Sunday, July 19, 2009

The $5 Miracle

I haven't mentioned it here, but I've been pretty stressed out the last couple months. My new lease was late. It happens every year: In April, I send in my notice that I'm staying for another year, I stress out a bit until I receive it, and then a few weeks later, the lease comes, with a $50/month increase.

This year, I sent in my notice, stressed out a bit, and then stressed out some more. My lease didn't come in May. And then it didn't come in June.

I won't go into all the details. You can find all that here. Suffice it to say that in the end, I finally got my new lease, complete with an increase.

Of five bucks.

It's really nothing short of a miracle, and I don't say that lightly. When it took them so long to send me the new agreement, I figured I'd be lucky to get away with just the usual $50/month increase. I started thinking about how I'd be able to afford a significant rent change. I even stopped my auto savings deposit to prepare for the budget change. One thing I absolutely was not going to do, though, was change my debt payment plan.

Anyway, with just a $5 increase -- to match my lack of a raise this year -- I can continue on my current savings and budget plan for the next year. Yay!

In other news, out of the blue the other day, I received a credit card offer in an e-mail from one of my credit unions: low fixed rate, no balance transfer fees, no cash advance fees. Because this offer came on the heels of the good news about my lease, I took it as a sign and made the call. It was painless and now I'll be saving about $500 in finance charges.

Here's hoping more good signs come my way. :-)

Oh -- and one last thing: I'm officially under the $10K mark. Granted, I was last month, too, but once the finance charges were calculated for this billing period, I went just over $10,000. But now? I'm under -- for good.

Wishing everyone a good week.

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