Been way to long....

It has been way too long since I have posted. And you know what I have realized? Not posting goes hand in hand with not being proactive towards my debt! When I was posting everyday, I was making considerable progress. I have made hardly any progress except normal minimum payments since I stopped posting daily!

One good thing that I did do in the "blogging hiatus" was paying for my dental services with cash. My medical envelope is empty now, but I did not charge a dime. YaY for that.

Bad news: I still have about $500 of dental work that still needs to be done. I am scheduled to have it done in the later part of July, but I am not sure that I will have the funds available. So, I am calling to re-schedule my appointment for a later date.

We had to get the A/C fixed as well. The man had it working, but then the blower motor went out. Because of the way it was installed, there was no way to replace the motor. You couldn't even get to where it was. We did get it fixed for a lot less than the $10-$12 thousand dollars one man estimated for us. We found a place that replaced the entire inside unit (not the outside compressor, just the inside unit) for $3,600. Luckily, the man was able to pay this with cash as well from his emergency fund.

Work has also been a bit slow the last month. Thankfully I have the buffer in my checking account, otherwise I would be short close to $400. But, this is also in part because:

For some reason, I had forgotten to go to the VA office with my summer and fall school schedules. So, in June I only received $382 from the GI Bill - instead of the full $1321 payment. (I only got paid for the dates school was in session for the month of May instead of the full payment for not having a break in cycle) I did get to the VA office the first week I was back from Florida and turned in my paperwork, and the paperwork is at the Regional VA office. As soon as it is processed, I can get payment for the rest of the May amount as well as the full June amount. I am hoping that the paperwork gets processed this week so I can get payment next week. Yes, I still have money in the bank because of the buffer, but I would feel so much better having the full buffer back in there plus with the GI Bill payments I will have quite a bit more money available to use for things like:

Summer tuition. $892 which I need to pay ASAP. Technically, I can pay it anytime before Fall semester starts, but I would like to get it paid off as soon as I get the GI Bill money deposited into my account. Then I do not have to worry about it any longer.

My children are also getting ready to go to their dad's for a month this summer in two weeks. Of course, he couldn't afford the entire amount of the plane tickets, so I agreed to pay half the cost. I really would rather use that money towards debt, but it is for the kids so I am trying not to be too upset about it.

Which leaves cheerleading uniforms to pay for. The team is doing bake sales to help lower the costs, but if they are not at the bake sale, they do not get credit towards their uniforms. So far the team has only had one bake sale and both girls attended, but they only made $120, which will be split between the six girls that participated. Every little bit helps, but I still have to come up with $460 for uniforms. Of course, dear dad can't afford to help pay for this. My mother said that she would help me with it, so hopefully that works out.

My house is still not rented out, for a lot of reasons, most of which have to do with the man being out of town quite a bit the last month. There are some things we still need to do to get it ready, and with the kids, school, and work, it was almost impossible for me to get the things done. (Besides the fact that I have no idea how to hang a door or other things of that nature) The house is getting listed as ready to rent next week though. Hopefully it will get rented out quickly so I can at least have the mortgage covered via rent so that will be one less thing for me to worry about.

One thing that I am actually happy about is that I kept my $1000 buffer in my checking account. For a while I was thinking about using half of it towards debt, but since the GI Bill money hasn't come in yet, I am very happy that I decided to keep the entire $1000 in the bank. If I had not done that, I would have been in a very big bind, having to use part of the Emergency Fund to cover bills, groceries, and gasoline.

I had really thought that I would be able to get Capital One paid off by the end of July, but with the way things are looking, I am not sure if that is really going to be a possibility. If work picks up a bit, I may still be able to knock out a pretty big chunk and if my mom can help with the cheer uniforms it may happen, but I am looking at my projection moving out to August.

Which just brings up more issues since August is back to school and the girls will need school supplies and other back to school shopping essentials. They do not necessarily need a ton of new clothes for the start of the school, but they will need new fall clothing shortly thereafter, so it might be better to buy the clothes during the back to school sales and tax free days rather than waiting.

Well, I have rambled on enough for one night. I promise I will post more often. When I post, I seem to keep myself more accountable. As it stands, the month of July is a broke month where I have no money to do anything other than go to work, school, and stay at home. Which may not be a bad thing, but I would prefer to have had some money available for extra debt payments and the dentist.