I’m home with a sick kid today. My daughter has a 101 temp so she can’t go to school. She doesn’t feel too bad but we’ll keep an eye on her today and see if she gets better or worse.
While she’s relaxing on the couch watching a streaming Netflix movie, I’m sitting here thinking about how our absurd December spending is just about a month behind us. We made a decision to really lock down spending in January to help offset the monetary bloodbath we subjected ourselves to in December. So far so good. We’ve held our spending to just the necessities, for the most part.
I think the worst part about the December spending was the bill that came from American Express. It was brutal. Nearly $5000. Since we refuse to pay interest by carrying the balance from month to month, I knew it was going to be a painful bill to pay. I’m happy to report that it has been paid and now we have our balance back down to zero. Yes, the bank account took a hit, but as we hold back our spending over the next few months, we’ll see that head back up as well.
It’s times like this that I tend not to like our strategy of trying to put as much on the American Express card as possible to get the maximum cash back. It’s almost less painful to pay for things with the debit card in smaller chunks so that I can’t psychologically see the total balance. If I’m paying for $40 here and $50 there, I tend not to get the larger picture. I suppose I should embrace the card so that it might force me to watch our spending even closer (to avoid the large balance at the end of the month) but so far that hasn’t happened.
Anyway, now that we’ve essentially caught up from our December to remember, I think we’ll play it tight through the Spring to get our account balances as high as possible. Both my wife and I are anticipating raises and bonuses in March which should also help. It’s still too early to know how we’re going to fair on taxes but I also hope to see a small refund there as well.