Friday, February 8, 2013

The sweetest of all mistakes

First up, today is guaranteed to be a fantastic day, because I'm meeting my sweet husband for an early birthday celebration. Yeah! :-) The day will be less fun as I have a four hour meeting this afternoon. What a fun way to kick off the weekend, right?

Now, I've been poring over our budget numbers to try and get a better picture on our long range financial goals, & whether our time lines are realistic. And, no matter how many times I crunched the numbers, things just didn't make sense. Additionally, I couldn't figure out how our current monthly budget was working. As background, M's paycheck is direct deposited into his account, with a variety of expenses automatically paid from there. We've talked about having all funds deposited into one account, but after all this time, we've stuck to our old ways. :-)

Anyway, M's switched jobs, we had a variety of random expenses that he was paying, & I could not get the budget numbers (income minus expenses) to add up. . . And, today I figured out why! I made a typo, & all of our budgets - including the 2013 budget & our long-term financial projections - were based on that error. And, we actually have more money than I thought. How often does that happen in life? Never, I think.

Honestly, we've had some very difficult months with the bonus repayment, & the (still pending) tax situation, the refinances, & what an absolutely delightful surprise to find out that I built our entire 2013 budget off of a lower amount? Pretty darn skippy!

We're still making adjustments to our net monthly pay to try & lower our tax payment next year, but I expect the difference to be about $2,000/month. An incredibly sizable amount. And, a pretty good indication that M & I need to correct our shared account situation & get a bit more buttoned up. We'll be using a small amount of the money to add a much needed date night back into the budget, & use the rest to pay down our second mortgage. HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are you looking forward to this weekend?

And, if you haven't updated your first week in the fitness challenge, please comment so you can be entered to win one of the $25 paypal prizes!

9 comments:

  1. Wow, I wish I made mistakes like that! Hopefully this weekend will be spent getting ahead on chores (inevitable), blog posts (fun), and updating finance (lots and lots of fun).

    Elizabeth@roadnotchosen.blogspot.com

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  2. Now that's a pleasant mistake :)

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  3. That's a GOOD mistake to make! It usually always works the other way!

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  4. Yay!!! I thought you were going to talk about babies. You can tell what I'm thinking about.

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    1. Ha! I also have one of those at home. He's now a gorgeous, almost six year old. Apparently, breast feedgn is not the most reliable form of birth control

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  5. Yeah for mistakes in your favor! Never seems to work that way for me, unfortunately.
    Has it been a week already in February? Crap. I'm still working on my goals. The good news is that I joined WW's again. I start next Thursday. I plan on working out on my treadmill 3-4x a week for 40 minutes. I promise I'll start that tomorrow! :)!

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  6. Good stuff!! That should make things easier! :)

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  7. Such a rare occurrence to have a money mistake in your favor. :-)

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