Today was just crazy.  I’m absolutely amazed that I can think coherently right now.  LOL

With the wife and two kids sick all night long, nobody really got any sleep.  So today I played Mr. Mom for awhile to get the kids off to school, then raced home after work to do the same at dinner.  The worst thing about it all is having to sanitize everything every 10 minutes because kids just have this way of sneezing on everything when you least expect it.

So, we didn’t really have time for anything other than stopping by the grocery store for a few things and developing 5 photos via Walgreen’s online system for a school project.  (I’ll pay $1 to develop a few pictures before I go through all my printer’s ink for 1/2 the quality.)

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $2409.60
• Spent - $9.20 (groceries)
• Debt Reduced - $0

There are many types of benefit programs out there.  Each company has a plan for how to handle vacation time with its employees.  It’s that time of year for me when I need to either use up vacation, or lose it.

Variety in Vacation Plans

Now, some companies will simply give you some vacation time, and you either use it up in your year or lose it.  This is about as simple as it gets.  The only confusing part for some people is when the cutoff date is.  The hard part can sometimes be finding a "convenient" time to use it during the year without negatively affecting your productivity at work.  This is the plan I’ve got.  I just need to use it by the end of this month or it’s long gone.

Other companies will allow you to roll over vacation days from one year to another.  There’s various limits on rollovers so that you can’t accumulate more than say, 2 months of vacation time before you start to lose them.  I know companies used to let you accumulate them indefinitely and even use them as sort of an "early retirement".  This is nice for those times where you simply can’t find time to use vacation by a given week in the year.

Still, some companies will even place a dollar amount on your free time and offer to just pay you regular time or holiday time for your vacation days that you don’t use.  People who don’t take time off can make some extra money by cashing in their vacation days.

So what’s a vacation day worth to you?

For me, it’s pretty simple.  Skipping vacation time means I just lose it.  So you bet I’m going to be taking every single hour of vacation I have.  I put in plenty of unpaid overtime anyway, so it’s more of a formality than anything else.  Such is the life of the non-hourly employee.

Photo by sabal-bruce

I have to wonder how it would be if I could cash in my days of vacation though.  How much would I really need for a day to justify not taking it and spending extra time relaxing?  What kind of projects would I want to work on instead of taking an extra day’s wages?  Would I even let myself do it unless I absolutely had to?

I’d like to think that I would still use up most of my vacation time were this the case.  Though, the in-debt side of me would also consider a couple weeks of vacation being cashed in like a part-time job.  A couple of weeks is a couple thousand bucks for me.  I think I’d probably try to take as much of that money as I could until I cleared away some of this debt. 

Would a day of vacation be worth a couple hundred dollars for you?  What other types of plans are there out there?  How do you freelancers and contractors deal with this?

Talk about rough day for some of us.  Three were too sick to go to family night at the church.  And one threw up all over the nursery floor about 10 minutes before classes got out.  It was such a stressful night from that point on.  I felt obligated to use half of the money left in our account (until payday tomorrow anyway) to buy $10 worth of cleaning supplies to go sanitize the place after I finally got everyone home.  We’ve also been up all night just getting the children through it all.

‘Tis the season I suppose…

I really don’t like being so close to the bottom of my account every payday.  It looks like I’m going to barely have enough for mortgage out of this next check, let alone enough to pay the few bills that are due the next week.  I really wish we were either paid once a month…or the billing cycles on most things would be 2 or 4 weeks.  Budgeting would be so much easier then.  Oh well…

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $81.21(groceries& cleaning supplies, water/garbage bill)
• Debt Reduced - $0
• Left in bank account today - $8.25  (ouch)

Photo by pointybunny

I grew up moving around quite a bit.  Compared to many, I’ve actually moved around quite a bit since I grew up.  One side effect of doing so is that I’ve accumulated quite a few bank accounts in various places over time. 

Of course none of them had a significant amount of money, but when sitting down to REALLY do the math, I surprised myself.  I had FOUR bank accounts in places that I have not visited or passed through in over THREE YEARS. 

Total value of all accounts?  Just over $300!  Ok, $300 is now a significant amount of money.  So how do I get my hands on it?

A Simple Phone Call

For each bank, you simply look up the main phone number and give them a call.

1. Identify yourself.
2. State that you’d like to close all accounts since you no longer use them.
3. Ask that they just mail a check to your current address.

Yes, that was it.  I mean, how EASY is that?  I feel like an idiot for not having done this before.  There’s simply NO reason to have 10 bank accounts spread all around the country when I can access my two or three main accounts from anywhere already.

Consolidation Keeps Things Simple

I don’t know about you, but I get enough mail as it is.  This eliminates four monthly/quarterly statements that I simply don’t need in my mailbox and in my file cabinet.  That money is also going to waste at 0-0.5% interest in old savings and checking accounts at local banks in places I’m a THOUSAND miles away from.  LOL!

So What Took So Long?

Photo by Mason Poe

I have just never really closed any bank accounts.  Ever.  I didn’t know how easy it was, so I always just left whatever money was there when I moved out of town.  Fear of the unknown made me hesitate.  Once I called the first bank ready to deal with some long tedious process of exchanging signatures and faxing paperwork only to find out it only took a FIVE MINUTE PHONE CALL…I just laughed myself silly!  ROFL!

So, now I’ve got less to keep track of, an extra $300 in my pocket, and I’m no longer AFRAID of just asking questions or inquiring about things I don’t understand.  Don’t hesitate!  Call up some banks and close old accounts you’re not using anymore TODAY!

Please let me know if you’ve had any "nightmare" experiences closing an account.  I mean, this just shouldn’t be as bad as trying to cancel your AOL subscription!  ;)  Do any of you have unnecessary bank accounts that have been dormant for over 3-5 years?  I’m curious if I’m alone on this one.

It’s that time of year again, where bills start rolling in from over the holidays and we all cringe to open them…unless of course we were responsible enough not to break all the budget rules.  I’ve gotten a couple of statements I’m not too happy about. 

Rather than post the trickle-effect of each one in detail in the journal, I’ll just prepare a post for next week summing it all up.  I think a nice "big picture" post outlining such a major setback done in so little time will be good for my motivation.  I’m already steaming out the ears as it is since I think I’ve seen most of it, but a nicely planned heart-piercing stab-in-the-back revealing post ought to get me moving in the right direction. 

At any rate, today we spent about another $25 in groceries.  Everyone’s getting sick again, so we’re needing to stockpile up on some medicine, juice and such.  Never a dull medical moment in this house during the cold season.  LOL

So I doubt I’ll have my budget all caught up to date during the week, but I’m going to chisel away at it all week as I’m right in the middle of the living-paycheck-to-paycheck payday week.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $25.67 (groceries)
• Debt Reduced - $0

A couple of months ago I stumbled onto this salary counter that shows your salary adding up as you stare at the page.  It’s pretty neat to look at for awhile, even if you don’t make all that much.

It brings back memories of a couple buddies in college laughing about how much we were getting paid every time we had to reboot our computers.  LOL!