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Monday, June 14, 2010

Reunited and it feels so good!

I love that I've been reunited with my budget. I have created a new Excel spreadsheet (new computer) and I'm trying to format it just like my old one. I have funds for the following items:

Rent
Utilities (unknown amount as of now but hopefully I've over guessed)
Car Insurance
Car Maintnence
Phone
Health Insurance (although my parents are paying for June/July/August for insurance as my graduation present, it's still good to get used to it)
Health Maintenence (Co-pays for dr. visits and prescriptions I need-or even the $1000 deductible I have)
Food
Gas
Loans
Emergency Fund
Savings

Oofta. I get a $100 allowance from every paycheck and the rest is 100% accounted for. I'll be saving only 8% for now but I'm just following .

When I drew up this new plan, I gave myself $30 for food for the next week. I decided yesterday to go to the grocery store and buy a few things for meals this week. I took some time to make cheese tortellini with meat sauce so I'll have that for my lunches. Not sure if it will last all week or not but it should save me quite a bit compared to last week. I also have some salads with some chicken sandwich meat that I can add to spice it up a bit. Slowly but surely I'm getting back on track and it feels great!

My boss also mentioned that they have more furniture than they know what to do with so I could borrow some for my new apartment! YES! I was just going to be living on a futon, no tables or chairs. I'm glad this will make it a little nicer until MG moves down with all of my couches and bedroom stuff or until I have to move home. Things just keep getting better and better here :)

As I mentioned in my last post, my student loans were going to get some pretty significant payments soon but I take that back. First I have to build up my emergency fund of $1000. So when I normally could make a loan payment of $700 plus dollars, it will take a month and a half to get my emergency fund built. After all that, I won't make a full $700 payment. Since I'm not sure if I'll have a job come Sept. as of now, I want to have some back up money for when those loans start to kick in for real. I will pay $500 per month towards the smallest loan and then keep the rest as a back up plan. That way if I don't have a job, I won't kick off my true loan payments on a very bad note.

That means I'll put $750 towards loans by the time I'll know if I have a job or not, but I'll still have a small back up fund. If it turns out I will for sure be able to continue working here, then I can take that back up fund and make a big loan payment with it and call it a day. But in the mean time, I'm trying to be smart.

Speaking of student loans, since I have all private loans, I never did an exit interview. I'm not sure how Sallie Mae will know that I've graduated and should start owing them money. All of my loan summaries say I don't owe my first payment until at least December of 2011! That clearly isn't right and I'm not sure how to correct it or if I should. Am I responsible for letting them know? Is there a fine if I don't? Or can I just slide by until then? Let me know any advice or knowledge you may have please :)

5 comments:

  1. I thought you got to wait about 6 months untill you started owing anyway?

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  2. yeah, normally once you graduate you do an exit-interview so the loans know you've graduated and then they set a date 6 months or so from that point for when your payments will start. Since mine are private loans though, they haven't done that so I'm wondering if I really will have to start paying in November or I can wait until Dec. 2011 if I wanted to? (obviously I'd pay as much as I can as early as I can though).

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  3. Ask your lender - and - get the response in writing in case you ever have to prove the date they told you.

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  4. Hmmmm... I noticed that you have multiple ads for tatoo companies showing up in your blog... you have to wonder what's in your blog that triggered those!!!!!

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  5. I don't think I ever mention tatoos in my posts!

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