Green Panda Treehouse

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I finished my morning assignments and now I’m just watching the phones since we’re down a person today at work. I have a few minutes, so I decided to update you guys on how my debt is going.

I have two loan payments to worry about now: my car loan and my student loan. My first student loan payment is due July 23, 2008. My car payment is due July 22, 2008, but I schedule the payment a week earlier to ensure it gets there in time. The student loan is at 6.5% and that crazy car loan is at 13.75%. I signed up for an automatic debit from my individual checking, so I get a small discount on my interest rate on my student loan.

My plan is to make my minimum student loan payments and pay aggressively on my car loan. Once my car loan is eliminated, then I’ll roll half of that amount over to my student loans and save the other half. If I get a raise, which I highly doubt due to previous employees being denied raises, then that extra money would go to the car loan payment. (I can almost hear my husband laughing at the idea of me getting a raise. He knows where I work.)

My 3 Month Performance Review is tomorrow (technically I made 3 months last month) and I should get a good evaluation. My clients get their orders and I do my best to keep them happy and going smoothly.

I reviewed my performance and here’s what I jotted down:

Strengths:

• Team Player: Many people say this, but I did keep track of when I went beyond my job. I averaged an extra project a week helping someone else out.
• Takes initiative: I started a weekly breakfast group that has taken off. It started as 3 people, but now more than half the company volunteered to bring in breakfast on a rotational basis.
• Organized: My training wasn’t too thorough (learn as I went and 1 session with the previous employee) and the manual I was given did have some out of date and incorrect information.

Weaknesses:

• If someone interrupts me while I’m working, it takes me awhile to get back on track.
• I tend to say ‘yes’ without checking my schedule.

When I get home tonight, I’ll try and double check this list. I’ll finish up some prep work before the performance meeting tomorrow, so please wish me well.

It’s a slow day at work and I had a chance to catch up on some interesting articles on the web. After checking out Yahoo’s list of new necessities, here are the ones that I regularly use.

• Daily Latte: I don’t get lattes, but I usually get breakfast 2-3 week outside. It does add up and the food isn’t all that. (Sorry BK French toast sticks.) $8-12/week or $416-624/week
• 2^nd Car: We have two cars that we use for work, errands, and so forth. We are actually trying to reduce car usage. I don’t see us getting rid of a car, but I would like to help the environment and our pocketbook by walking more and finding a bicycle to use. $3,000 year for fuel/insurance/maintenance
• Cell Phone: I think we could save money by downgrading our plan. We have more than enough minutes. It is costing us $110/month with taxes including for the both of us. We also use Skype as a ‘home’ line and that’s only $3/month.

The others on the list either don’t apply to us (we rent and have no children) or we’re frugal and do our own cat grooming. How about you? What are some new necessities that you use on a regular basis?

I don’t know about you, but slow days kill me. It’s only 11:14am and I’m bored to death. I offered some of my co-workers my help and one has taken me up on my offer. I don’t want to announce I’m doing well because sometimes low value projects get thrown on the to-do list. So my reward for working effectively and efficiently is to get work that someone else was supposed to do but couldn’t due to taking long breaks and chatting on the phone? No thanks…..

Photo Credit: Pascal Vuylsteker

We finally got our economic stimulus check yesterday! During my lunch break, I’m depositing into the bank. Once it clears, we’re sending the whole amount $1,200 toward paying down the car loan. I’m excited about it.

My husband is “happy for me”. It’s hard to be excited when he doesn’t exactly see the money, but he knows it’s for a good cause. I love that he’s honest with me. He doesn’t see the immediately see the benefits, but it will help us out as I’ll move the car payments to joint deposits.

By the way, we paid our late rent and fees, so hopefully there should be no problems. We may do the money order option. It just kills me how this situation was handled.

As a reminder to everyone who got their stimulus check this week.

• If you have high interest debt, use the stimulus to pay down or eliminate it.
• If you have no savings, put it in a high interest savings account to start your emergency fund.
• If you have no debt and have savings, looking into depositing the money into an IRA.
• If all of the above is in place, have fun with the money. Actually you could send it to me.

I hope eveyone’s day is going well!