I’ve already been remotivated to get money into savings and get my debt paid off, but today clinched it. We had a tornado warning, a serious one. I know, a lot of places get tornado warnings every day for weeks at a time it seems, but I’m not used to it at all. On the radar map it was all red with that dark red/black color in the center. Yikes. I can handle snow, ice, wind, rain, even heat and humidity (though I hate it), but I’m not used to tornadoes and it freaked me out a little. Some parts around here got almost baseball-sized hail, but we didn’t get any hail at all, thank goodness!

It also made me realize why I’m working on becoming debt-free and saving money. I’m looking forward to the day when I can feel some comfort knowing that, in a crisis, I have my ducks in a row. Both Tim’s and my cars were out in the parking lot and we could have lost them, too. They are paid-for and have minimal insurance, one’s a 1991 the other’s a 1995. However, we don’t have the money to replace them even with a very inexpensive car and that really would been a problem. I can always take public transit to work, but where Tim works and with his crazy schedule it’s almost impossible.

Good wake-up call. I’m glad I was already waking up, but this really brought me to full attention.

I should post my budget here in addition to writing it my notebook, to help me be accountable. In the meantime, however, I have the following little items that are making me happy at the moment:

1. It’s the end of the first week of August, and I already have my new registration stickers (due at the end of August) and my car inspected (due in October). Usually I’m one to do both of these things at the last minute, but I got them both done early and didn’t have to sacrifice other bills or put anything on a credit card to do it.

2. I renewed my AAA membership. I love my 1991 Corolla, but realize things go wrong so this really helps my peace of mind.

3. I have $50 in savings. Not much, but it’s a start. Saving money is the hardest thing for me to do, so the money is currently encased in ice in a small container in my freezer. LOL. I see people do that with credit cards and figured it would help with my savings. That way I either have to melt it or break through the ice to get to it and it will give me just a little more time to really think about needing to spend it.  I will be adding more to it as I go along.

4. Just ordered my groceries online for the next two weeks, except for produce that I buy as I need it. The $10 I spend for delivery is sooooo worth not having to fight my way through the store or getting sidetracked by items not on my list. I went through the sales then decided my menus for the next two weeks, which really helps. I don’t go totally nuts, as it’s important to me that we eat well, not just cheaply. There’s a lot of inexpensive food out there that is absolutely horrible for us, so I’m OK spending a little more to eat in a relatively healthy manner.

5. My utilities are paid for the month, rent of course has been taken care of for August, I have my public transportation pass for the month, and I have a little extra for the next two weeks for my Avon order and a once-a-week treat from Starbucks.

6. Almost forgot — I’m also paying off another credit card this month! I know, technially that $350 should go to my savings. However, it’s a settlement offer and is less than half of what I actually owe on that account, so I’m going to take advantage of it and get it out of the way.

I haven’t been posting here very often but I’m making slow but sure progress. I have $120 in savings — not much, but it’s something. I would have had almost $300 but I had to go to the ER a few weeks back because I cut myself opening a can of cat food. Yeesh! Hadn’t been to the ER in 25 years, and had to go to get one little stitch in my finger because of that. Oh well, if that’s the worst that happens for another 25 years I’ll be doing pretty well.

So, our health plan at work requires that we pay $150 for ER visits. We then turn in the receipt and fill out a form and get all but $35 back. So, it’s not a bad deal in the end but you need to have that money up front, so I’m very glad I had a little in savings, even if it was a small amount. When I get the $115 back (should be soon), I’ll put it back into savings.

I actually had a pretty bad month in January — still dealing with tendonitis in one wrist and something weird going on in my foot (I call it Dammit Foot until we really figure it out), my sciatica acted up and I missed 3.5 days of work, I broke a tooth, then the cat food incident. By the time I had the cat food incident, all I could do was laugh — that is, after I was done cursing for having another injury.

As for my finances, I’m starting to pay $500 a month on my student loan. It’s a lot of money, and it will make the pay-off on the smaller stuff take longer, but I really want to get rid of that thing. I’m sick of having it hang over my head. I still have my Netflix account but have decreased it down to two movies at a time. I know, I know — rent stuff at the library, etc. The thing is, I rent mostly documentaries and Netflix has just about everything you’d want and the library is limited. So, I compromised and reduced the number of movies I get at a time and will pay less each month for the service.

Oh, and I’m back on track with my lattes. Over the summer I’d stop every day on the way in for an iced latte (Barnes and Noble is next door to work) because it helped with the heat. However, I’ve been keeping up the habit and it’s not good for my health nor my wallet. When I drink that every morning, I don’t feel hungry and I don’t eat well and become exhausted and pig out at night — just bad all around. So, now I’m going on Mondays and Fridays and will bring that down to once a week as a treat, or less often that that. It’s not just the lattes, though. The people in the cafe are wonderful and I feel like my morning isn’t complete if I don’t see them, but I’m getting over that.

Instead of drinking the lattes, I’m drinking my black tea every morning. I admit I’m a bit of a tea snob and can’t drink Lipton or “normal” black teas. I tend to buy loose teas and tea sachets in tins. Again, I see it as a compromise — I pay just a little more for a tin of 20 sachets than I did for one latte, and I already have some loose tea and the tools to use the loose tea. I also have herbal and green teas. I figure it’s better to spend a little more money on something I like that to spend less money on tea I don’t like — then I won’t drink it and will go back to the lattes.

The whole thing is a process. I think some people will think that I’m not “gazelle” enough, but I want to live my life and enjoy it while I’m paying down my debt. Otherwise, it will be like my experience with dieting — deprive myself of all sorts of things then binge and be worse off than before. I really don’t want to do that and would rather do things in moderation.

Haven’t been here in a while, but I am making progress. I’m going to get my goals together for August and my totals for debt paid off this weekend.

In the meantime, I wanted to say I paid the settlement offer on the second Premier Bankcard last week! So, that’s two credit cards I won’t have to worry about anymore. Sure, it will show up on my credit report that I paid the settlement, but I don’t care. It won’t look any worse than my report already looks and this way they’re done and I don’t have to pay anything else on them.

I was just doing some figuring and had some random thoughts I had to get out of my head, good thoughts.

If I follow my plan:

1. The only debt I’ll have to deal with a year from now will be my student loan.

2. My student loan should be paid off by September 2010. I think that’s accurate, although it’s hard for me to figure the interest.

3. My emergency fund will be fully funded ($10k) by July, 2011. After that, I’ll be funding my retirement fund with 15$ of my gross income and will start investing for the long-term and/or saving up to pay cash for a house.

I’ll turn 40 in April 2011. How awesome will it to have $10k in savings, no debt, sending about $500 a month to my retirement fund and investing the rest? Obviously things happen and nothing is perfect, but just knowing that it’s possible is a huge thing for me. A year ago I never would have thought I could be debt-free within just a few years and have a real emergency fund.

I wish I had found this plan about 10 years ago, but I’m still young enough that it will make a very big difference.