Firefly's Personal Finance Blog

Yes, I found out something good about my 457(b) just now. I noticed on the salary deferral agree that there is now an option to take 300 hours of annual leave as a lump sum payment to your 457(b) when leaving state employment. This is as long as you haven't met your maximum for the year. I hope that this is in addition to the 300 hours leave that you are paid when leaving state employment, but I'd rather put it in the 457(b) than cash out if not. I now have over 600 hours so this would help me not lose some hours if I can take both. Not that I'm planning to leave state employment right now, but in the future I may be.

I'm feeling pretty good about the amount of debt that I've paid off this year. Since September 2006 I've paid off more than $9,000 in debt. Next month I'll cut my remaining $6,000 or so debt in half. I worked a lot of overtime to make this happen, but it was worth it. I can't wait until I see that amount down to $0.

These past few weeks I've had some big bills to charge to my Mastercard. I had over $600 from my car repair and about $150 for my dental bill. I hope to be able to put some overtime towards that.

Today I spent over $100 on scrubs. My hospital is now requiring that we wear a certain color so I'm getting ready for that. I said that I would wait to order them in September since the dress code isn't in effect until October, but I decided not to wait. Better to get that off my mind and just focus on grad school. I also need to have my oil changed if they didn't do that at the garage already. I don't think so, but I need to check the invoice.

And in case you're wondering, though I know you're not, my weight went back down. Thank goodness.

Darn, darn, darn. I just lost a whole entry. Here I go, here I go again...

Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods. I got some good things including some pork ribeyes to make pork chop rice skillet. I made that late last night and just put it up since I got dinner from their deli.

I got the $5.99 plate for 3 side dishes. I got shrimp/sausage/chicken jamabalaya, with cauliflower cracklins which was roasted roasted cauliflower with peas, and sauteed cabbage. It was all very good but, probably very salty as well.

I weigh myself daily and I had put on 3 pounds overnight. What?! It was so funny because I started hitting my scale because I thought it was stuck or broken. Then I remembered what I had eaten yesterday. I can't gain 3 pounds in less than 24 hours on 1400 calories. So I'm chilling out and drinking plenty of water.

I brought some cherries that I bought by my parents' house today on the way to work. These cherries ended up costing me $11 to my surprise. They're very good though. My mom called me to come by and get some food. I got some beef stew and black-eyed peas. I had some brown rice in my freezer to go along with this as well.

I really need to start cooking more. Especilly now that I'm starting school and not working as much overtime. My dining out is definitely where I could stand to cut some money. It just gets a bit tiring eating the same thing everyday, what with living alone.

I don't know why I never considered that there were sites for blogging about your finances, but imagine my surprise when I search for something else and stumbled upon this. I visit so many financial sites, but this is an entirely new concept for me.

So let me introduce myself. I'm 29 and single. I bought my first home last year. I'm working full-time on the 3-11 shift. I will be attending graduate school on alternate weekends starting in 3 weeks. I have two undergraduate degrees, the second earned while working full-time so I feel a little bit prepared for this.

Graduate school will cost $18.5k. I have paid the $500 deposit which comes off the original amount. Then there are $4.5k payments over the 4 semesters. My employer paid $1k. The remaining $3.5k will come from Stafford loans. Yes, more loans when I was so close to paying off the small loan from my first degree. I incurred no loans the second time around. My mom says she will pay $5k toward my tuition the last 2 semesters.

My immediate goals are to build up my emergency fund, a car fund, and a short-term savings fund, which I will call my Christmas fund. Why I call it that I'm not sure as I will end up using it for more than Christmas.

I got paid today, or actually now it's yesterday. Today's check reflected the $0.72 an hour that all state workers received. Not a huge amount, but $1500 a year, and every little bit counts. I'm going to increase my savings to start funding the aforementioned savings accounts.

Today I went shopping. It's called tax free weekend, but you actually still pay 5% local taxes. I got some school supplies, some groceries, an outfit, and some hand soaps from Bath and Body Works. I haven't shopped like that in quite a while!