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Archive for November, 2006

Forgot one important bill...

November 1st, 2006 at 05:38 pm

Well, I have been looking over the #'s again in the budget. Seems that I made one really huge mistake in my figures. Since we are paying Nov. rent with 1st Nov. check I just totally forgot that we would again have to pay the rent on the 2nd Nov. check for Dec. rent. And that rent is going up $20. It threw my #'s way out of wack. I knew it was too good to be true.Unless I can get the expenses down even more there will be no way I will be able to pay off debt.
I think that Dec. electric bill may be lower, considering I have not run heat or a/c in days and days. It was cold in the house this morning (DD's hands were very cold when I went to get her out of bed this morning) so I'm afraid that I may need to start turning on the heat. I'm trying to do everything I can to keep it off, though. Any suggestions you all may have regarding would help.
I know that the phone bill will be going down by an est. $20 per month, and will go down even more once my application for assistance is processed (but probably not until the begining of the year).
The water bill has gone down about $10 this month. I was shocked to see it because it always runs high. A fire in our apartment complex knocked out 16 apartments. I didn't think it would have made that big of a difference in the bill though. We have somewhere around 300 units here. It makes me wonder if I am not getting a super raw deal on my water bill. The only reason I can think of that would decrease so quickly is the fire and the lowered occupancy due to it. Several people have moved out of the complex since the fire.
I am going to experiment a little with the grocery bill. I still have plenty of food so I am going to hold off buying groceries all together for as long as I can. I will need to get bread and diapers in the near future and may need to get a few supplies for my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner, but other than that no spending-unless absolutely necessary. We will not go without food and a healthy balance of it.
The only other option at this point is to cut the smoking budget down again. DH has been getting a little laxed with his 10 cigarette a day limit so we have bought more this month than the actual 10 a day. But, I did budget for the extra considering it was the first month of doing it. But even if I did cut the cigarette budget out completely, we still would not have enough to cover the double payment of rent for this month.
I see that the only option is to take the PayPal money (going towards paying off the bank) to pay the remainder of the balance for the rent.
This also leaves no money for Christmas. We bought DD's birthday present last weekend on clearance last weekend. Her birthday is mid Dec. I know I should probably just make it a birthday/christmas gift, because she is only turning 1 yr. and won't remember it, but I figured that one gift for birthday and a small family party with normal food and a home made cake for dessert would be acceptably low key for the occasion. And I have 3 gifts that I will be making her for Christmas, all of them I consider free because I will be using up supplies (scrap fabric, sewing notions and polyfill) that I have had for ages and ages with no specific purpose for having them.
Anyways, enough of my rambling for now...