Worried About Money
I took a pretty hefty paycut last September when my Fellowship ended, and it's finally catching up to us. (I suppose technically it turns out it was a much less hefty paycut than I'd thought because they weren't taking taxes out of the Fellowship. Wasn't THAT A joy to find out when I filed taxes?)
We knew to expect it, so we tightened down on spending. I thought we were doing pretty well, but it's not something that's easy to keep track of so I've just been looking at my starting and ending balances each month when I get my bank statement. Because of when certain payments go through (tuition, rent, etc.) it's pretty normal for the number to fluctuate by about $300-$500 each month (which is a lot of money for us!), but in the past it's always evened out overall.
So when I checked my balance yesterday, I was really surprised to see that I was almost cleaned out. Going back three statements, it seems that the balance has just kept going down, never up. Going back further, it seems that the ONLY times it went up since the paycut has been whenever either I've moved money from savings or we got money from one of our parents (usually it's Liz's Dad reimbursing her tuition for good grades, but my parents gave some money for Christmas too.)
On top of that, we've been living off of our savings more than we'd realized, so both her and my accounts are pretty cleaned out too. I've got some investments we could cash in that my parents bought with my leftover college money, but they aren't easy to reach in an emergency and we were trying to hang onto them for whenever we're ready to buy a house.
So yeah, feeling uber-stressed now. Even if we can manage to cut enough costs that we're not bleeding away money every month, there's no way we can cut them enough to build back those savings again any time soon. We don't drink, we don't shop, we don't go on trips, and we don't have any expensive hobbies. It's basically just rent, bills, tuition, and food.
My parents have been asking me for months to switch over to my own cell plan, and I promised them I'd do it. I don't think there's any way we can afford it now.
There's no real end in sight. I get a SLIGHTLY better pay rate this summer for teaching instead of just researching, but the difference is pretty negligible. Then come Fall, we'll be right back where we are again.
We're doing our best. I guess that's all we can do.
We knew to expect it, so we tightened down on spending. I thought we were doing pretty well, but it's not something that's easy to keep track of so I've just been looking at my starting and ending balances each month when I get my bank statement. Because of when certain payments go through (tuition, rent, etc.) it's pretty normal for the number to fluctuate by about $300-$500 each month (which is a lot of money for us!), but in the past it's always evened out overall.
So when I checked my balance yesterday, I was really surprised to see that I was almost cleaned out. Going back three statements, it seems that the balance has just kept going down, never up. Going back further, it seems that the ONLY times it went up since the paycut has been whenever either I've moved money from savings or we got money from one of our parents (usually it's Liz's Dad reimbursing her tuition for good grades, but my parents gave some money for Christmas too.)
On top of that, we've been living off of our savings more than we'd realized, so both her and my accounts are pretty cleaned out too. I've got some investments we could cash in that my parents bought with my leftover college money, but they aren't easy to reach in an emergency and we were trying to hang onto them for whenever we're ready to buy a house.
So yeah, feeling uber-stressed now. Even if we can manage to cut enough costs that we're not bleeding away money every month, there's no way we can cut them enough to build back those savings again any time soon. We don't drink, we don't shop, we don't go on trips, and we don't have any expensive hobbies. It's basically just rent, bills, tuition, and food.
My parents have been asking me for months to switch over to my own cell plan, and I promised them I'd do it. I don't think there's any way we can afford it now.
There's no real end in sight. I get a SLIGHTLY better pay rate this summer for teaching instead of just researching, but the difference is pretty negligible. Then come Fall, we'll be right back where we are again.
We're doing our best. I guess that's all we can do.