Quick blog: Over the last couple weekends, I have (once again) increased my bad-debt-to-income ratio. Up 2%.
This is due to a few factors:
- school tuition due of $795 – so perhaps this is good debt, but I included it in my increase because it was charged on my CC with 12% interest and not charged against a student loan at 3.25% – 6%. So, in my book this fits in the mediocre category.
- Then, a series of mishaps equalling $595 – which, should have been covered under an emergency fund if I had one larger than $75 in it. We went over budget this week by $115 ish (don’t take the husband grocery shopping because he thinks money is expendable), the pump blew out in the pond, etc…
And then coming up this month I still have school shopping for 2 kids (one is a teenager). But, I have a plan of attack – it will momentarily increase my percentage, but quickly decrease because I am working overtime at work to cover that bill. Overtime, I am hoping will continue a bit more to knock down some of these bills…like the $1390 or 2% increase that I occured.
So, even though I knew this was going to be a bumpy ride…one, I feel guilty for bringing up 2%…it may not be all that bad when the overtime check comes in to clear up and set me back down to 80% (or lower). 80%??? ghastly!
But, the lesson to my family is… it is probably very wise to build an emergency fund of, at least, $2000. Any idea how to do this while trying to snowball the debt down???