What's a few days anyway?

Have you ever had a goal and work almighty to achieve and you still fall short?

sigh

I hate to even type this because putting in writing makes me feel like I'm accepting defeat...

It appears we will not have our Emergency Fund in place by the end of 2009.

That was not easy to type.

The Whammies

We've had a few things come up that will prevent us from having enough money to fund the rest of our savings in December.

1. Michael's clinic where he works was not open the day after Thanksgiving. However, it's not a holiday so he didn't get paid for it. Therefore, his first check of December will be much lower than anticipated. Not only is it short 1 day, but he normally has 4-5 hours of overtime on each check that he won't have.
2. This coming Friday, Michael has a conference to go to for work. His employer is paying for his registration fees to go. However, they are not paying him his normal hourly wage (so stupid to me!). So again, no pay for this coming Friday (or last Friday) and no overtime.
3. We have some expenses in December that were not planned for originally but after finalizing December's budget, I am adding them in. The two main expenses I'm referring to are landscaping for our AZ home ($70) and repairs to our furnace in our Michigan home($76).

It's like a triple whammy... 3 things that when I set our goal months ago I couldn't have known they would happen. This is the first holiday season that Michael has worked at his current job, so we had no idea he wouldn't get paid for "non-holidays" even when the clinic is closed. Now we know and now we can plan for that in the future.

The Verdict

When I realized whammy #1, I did some things to try and offset it- I reduced our budget for Christmas cards (immediate family only), I forfeited my $10/week "allowance" (spending money) and it worked. But now that Whammies #2 and #3 have hit, I don't know where else to pull from. I have no more tricks up my sleeve.

We are approximately $325 short of achieving our goal if Michael's checks come in where I'm expecting. There's still the chance that they will come in more but I'm sort of low-balling it right now since I really don't know what they will be. I'd rather assume it's less and be wrong than expect more income and fall short.

Solutions

1. Can we sell anything? I don't think so. We've already sold most of the crap we weren't using. Michael does have some XBox games and we have a PS3 now so it's an option but we wouldn't get that much money for them.
2. Our tenants pay their rent early?  We're very blessed- our tenants pay their rent like clockwork on the 1st of every month. They are never late which I truly appreciate, but they're never early either. If by some stroke of luck they pay before the month ends, we would have money to put toward savings.
3. Michael's bootcamps? Michael started his weekend bootcamps again this past weekend and the first one was a success. It's not likely he'll make enough in December (especially w/ the holidays) but you never know...
4. Cut back on Christmas gift giving? To me, this is not really an option but I figured someone would ask. We already do the bare minimum for Christmas and I already wish I could do more. I want to buy my family members something and I want to give them a gift... not giving them a gift just so I can have our Emergency Fund in place 2 weeks earlier doesn't seem like a well-balanced approach to life in general to me. If we were spending HUNDREDS of dollars on gifts, I would consider cutting back but we're not spending a lot to begin with.

Thanks for listening as I put this all out there!

KelsaLynn