It's always something

Of course, it's Murphy's Law that what can go wrong will go wrong. After that last post, I was all excited but of course the next day my computer got a virus, which costs $200 to clear it off. Since school starts Tuesday, I can't be out of a computer so of course I had to fork it over.

Where did I get the money, you might ask? My guy came to the rescue! This is not just a free gift, however. He knows how hard I've been working with this budget and knows how much I stress about money so since he happened to receive a couple thousand dollars of financial aid that same day, he helped me out. He told me to pay him back once I've got my budget going.

There's a book that inspired the urge to get my finances in order and start paying off debt. It's called the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I first borrowed it from my guy's parents and it was really inspiring see how simple it could be to get out of debt. I got my own copy for Christmas and it helped me jump start my plan. There are two good tips that I've gotten out of it so far: $1000 emergency fund and the snowball effect.

1st, when you're working towards getting out of debt, you need to have $1000 as an emergency fund so when something goes wrong, you don't have to get into more debt as a result. Once you have the emergency fund, start with the smallest loan and put the most money towards that (make your regular payments to any other debt bills too and the extra goes towards your smallest loan). That will make a snowball effect because once your smallest loan goes away, you can apply that money to the next smallest and getting out of debt goes faster and faster.

That was important information. Rather than working on my loans right away, I've decided to work on the emergency fund first. MG said once I get that saved, I can pay him back for this computer emergency. Then even well before I have to start making loan payments, I can start putting money towards the smallest loan and start the snowball effect.

Here is a positive note to the weekend though. My gracious parents wanted to try to help me out some by giving me $200. I'm not sure what to put that towards yet, since there are so many areas that need it but I'm sure I'll figure it out soon.