Ok, so here I am like a week after getting my Internet disconnected.  Apparently I’ve been submitting my cable bills to be reimbursed by my work (I get my cable modem paid for since I work from home occasionally) and not ACTUALLY PAYING the bill.  Ok, so 3 months in a row of the same story and my connection goes dry on me.  Talk about a stupid thing to do on my part.

In the Financial Weeds

You know, this can be so disheartening.  I mean, I got my connection back yesterday and all but I was so annoyed at the whole situation I stopped keeping up with the finances on a daily basis.  Now I’ve got this huge pile of bills and a stack of receipts in front of me.  I’ve got my bank account open in another window and I see a bunch of debits there.

I think I’m going to have to just suck it up and practically start over.  Renew the budget, balances, log, etc.  Granted I did this once a month ago and it was going great, so it can’t be that hard to do again.  It’s amazing how you plan one thing out and it’s so great in your mind, then things go a totally different direction. 

Stick to the Plan

God is seriously testing me here.  I know that we’ve spent a little more than we probably would have if we’d been super-strict every single day.  Once you slip, that’s it.  It’s too easy to slip again and again and again.

OK, end of sob story.  Time to gather up my frustrations and trudge through the weeds one more time to get this show on the road once again.  I’m sure you’ve all been in similar situations where you just felt like you couldn’t get ahead.  The world just kicked you while you were down and all.  Well, time to suck it up and get back to beating that debt!

Also, I need to be super-meticulous with my online bill paying to make sure everything gets paid every month.  I’m seeing a place for making reminders.  I should set that up so they don’t go away until I actually make a payment for it.  I don’t know what I was thinking on this one.

Anyone else?

Feel free to share a sob story of your own.  I really wouldn’t mind hearing about someone else’s low moments when trying to kick-start their debt reduction.

Ok, finally caught up on a little sleep.  (well, sort of)  now it’s time to catch up on some bills and budgeting action.  Just like I mentioned yesterday about letting tiredness & fatigue wear you down to the point where you don’t care about what you spend.  Well, being completely worn out will also allow you to justify NOT keeping up with things.

Really, I think it’s just as bad as letting yourself get into credit card debt.  "Oh I can pay it off next month" sounds a lot like "well, I can do the bills next week".  Whew, don’t let yourself get too far behind.  Now I have this mess to clean up.  Luckily, I have no major plans this weekend and will at least be able force myself to get caught up.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $200 (Credit Card payment)
• Debt Reduced -$0

Yay!  Mommy is home!  You know, it’s just amazing how much being super-tired allows us to reason our way into spending more than we need to.  During the road trip to go get mommy from the airport, (with 5 hours of sleep in over 2 days) it just made a lot more sense to buy lunch at a restaurant to "welcome mommy home".  Well, we all know good and well that I was just too tired to care about packing lunches or to bring our own snacks.

Sometimes saving money does seem like work, but only because we’ve made it feel more normal to take the more expensive/convenient shortcuts in life.  It’s the little extra effort that you put into things that really saves money.  Next time, I’ll try harder to pack lunches before the road trip.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $60 (lunch & gas)
• Debt Reduced -$0

Mrs. Debtbeater comes home soon!  It’s been very easy to not spend money when there’s just no time to spend it.  However, in order to get some time in at the office I had to hire a sitter for part of the day.  That puts me back a quick $25, but I’d say I’m getting quite a deal.  Unfortunately, I’m also running on less than 5 hours of sleep since Monday morning and am getting to that point of not being able to see fine print very well.  No time for naps either as the kids are about to get up.

Not having my support system (the wife) here while work emergencies are going on just makes it  very hard to care about anything other than getting by let alone finances.  Can’t wait to get back in the groove.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $25 (babysitter)
• Debt Reduced -$0

Recently I decided to re-examine my W4 with my employer.  There’s a number of factors to consider, and there’s not one single perfect approach for deciding what you want to select on this form.  However, there’s definitely something to gain by making sure you’ve got this form updated to make your money work for you the best way possible.

Current Situation

For the last 10 years, I’ve gotten tax deductions in the area of $4000-8000.  As my family and income grow, my returns grow.  It’s gotten to the point where we just plan on some big "bonus" each year to help get all the shopping paid off that we did for the holidays.  Sure, we plan on each return to pay down a credit card or something, but that rarely happens in full.

Calibrating Dependent Count

Well no more.  Up until today, I’ve had 6 deductions claimed for my total family.  When doing the math on some online W4 deduction calculators it turns out I should be declaring 15 to actually get my paychecks stop taking out so much tax so I don’t get too much of a return.  FIFTEEN!?!?  I’ve only got 6 kids…what the heck?

There’s actually a worksheet on the official W4 form where you not only count yourself and your spouse (when filing jointly) and each dependent child in your family.  But there’s also a line where you declare, based on your income range, how many qualifying children you have for the child tax credit.  This was the part I’ve never figured into it that made my returns so large. 

Without this tax credit, I’d probably only be declaring the number of family members I have on my W4.  However, since we apply the credit I actually declare more so that at the end of the year I almost end up with no return, and no owed taxes.

The Paycheck Effect

Now that I’ve changed my W4 to have 15 dependents, I expect my normal $8000 worth of returns to evenly apply to the 26 paychecks I get every year with around another $200-300 increase per paycheck.  Maybe more.

End Benefit

This is huge, but don’t let it make you think you’re getting a pay raise.  All it’s doing is giving you your money when you earned it instead of the next year after letting it sit in the governments pockets.  The way I see it, if I get my $8000 a year early at the cost of paying 15% interest on my credit card with that balance I’m losing well over $1000 a year to this simple little problem.

Now, I know everyone else out there may have a different method to their W4 madness.  It’s very simple for people without families to just declare the minimum.  However, if you’re getting huge returns every year, you really should consider adding a couple of dependents to your W4 so you don’t let the government get all that nice money in their account for free until the end of each year.

 [update] - I finally got my next paycheck reflecting the changes.  My take-home after taxes and deductions went up $205!  Definitely well needed while up against the wall financially every month.

Emergencies going on at work, even though I’m on "vacation" to stay home with the kids my wife didn’t take out of town.  I’m basically running on coffee right now, and haven’t had time to spend any money let alone do much against my budget & pile of paperwork today.  I really want to get this caught up, but burning the candle at both ends doesn’t leave me much energy left to find yet another end to light up.  Good thing I already have a couple of posts in reserve for the week.

Hey, at least it’s another day where I didn’t spend any money! 

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $0
• Debt Reduced -$0