Day 12 and More True Confessions

Well, I promised, I'd total our eating out numbers for the last few months and I did. Here's the rundown:

October: $391.50
November: $296.52
December: $306.53
January: $121.71
For a staggering total of: $1116.26!!!!!!!

This was strictly from our checkbook, it doesn't count anything we might have bought with cash. It does include the Sonic drinks that were listed in the checkbook. Now these weren't gourmet meals, most of them were fast food. Downright depressing! However, we must look forward and not dwell too much on past mistakes, except to learn from them.

Another sobering confession. I looked at our final December bank statement to find out how much we paid in "courtesy pay fees" for 2007. Courtesy pay fees are what our credit union charges when you bounce a check and they go ahead and pay it. It was $1170!!!! We also had $90 in NSF fees (where the bank returned the checks) from last spring when I really screwed up our checkbook bad. Most of the courtesy pay fees were from the first 5 months of the year ($1057.50+ the $90 in NSF fees), when we were doing really badly with our finances. In June, we started trying to straighten ourselves out, but we still screwed up a few times over the course of the rest of the year. For 2008, my goal is to have NO MORE of those. Unfortunately, we've already had 2 earlier this month (before we started FPU up again), but I plan to make sure that doesn't happen again.

The lesson here is we must always be mindful of where our money is going. I won't say that we'll never eat out again, but we are going to be much more careful about it and once again, we just have to learn from our mistakes and move on.

Now, on to GOOD NEWS! Here's the updated debt list with what got paid today from Tom's paycheck:

DLO: $14.40-PAID!
DLO: $34.11-PAID!
Radiology: $37-PAID!
Urgent care clinic: $46
Dr. Office: $79
ER Doctor: $97
dentist: $145-paid $25; balance $120
Auto parts store: $161.37-paid $25, balance $136.37
Josten's (Josh's Sr. Stuff) $252.12 (this has to be paid by March 1st)-paid $84.04, balance $168.08
Hospital: $261.16
Credit card #1: $2970
Credit card #2: $1104
Credit card #3: $990
Credit card #4: $899
Credit card #5: $908
Credit card #6: $2509
Car loan: $3563-paid $276.47, balance $3307
My student loan: $12, 913
DH student loan: $53, 248

As of January 25^th: $496.02 paid on our debt just since starting FPU less than two weeks ago!