When life comes at you!

I had all these plans to get back in the swing of things and weekly posting, and then LIFE happened. The last time I was here I think I mentioned that I thought I was being underpaid. Whooaa boy was I being underpaid!! So that could probably be a post all on it’s own, but here are the basics of what happened:

1. I set up a profile via linkedin, and within a few weeks I was recruited by more than one company.
2. I made it through several rounds of interviews with a company I really liked.
3. Their starting salary was SIGNIFICANTLY higher than what I make now- about 50k higher- ( SAY WHAT?!).
4. I told my boss.
5. My boss set into motion a promotion that was due to me but probably wouldn’t have happened right away.
6. With the promotion came a pretty significant pay increase and made my staying worth it.
7. Future- my normal yearly raise will be based on the higher salary (woo hoo!).

So there you have it. I didn’t actually go anywhere, I didn’t leave the job I love, I’m just being recognized for the hard work that I’ve been doing. I also can keep my awesome awesome work from home most of the time schedule which is really good for how our school drop off/pick up situation will be for the next 2 years.

As a result, we have both left our soul sucking per diem jobs, and we’ll still be bringing in more income than we were both bringing in combined.Will we ever go back to our per diem jobs? Maybe. Never is a long time and the money was pretty good. However, we both need a really good long break. I’ve been working per diem for 8 years on top of my full time job. It’s physically and mentally exhausting and now that our kiddos are getting older we feel the impact when one of us is gone for the whole weekend. It’s time that we can’t get back, so maybe down the road when the kids are older we’ll pick up a shift or 2 in order to contribute more to our retirement or something, but for now, WE’RE DONE!

So, what else? I’m coming up with our next plan for debt repayment. I won’t know exactly how much my new paycheck will be, but I’m starting to get an inkling for how I want the next 12 months to go. Ideally we’d have all credit card debt paid off and be working on the car loan, within 18 months we’d have just the student loans and the house. After that I’d like to have everything but the house paid off in 5 years, but again, I’ll know more once I see that first pay check, so stay tuned!

On the house/kid/life stand point, it’s been really really busy. I’ve traveled for work once a month for the last 4 months, we also had a wedding and a family reunion. Looks like I won’t have to travel again until October so yay! Oldest frugal kid was diagnosed with sleep apnea last month and gets his tonsils and adenoids out tomorrow morning, so we’re all looking forward to that being in our rearview mirror. Everyone else has been doing well and rather than take a huge summer trip, we’ve done a bunch of day trips and we’ll be heading down to Virginia to visit my sister.

Phew, that was just a small update, I don’t even want to say it, but I’m hoping to get more regular in my posting soon. Probably won’t have an August state of the union so that I can figure out our financial plans first. You’ll hopefully see me before the September state of the frugal union rolls around. Thanks for stopping by!