I am now breathing a big sigh of relief for real. I feel as if I had been holding my breath for the last 11 mos. (since DH was laid off last June). He went back to work for the former employer and received his first pay this past Friday. It was so nice to be able to pay all the bills without having to take anything out of savings/line of credit. My goals now are to sit back, re-evaluate where we are and pay off debt/build emergency fund. We also got back our tax refund this weekend. That will go right into our ING acccount to sit and earn interest til we need it to pay our school taxes in August (we pay ourselves rather than having mortgage co. escrow). I like the feeling of knowing it is sitting there collecting interest, working for me. Even better would be not having to spend it but I'll take the interest for the few months. My focus is now on getting our line of credit paid off but balancing that with refunding savings/emergency. Since the line of credit interest is tax deductible, I do not feel so bad about diverting money to savings. I would rather build a small savings/emergency fund so it is there if we need it and we don't have to add to the line of credit. I am just so excited to finally feel like we are getting back on track and heading in the right direction. When DH was unemployed or working lower paying jobs, I felt very frustrated because even though I was doing all the right things, there just was not enough money coming in to cover everthing. Thank goodness that I am frugal by nature and we started out with a decent savings account and no debt. If we had been in the same situation but with existing debt (non-mortgage I mean) and no savings, we probably would have been forced to take much more drastic measures like selling our home. I definitely believe the saying that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger so I think I have come out of this last years experience a stronger and better person for it. I have realized what is really most important in life and it is not money. It has helped me put things into perspective, but I must say again, I am still breathing that big sigh of relief.
Getting Back on Track ...Finally!!!
May 15th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
May 15th, 2007 at 12:55 pm 1179233706
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