heck of a lot cheaper than what my employer is currently paying on us. Especially after an upcoming rate increase goes into effect.

I broached the subject of dropping us from the group coverage and instead getting a salary increase on par with the plan’s premium with my employer, and he certainly didn’t rule the idea out. So yesterday we submitted an application to see if we could qualify for one of the mid-range plans that meets our needs, halves our deductible(!), and qualifies as an HSA plan to boot.

Anyway, enough rambling for today. On to the raw numbers:

photo credit: ToniVC

Summer has finally made itself fully known, and walking outside is like walking into a sauna. Which is fine if I wanted a sauna, but not so fine if I just wanted to go for a walk. So, what better time to break out ye’ olde spreadsheet and see what kind of progress was made in killing off debt last month?

Summer always seem to be a little more expensive for us than other times of the year. After all, when it’s snowing and 7 degrees, we are perfectly content not wandering much and just staying warm inside here at home.

But it being a beautiful summer, we felt like wandering a bit. We made our annual pilgrimage to my extended family reunion, and decided to take a couple extra days to see my wife’s brother nearby while we were in the area. We did do a budget for the vacation, but it being one of those things we didn’t regularly budget for in the past (otherwise known as everything), we didn’t end up budgeting enough. A couple extra meals out, a few too many trips to the coffee shop, some random spending, and the bottom line showed us a couple hundred overspent.

I was a little disappointed, but wasn’t extraordinarily bothered by it. My wife? Borderline stroke. I had no idea how deeply the get-out-of-debt bug I brought home had bitten her! A few serious conversations about our goals and progress and such, and she relaxed a bit while also imbuing in me a little extra motivation to kick a few things into higher gear…