My plans to start posting more regularly have hit a snag. Mr. Hairball is going to be taking my laptop to work with him everyday, because he needs access to a decent equation editor before he goes completely insane. Tech UnSupport at his new job just keeps offering him Kool-Aid and mumbling about the awesomeness of Microsoft Office while he begs them for permission to install OpenOffice.
Because of the never-ending trainwreck known as the Human Resource department, Mr. Hairball's current pay is about 18% less than we had planned. Some of the discrepancies in his pay related to his education and experience should be resolved before his next paycheck, while others, like the signing bonus he was continually promised until someone at HR realized that he wasn't eligible, will not. Oopsie! *sighs*
In light of the above, I have reworked the household budget based on the numbers from his September paycheck, and right now, we will be able to save slightly more than 13% of our after tax income. If the people at HR do decide to finally give him full credit for his education and experience, then we will be able to increase that percentage. After all those months of pulling money out, it is a start in the right direction to finally be putting money back in savings.
Anyway, after living off our savings for a few months, paying for all of the various moving expenses, and with another large expense looming on the horizon, neither of us is comfortable right now with using some of of our current savings to buy Mr. Hairball a new laptop. I'm on the old Linux desktop right now, but my use of that computer will be limited to times when the outside temperature is less than about 85F. This baby pumps out some serious heat, and having to crank up the A/C so I can use it, really defeats the purpose of trying to save money to build our savings back up. I will have some access to my laptop at night and should have regular access to it on most weekends. Please be patient if it takes me a while to respond.
We have changed one of our Smarty Pig saving accounts goals to a fund for a new laptop for Mr. Hairball. There's a widget on the right hand side of my blog with my Smarty Pig savings goals if you want to watch my progress. My goal is to try a save a little extra wherever I can, so that the new laptop fund continues to grow every month. Mr. Hairball and I have agreed that while other savings goals need to take priority at this time, a small portion of any extra money we manage to save will go towards the laptop fund.
More later...
