Budget Crunch

So, this weekend is a payday weekend, or specifically Sunday is Payday. This is also the payday that I pay Wanda’s Insurance up front.

This means that things are a bit tight and was one of the payday’s that I had planned to dip into my Mid-Term Savings in order to do this.

This is also the payday that I have vowed to get out of my Personal Overdraft, without dipping further into my Mid-Term Savings.

Things are looking grim and it looks as though as none of my regular Budgetary Alchemy will make this happen. 

As you can imagine, this will require me to dig deep into my bag of tricks and do some things I have not done in some time. 

In other words, I will have to resort to some desperate measures.

With the warmer weather upon us (last bout of the dead of winter notwithstanding) this means that I am using much less propane. 

This means that I can dip into my Utilities Wallet and transfer $40.00 of the $60.00 budget from that wallet and into my Groceries Wallet. 

I can then underfund the Groceries Wallet, only putting $20.00 or $40.00 into it and still manage to make it until the next payday. 

I will then have to keep up my budgeted $20.00 per payday that I have earmarked to go into the Utilities Wallet in order to slowly fund that Wallet back up to its budget of $60.00.

As I head into the last 5 months (and change) of this journey I am heading into a long, steady budget crunch. 

In order to become totally debt free by October 2nd, I will need to make every one of my budgetary targets from now until then, in order to make this happen. 

I need to make at least what I have targeted for my minimum amount of income. More importantly I need to somehow make all of my savings and expense targets.

So if my income is a little light during a given payperiod, I will need to cut back on less vital spending in order to make my key savings and expense targets.

I can do this, but as a result of the past few months, any and all wiggle room in my budgets are gone. 

October 22nd is still my drop dead, deadline date to become Totally Debt Free. I will make that day one way or another. 

This, of course, will require much more Budgetary Alchemy, to be sure. This is a place that I have been before, so I know what to do. 

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward.