I wonder if learning to juggle balls, bowling pins, or maybe even flaming torches would help refine my skill at juggling our finances?
It often feels like I’m juggling, and I fear one day the balls will all come crashing down, I’ll trip on one and fall, landing on them and mashing them in the process.
Over the weekend I paid the mortgage, assorted other bills and figured out where we are at financially. Mr. A’s little stream of jobs has dried up for the moment, but he has two prospects on the horizon.
I wish I felt comfortable taking the extra money he’s made and applying it all towards our debt. Our goal is to keep $1000 in his account so he will have the money at the beginning of new jobs to buy materials without having to use a credit card, or ask the customer for money up front. So far this plan has worked out great. At the moment, we have more than $1000 in his account (his account is an interest bearing checking account). I am paying more than the minimum on our credit cards, and at the current rate if I keep switching the money to lower cards when the low rate on these expires, it will take us three years to pay off our debt. That is not soon enough; I hope we can start paying more soon.
We are keeping the air conditioner at 81°F from 9am to 9pm each day. It’s uncomfortable. I hate sweating and feeling hot. I finally figured out that my desk fan costs about ten cents to run it 24 hours. But I only run it for a couple of hours a day because it is noisy, and therefore, distracting. I don’t know which is worse, the sweat rolling down my back, or the noisy fan. 
I did finish a new chart over the weekend which I hope will help me maintain the juggling act and keep all the balls, I mean bills, paid for and taken care of.
I have the following goals for the next week:
- I am planning to share two spreadsheets with my readers
- I will be updating my progress bars
- I will be posting a monthly progress report
- Look forward to a True Confessions post about my birthday…
How did May go for you? How do you feel about June so far?
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You could make up the cost of a fan pretty quickly if you decided to buy a quieter one… I was looking at some at a store over the weekend, and they were running pretty powerful, but quiet ones for less than $100…
Also, if you are in a low-humidity area, evaporative coolers work wonders! My family has used them for years and years… they work great, aren’t too terribly distracting with the noise, and really do a good job (the lower the humidity, the better they do)
Looking forward to the spreadsheets…
Also, thanks for the tips and links… I’ll be “resurfacing” my blog to the three column layout hopefully sometime this week…
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Hi Brack, well, I paid $10 for my fan from Walmart… it can be mounted to the wall and adjusts to whichever direction I want it to go. I think I can live with the noise for the price.
We have considered the evap cooler and that’s all we had when we lived in the city. July and August were M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E. But we haul our own water where we live now. Each load is 500 gallons and 25 minutes minimum for each load. We already haul 12-16 loads a month; using the evap would mean another 16 loads according to water usage estimates by the local electricity company. I am sure we would save money even if we only used it during the low humidity months, but we are already hard pressed to find the time to haul the water we currently use. Then there’s the issue that my son and I have asthma and it is so dusty out here. I do keep coming back to the “boy, we’d sure save a lot of money with an evap cooler” then I remind myself of all the reasons why it won’t work. My mom even keeps telling me we should get a cooler and I have to keep reminding her why we can’t.
I look forward to seeing your new 3 column blog! Thanks for commenting!
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May was good in the fact that I became aware of our situation, but we’re still right on the edge. I am anticipating a better June. I look forward to seeing your spreadsheets!
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Hi Bettsi, I am still refining and tweaking our budget… especially since Mr. A started his own business I can’t really depend on a set amount of money to come in now. Good luck with June!!
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