This is paycheck #2 for the month of January which based on my system (which I seldom waver from) means that it goes into my 'mortgage' checking account. It takes about 2 paychecks to cover the mortgage on the house and my wife takes care of the other house bills & utilities. She recently got some extra work from her job which will mean some extra money that might go towards paying the mortgage down, but I wont get into that for at least a couple more weeks once I know more.
So today's paycheck was $602.79 which is actually a little less than I thought it would be for a 40 hour week because for some reason my social security tax went up $18.53 this week.
Now all $602.79 will go into the one 'mortgage' account, but that doesn't mean I wont save anything this week. I will make a $20 transfer from my regular checking account into my 'vacation' account. You may be wondering why I don't set it up as a reoccurring transfer every Friday or why I don't just make on transfer per month for $80 ($20 per week)? Well the answer to that is I'm OCD and I like to move the money myself exactly when I want it moved.
I also had a little bonus save this week. I went to Stop & Shop and returned some deposit cans & bottles that we had from the last couple of months. Some people return cans to get the money back that they paid as a deposit when they bought the soda, but one of the benefits of living in Rhode Island is that most of the cans & bottles are stamped with a .05 cent Massachusetts deposit, but there is no deposit in Rhode Island. So for every can we buy in RI and return to MA we actually get .05 cents of free money. I've been doing that for awhile now and I keep all that money in a small piggy bank. This weeks trip netted $9.05 in can money.
This weeks savings were....
$38.26 in my 401K
$20 in the vacation fund
$9.05 in the piggy bank
which makes the 2013 totals...
$88.55 in my 401K
$40 in the vacation find
$9.05 in the piggy bank
To give you a glimpse into how crazy I actually am here is a picture of the sheet of paper I use to do my budget. I take a yellow piece of paper from work and I write out all the months and pay dates (all the Fridays) on it. Then each week when I get my check I write in the full dollar amount and I write in where the check is going (checking, money market, mortgage, etc). I am totally serious about this. I've been doing it this way for about 5 years and a the end of the year I paperclip this sheet of paper to my calendar and put it on a book shelf.
Maybe next week I'll show you how I keep track of my $20 vacation transfers!
Your social security tax went up as part of the recent "fiscal cliff" negotiations - it was cut as part of the stimulus in, I think, 2008 to get more money into the economy and was set to expire at the end of 2012.
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