Changing the Game

Okay so sometimes life throws you curve balls. Granted, mine throws me a lot of them.

This new one is kinda fun and very scary though. 10 days ago I lost my job. It was an amicable separation, though the timetable was moved up a bunch. I took a months severance and gracefully exited. That severance went straight into my emergency fund, and that combined with some other money I have saved means that I have enough money to cover four months worth of bills, assuming I make absolutely no money at all.

So what does this mean for me? Well, I'm now officially a full time independent theatre technician. Meaning I do freelance tech work for a living. I'm hoping to get booked for some work soon, though when you hit the circuit full time, it takes a bit to warm up and get your name out there. I have two days of work booked for November and will be doing some other on the side things to hopefully make a bit more money.

Budget-wise, the focus of this blog is now going to be on meeting my monthly goal. I need to make $1265 a month in order to cover all my bills. This includes $600 that I pay towards my student loan every month. I'll be starting each month at zero. Bear in mind though, this does not include food or gas. This is just my bills. I'll be keeping my incidental expenses as teeny tiny as I possibly can.

At the end of the month, if I didn't make my goals, I'll be pulling from my emergency fund to make up the difference. I'm hoping that I won't have to do that much though.

So there we go. I walked to the edge and I jumped. Now lets just hope my parachute opens!

Another New Project

I've had a project in mind for a while now.

Working in theatre, a lot of crazy crazy stuff tends to happen. So I've always wanted to write down the insane stories that I have.

And so, Backstage Diaries was born. I'll be posting my insane stories here, and maybe stories from other people too!

Backstage Diaries

All Gone!

So today I made the very last payment on the last little bit of my credit card debt. I am now officially out of consumer debt. The only money I owe is my student loan that is not interest bearing (I owe it to my parents).

This is huge for me. My finances are under control. I'm starting on a new budget on October first that will skyrocket my savings, which will allow me to finally not panic when bad things happen, and hopefully I'll be able to travel home next year. I can also start paying down my student loan significantly. I'm also upping my spending money a little too, because, well I think I've earned it!

I'm still working extra jobs and trying to make some extra money because I like being busy, and because I need to keep building my technical theatre resume. That means working nights and weekends and keeping my regular 9-5 job too. I'm not out of the woods yet, because I'm not out of debt yet, and $25,000 is a huge sum of money that I still have to pay off. But I have three and a half years to do it, I'm not paying interest, and I make enough money that I don't have to struggle with my bills. So here is what really made the difference for me:

I got a roommate. Monthly savings : $480

I cut my grocery bill as low as I could. Monthly Savings : $200

I stopped buying things that I couldn't afford. Monthly savings : $300

I snowballed my debt. This allowed me to pay off thousands of dollars in just over a year.
I purged assets I wasn't using, like my camera, books, clothes. I stopped eating out and drinking out.

I worked my ass off to get where I am and I have to say, I'm really proud. Right now, I'll be out of debt sometime around February 2013 and I plan on making it sooner than that if I can. I'm still going to be blogging about my money stuff and my financial goals. So with that, here are my current savings goals that I'm working on:

Emergency Fund to $3000 (Currently at $235)

Travel Fund to $3600 (Currently at $109)

Medical and Dental Fund to $1000 (Currently at $1)

Car Maintenance Fund to $1000 (Currently at $1)

2009 Roth IRA to $1500 (Currently at $195)

I'm certainly not done yet with my goals, but it feels good to have interest coming in, not going out for a change! Yay me!

Another One Bites the Dust

The American Express credit card is paid!
I just put in a chunk of money on that and some on my ING overdraft, which leaves my overdraft at $810.33. My consumer debt is now under $1,000 and I am so stoked!
I haven't even put my money from my paycheck on it yet. I'm about to be a seriously happy girl.

I'm trying not to jinx it, because the universe has a tendency to smite me... but I'm so close to only having my student loan to deal with. So very very close!

Closer

Things have been hectic as usual, working as much as possible and getting the debt down.
I've cleared my Bank of America credit card. This started with a balance of over $6,000. Now it's all gone! I only have $280 left on my American Express and $1100 on my Overdraft from ING. If all goes as anticipated, I'm looking at having this all done by September 15th. That's in 26 days!
Pending mass chaos, this means I am on track to start working on my Student Loan and things are going really really well.

I plan on starting to do some pretty hefty saving to try and work on the whole buffer thing. My student loan payments will be set at $600 so I'll have some breathing room, which is really great.

I'm working hard on getting more technical theatre work, which is a big goal of mine. Basically, all is well in finance land.

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

So I have a confession to make. I fell off the wagon a bit. I have a lot of good planning when it comes to my finances, but every so often I can get surprised by bills.

My checking account has a low interest overdraft on it and the first thing that happened was I started going over my spending budget for various reasons.

It's so easy to swipe a card and think everything will be covered next paycheck, and then to find out you are actually wrong and you've gone over.

So I maxed out my checking account overdraft to the tune of about $1200 over several months. I was doing mostly okay chipping away at it, until I had a $500 vet bill followed by a $280 dentist bill.

These wiped out my emergency fund and there wasn't enough to cover the rest. I also had to make a few purchases that will be reimbursed later.
A lot of this was me screwing up. I had a few times where I was buying food or drinks that I shouldn't have. I bought some birthday gifts which weren't part of my budget. Basically, I screwed up.
So going forward, I have pretty much wiped out my Bank of America credit card. I have one payment of $261 left to make on it, which is fantastic and I am SO proud of myself. I am next going to have to clear this overdraft, so I am a little further behind than I wanted to be.
This means no bold rejoicing yet.

From here on out, I'm doing something kind of bold. I'm moving to the cash system for my spending budget. I'm giving myself an allowance for spending and I'm sticking to it. If I don't have the cash, well, that's my tough luck.

I'm sure to get about $500 from various sources in the month of August, and I'm picking up more hours at one of my part time gigs, as well as working another part time gig. So things will start picking up and I expect swift progress. I'd like to clear these overdrafts, or at least get them manageable by September, though that feels a touch optimistic.

Regardless, it's time to get this show on the road. I'm so close I can smell it!