financials, revisited
So I just got paid. It’s nice, ’cause I was sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for the last couple months. But I’m consistently putting in ~75-80 hour pay periods (pay period being 2 weeks), which helps. I’m not counting tax refund stuff in any of this — I figure, that’s less-predictable necessities, like clothing, shoes, etc.
Based on spending patterns in the last 4 months, as long as nothing goes terribly wrong with me in the next year and a half (knock on gallbladder and teeth), and based on a generous food budget (to account for eating out several meals a week, and a fudge-factor for entertainment) …
I won’t hit bottom any time soon, which is good. I have money to buy things I need.
April is going to be rough, because at the end of april I’m expecting to pay more for tuition than I paid for this semester (whose idea was it that 6 hours in summer is full-time?? bastards!). At the end of march, I’ll surface above the “negative balance” point, for a gasp of air. That gasp won’t last long, I’ll spend the first half of april above zero but then toward the end of it, slam myself back into hard-negative with summer tuition.
After the summer tuition hits, next time I’ll be meaningfully positive is june. And then, thanks to the rent-free june and july lease terms, I’ll destroy the balance of the student loan that I shouldn’t be paying back right now because I’m still a student.
I’ll drop back below zero again at the end of august, when I pay for fall tuition. But it won’t be as far down as it was this semester, and without the extra nearly $1000 total worth of medical bills dragging me down right now, I’ll be able to clamber back into positivity by the end of september. By the end of the year, I should be able to make spring ’07 tuition not only without dropping into negative, but possibly without dropping below +$1000. Then, with the student loan payments gone, with no netflix, with glasses that are still under warranty, I should be able to exit april with ~$5000 in my pocket, and my two BS’es.
Of course, all that IS based on the idea that I’m going to work 37+ hour weeks every week for the next 15 months. And plans change, and things happen, and the world doesn’t work out like we think it will. But I don’t care, that’s dang nice looking.
Sure, it’s a long column, a lot of checks to write, a lot of stuff to take care of, and a lot of status-quo to maintain. And sure, I’ve still got $20,000 worth of stafford loan debt waiting for me on the other side of that, and that piddling +$5000 is a drop in the bucket, not even enough to buy a new car, much less pay off the student loans…
Still, it’s nice to know that I can make that sort of headway, even in the face of tuition. All I need to do is make sure to strike a balance between class and work, such that I can … you know, work 40 hours a week and still … you know, pass :-p.