Random Stuff

I did not make an actual budget for July and in no way did that help in my quest to get out of debt!

We have two more paychecks this month: The Husband gets paid tomorrow and I get paid on July 31st. I actually sat down and budgeted the money we have coming in.

First I allocated money towards our mortgage payment. That is actually the only bill we have due during the next two weeks before our next  pay check arrives.

After that, I funded my envelopes for the month. I allocated our bi-weekly $300 towards gas. I have increased our grocery budget by $50 every two weeks to $300 because like most people, we were consistently going over in groceries. I also gave $100 to "fill" each of our remaining envelopes: Essentials (which could also be called Target), Hair, Clothes, School, and Kids' Activities.

My goal over the next month is to get back on the budgeting bandwagon and to fund our envelopes. It does slow down our snowball process, but it also keeps us from accruing more debt!

After tomorrow, (which I know sounds like a cop-out, but I have to wait until I have some money in the bank and in our envelopes), I am taking my credit card out of my wallet.  Right now, I just can't trust myself with it. For a long time, I was able to charge and pay it off each month. Currently, I/we are charging more than we can pay off each month, so out of my wallet it goes!

Between the next two paychecks, I allocated $1150 to go towards our credit card. I also have several checks, almost $500, that I will be depositing and sending all of that towards our credit card as well.

As we have children, a dog, cars, and a house, I don't feel comfortable having only a $1000 emergency fund. Right now, my comfort level is $10,000. We recently fell below that number, to about $9200. Because of this, I am also depositing more than my normal $50 a month to our savings account. With these paychecks, I will be adding $325 to our savings bringing us to just over $9500. I will keep adding more than $50 until I can get us back over the $10,000, hopefully by next month and then all "extra" money will go towards our credit card as our snowball!

Anyway, this was just a short rambling update with no apparent focus about our current plans.