Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Catching a break?

Today the powers that be were kind enough to send out what we employees call Company spam regarding the lovely "temporary" base pay reductions. The check that we get on Friday will be the first at the reduced level. After the obligatory groan, I logged into our nifty online payroll system, and compared the amounts. The total difference after taxes was less than I had counted on,which was a pleasant surprise.

Basically, it comes down to, on a per check basis, about $400 less per pay period. The part about maybe, possibly, catching a break? With BabyA moving into the toddler room at daycare, my overall daycare bill has been reduced by $300 a month. So, that means that I only have to find a way to make up $250 per pay period instead of $400. Husband got his bonus numbers in a couple of days ago (his company uses some convoluted formula based on about four different variables), and we should be able to knock out at least one credit card, if not two. If we can manage that, we get back to goodness in about six weeks. We may even come out ahead-those two credit cards alone can make up the difference, and then some.

I was pretty worried about this whole thing, based on what my estimated numbers gave me. However, now that I have everything in front of me, we should be able to make it. We had been living within our means at the first level, and now we'll adjust to the new level. As long as we play our cards right, we may even emerge from this in a better financial place than before-a strange by product of the whole economic downturn. I guess that it sometimes just takes a pretty firm kick in the butt to finally get our act together.

Just six more weeks.....

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