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Home > Archive: July, 2018

Archive for July, 2018

Got my raise today!

August 1st, 2018 at 12:17 am

I found out about 3 months ago that we were going to be getting raises. This came as a total surprise because I'm only in year 1 of a 3-year contract. Apparently, management realized that there was no continuity to what everyone was making. It varied quite a bit based on when they were hired. They decided to switch to a 3-tier scale based on years of experience and adjust everybody's pay to get them onto that scale, giving everyone some degree of a raise in the process.

The new contract actually went into effect July 1 but we weren't able to set up a meeting to review the new contract until today. Once I sign it, they will pay me the higher rate retroactively to July 1.

Anyway, the main changes are that:
1) my base salary went up 3.55%
2) my bonus went up 14.5%
3) my bonus is now spelled out in the contract; it was not previously, so they are now contractually obligated to pay it.

When you add it all up, assuming I earn the full bonus (which I always have), I will be grossing about $670/month more which is a nice chunk of change. Most likely my pay over the next 3 years will remain the same, but I see absolutely no problem with that. I'm very happy with the new number (I was happy with the old number too).

Quick update

July 1st, 2018 at 08:42 pm

It's been 3 months since I updated here.

College costs are done.
As planned, I've been putting the former tuition money toward our HELOC instead. I was shooting to pay it off in 4 months, May-August. As it turns out, thanks to a bonus and some extra shifts, it will get paid off in July which is great.

Once that is done, my plan is to do $1,000/mo to the mortgage, $1,000 to savings, and $1,000 to an investment earmarked for retirement (although not in a designated retirement account). That will have the mortgage paid off in October 2019. I anticipate it will be sooner just knowing how I get when debt balances get low. I tend to want to just make a bigger payment and get rid of it once it gets down to a few thousand.

The increased savings will be partly to just build our overall reserve and also because both of our cars are approaching 100K miles so in the next couple of years, we'll probably be in the market.

The retirement stuff is because we are no longer eligible for Roths so need to replace that piece of our investing.

All in all, we're in a good position if everything stays on track. And if anything unexpected crops up, as it always does, the increased savings will be in place for that.