I cannot believe that the last time I blogged was 12/12/06. In my ideal world (ie. not reality) I would have time every day. Instead, I think I'll just settle for a January goal of a minimum of 2 entries a week and then we will take it from there. Part of my issue was feeling that I had nothing financial to say, then I just got too busy with the holidays. My highlights from the last half of Dec.
1) Yeah to my boss for a $500.00 bonus. Very generous and very much appreciated
2) Boo to DH's new employer for making us play "Where is the paycheck?" He started working there immediately after Thanksgiving and did not get his first paycheck til 12/22/06 and even then they had his start date wrong and shorted it by a week. This week is a pay week so lets see if they can redeem themselves.
3) Yeah for me - no Christmas debt that is not covered so I was able to pull this off even on a greatly reduced income.

Goals for 2007

I feel torn about setting goals for this year. On the one hand I really need to set goals and really want to. On the other hand, DH's current job situation does not even pay all the bills and probably won't for several more months so I feel frustrated and unable to prevent us from going into debt. This means using our home equity line to cover certain bills until his income rises at the current job or he gets a different (ie. better paying) job. After 20 years of marriage and almost as many of trying to live frugally, having to incur debt just to pay the basic bills feels like a failure to me. On the plus side, hopefully it will be just for the short term. Either way, I guess I have no choice but to keep plugging along and doing our best. In that light, my current goals for 2007 are:
1)DH increase income to be able to cover all basic bills - accomplish this by June of this year.
2) Add no new debt other than home equity to pay mortage and COBRA ($2200 total a mos. and COBRA should disappear once he is covered by company insurance - after 90 days).
3) Add minimum of 2 new sources of income myself by June - currently thinking of additional part time work and selling items on E-bay/Craig's list. I'm not going to totally kill myself but even a few hundred extra a month would help.
4) Re-assess all current fixed expenses to see where we can cut additional spending. (Insurance, cell phone contracts, cable etc.) Even cutting $50.00 to $100.00 total a month would help. Right off the bat I will probably temporarily cancel our YMCA membership - it is $80.00 a month and we almost never use it during the winter. We can always rejoin when we are more financially sound.
5) Have anything on equity line of credit paid off by end of Dec. 2007 -ie. increase income to point where we can pay off any of this debt.
6) Rebuild savings to minimum of $2500.00

This sounds like a lot to me right now but I know that it is all do-able once I find additional sources of income and DH's job situation gets more settled.

That said, I am really glad that 2007 is here. I am determined to make this a better year for myself, both financially, physically and mentally. I took off the week between Christmas and New Years but with a sick child, sick husband and the need for a guinea pig funeral, I was certainly ready for the return to "reality".