How are the post-Christmas bills looking for you?

[Kristen]

I just plotted out our money for the month of January, and I'm pretty relieved. I'm getting paid a little more than usual in January(my students that pay by semester pay me in September and January), so bills from Christmas, and also from home renos(we did our last major project, which was putting new railings and steps and in the foyer), we're actually going to be ok, and are not going to need to take any more money from our Home Equity Line of Credit, which we had taken out for fixing up the house. :thumbsup

Aaaand, from now on, our bills should generally be smaller because we'll mostly be done spending money on renovating our house. :woot Plus, our tax return will be coming shortly, so things are going to be looking up for us financially, I think.

Oh, and one more good thing...now that we won't be forking over every penny we have to Home Depot, I think we're going to do some saving up for Christmas next year. I opened an additional account at ING that I earmarked for Christmas, and we're going to put $10 a week into that. We should have about $500 in there by Christmas, which will cover our kids, Steve's whole family, and the two people we'll pick from the gift exchange on my side of the family.

[Beka]

Ohhhh it's not looking pretty, we ended up helping out a few people over christmas when we probably shouldn't have but how on earth do you say no to people at christmas? You know, it's a rock and a hard place (when the hard place is knowing they had families and it's christmas)

It'll take me january and february to get back on track with our monthly out goings, alot of robbing peter to pay paul during that time.

Then in February Chase has a residential which is costing me around $150, then when I get over that it's Jude and Dyls birthdays in march which wipe out any spare cash again, after March is over i have from March to August to save as much as i can towards going out to my sisters wedding in Disney... not going to be easy!

[Jeri]

Things have been really tight here, because when Jim took his new job, the HR person inputted (is that the past tense of input?) his pay rate incorrectly - by $3.50/hr, whch was an additional deficeit when you facotor in his 8-10 hours of OT per week. He waited awhile to tell them because he thought they were already working on it (turned out they had made a mistake on the other manager trainee, too, and that was the error they were fixing - not his). Anyhow, they finally fixed it for this last check, but didn't retro pay him for the last month. Hopefully we'll get that soon and I can pay the bills I've been putting off. I'm a month behond on the phone, electric, and cable bills. I'll put them on my credit card if I have to, but I really don't want to - because I'm really bad about paying as much as I should on the CC bills.

[Shana]

Fine. I have never gone into debt on Christmas spending. I am a BIG saver:D We had every penny that Iwas needed by the beginning of December.

[MathSpeak]

It's not Xmas that has me ready to pluck my eyeballs out, it's school. I paid cash for all of my gifts. I refuse to get into debt over children's toys. However, I am taking 3 courses this semester. Unlike the old job, the new job makes you pay 100% of the tuition in the beginning. They reimburse you half initially, then the other half when you get your grades. WELL, I've already gotten the 10K bill for my 3 classes, but I haven't gotten the reimbursement from the Fall semester because my grades are not in yet :rolleyes SO, in addition to not getting my money back from the fall, I need to shell out 10K for these classes :(

[Jo]

Ouch Anika!

We are so so. I put most of our expenses on the debit card but Dave used credit cards. Luckily I did a good 90% of the shopping.

[Renita]

Christmas itself did not put us over......but these once a year bills that pop up around this time....can we say ouch!

We have to renew our plates, buy new village stickers, pay the dental & medical bills finally (we were waiting for insurance to straighten it all out), and there are some other random "once a year" bills that I finally compiled today.

I am not happy about the $100 increase in our escrow account per monthly mortgage payment. I mean, really, do our taxes need to go up $1200 this year? That is INSANE! So when the tax bills come in February, I hope their projection is way off! LOL

The good thing is that I have earned A LOT of OT over this holiday break. I worked 5 hours today alone.... I also realized that I was not getting paid for my OT. I did not know there was a cap of 6 hours per 80 hour work week. Who knew? I feel even worse that I never checked my paystub, nada.....horrible! So, now my cap has been lifted and I better be getting some OT pay all the way back starting in March 2007. :D Then we have the tax return, though I have no clue what we will be getting back...and then our bonus will come in February, which will be about 12 days of pay. Not to mention that DH is finally going to start working regular hours....he has worked all of December and has yet to be paid....what is the hold up and why are they holding on to our money!?!?!? LOL

I just have to hold on tight for now.....curb my supertarget spending and we should be ok....

[Mary]

No bills, here. Our entire trip and all gifts have been paid for with cash.

[Danielle]

We're good. We did charge a few things, actually, dh charged a few things LOL but I just got a large retro cheque from a contract amendment at work so that'll cover it :).

[wendygrace]

Christmas will not put us over the edge. We also paid cash for the few gifts we got the kids and I also purchase most of their Holiday gifts while we were at Disney with money from Ds' Make A Wish check. We also, thankfully, received some private assistance. What will put us over the edge will be the medical bills. We were hoping to have Michael's surgeries all done by the end of the year, due to the co-pays and deductibles and such, but that is did not happen so we are going to be up to our eyeballs in medical debt. I pay them as I can though and will not go into cc debt for them. What I have to be watchful for is the gas we incur driving to and from St.Louis (6 hour drive for those not familiar) and of course the wear and tear on the car.

[Kristen]

I should say, I didn't charge the Christmas gifts while wondering if we could pay for them. :p I charge everything, because I like to get the cash-back rewards(I'm hundreds of dollars richer because of my(responsible) credit card usage). I think credit card companies hate people like me. :o

The main thing that was worrying me about our bills this month is the home improvement stuff, but it's not like that was frivilous spending. And we do have the HELOC to pay for stuff like that, but it makes me happier if we don't have to take money out of there. I will be very happy when we get that thing all paid off.

[ColleenC]

We paid cash and we never go overboard with Christmas, so it's all good here.

[Kristi]

ABout the same as normal since we don't buy anything on credit. BUT we are going to be struggling til next payday. Tim forgot to pay our phone, internet, cable bill last month so it was almost $200 more than normal.

Luckily we had $100 credit on our electric so we didn't have to pay that.

But we also had some unexpected expenses at the end of the month had to dip a little into what we put away for our mortgage payment so we had to pay extra on that too.