Back to Reality

Today marks my first day back to work after summer break. I can’t believe it.  Actually, I did not have to return to work today, I could have waited one more day and returned tomorrow.  My district offers what they call “Buy Back Days”. BBDs are optional teacher work days where if you attend, you get an extra paycheck of $249 before taxes, about $175 after taxes.  These BBDs function as professional development for our district and usually are very valuable and offer great practical ideas that I can take back to my classroom and implement easily and seamlessly. And the real reason I attend, I get paid. Although we aren’t gazelles, I don’t want to leave money on the table either.

We have three BBDs throughout the school year, but I usually only attend the first one at the beginning of the year because I would need to arrange daycare for my kids in order to attend the other two.  This year may be different because my kids are older and would be alright at home by themselves.  The extra money would certainly be nice to help pay off a little more debt.

The check I will receive from attending today’s BBD will either go right into our savings account or to paying for something for our kitchen; but either way, it will be directed towards helping us cash flow our kitchen and will not be going towards paying off any extra debt. I won’t get paid for this day until September and I will try to buy something “specific” with it so that I always remember “THAT” was bought and paid for by my BBD.

I still can’t believe I returned to work today.  I’m looking forward to this school year and the students I’m going to meet as well as all the new ideas and lessons I want to try to implement into my classroom. Some of my work related goals this year are to keep up a daily plan book for the entire school year and to keep a detailed calendar of meetings and conferences I’m going to attend during the year.  I want to get all the ideas and dates out of my head and put them down on paper. This is probably my biggest weakness: I keep everything in my head and because of that, sometimes I forget great ideas.

I’m very excited about having this blog and I’m so excited I pre-wrote several posts because with the school year just starting, I know I’m going to be busy and not be able to write as often as I’d like to. I don’t have a schedule of posting per se, but I’m shooting for posting twice a week with the occasional third post thrown in.  And, as of right now, all I’m writing about are things that matter to me, things that pertain to me, things that are personal to me. This is definitely not a how-to-get-out-of-debt-blog. It’s just a blog, written by a girl, that is fascinated by her debt and the personal finance community.

As far as our debt payment goes, I just keep chugging along. No major payments in the last week and no major setbacks either.