We are here at the last phase of the assignment. It's looking like 3-4 more paychecks. Awesome for me as I finally got a handle on expenses. Now its just bills and saving money. It's still super tempting to pay off the remainder of the car balance.

It is more than likely doable and would be a great relief so I'll just see what happens.

But with the other assignment ending soon and the status on unemployment or another assignment still in the air I have to be strong. I am not quitting the part time job. They were reasonable with me about the surgery. I am bummed that a manager that was really flexible with me is leaving and another who is not flexible at all might be promoted. This could spell trouble and a ton of headaches for me.

I have done a lot of great things with this money every step has made it that much easier for me to be able to sleep at night. I'm sure that no matter what happens things will work out.

My part time job is starting to get in the way of my assignment in a big way. And now I may have to take some time off to help my husband after his surgery. I'm at the point now where if they try to be inflexible about this I will just go ahead and quit. I am sure not going to tell my husband that I have to go tend to my part time job and he is just going have to be on his own.

My assignment has noted that they would like to pick me up for future assignments and there are already some plans in the works. Which is promising although I have been told that before.

On the one hand it seems silly to quit after putting up with it for so long and beside that it would be nice to have some income other than savings when my assignment does end (assuming I do not have unemployment.) But after working two jobs for more than a year now its really starting to take a toll on my well-being.

I feel like I am at the half way point though. Almost done with the car payments. Starting to finally save toward fun goals etc and losing the part time job would mean I'd have to take money much more money out of my regular check to fund my emergency fund which would live little breathing room to save for all those other things that I just started saving for. It would be tight unless I had overtime in each check. So now its a matter of living even more frugally than I already am or continuing to give up all my time to have that little bit of extra money.

I will stick with it if they agree to keep my hours low, and give me the time off to care for my husband. But if they don't it may be time to part ways with them. I do have other companies that I can do work for doing small temp jobs. And I may be able to make it by on unemployment.

Either way I think I'm going to set a tentative end date of this December. If everything goes well and I'm still working two jobs after this conversation with them than I will keep working with them squirreling away enough money to hit the 12 months worth of expenses mark which I could save up by then if I did it aggressively I'm already a quarter of the way there if I don't count my emergency fund. If I hit my mark in December I will quit my part time job and regain my sanity.

I have massed a total of $7774 between an account I consider my emergency fund and an account I consider a fund to cover expenses in between assignments.

I am working hard toward making sure I have at least 6 months and working my way to up 12 months worth of cash for cover expenses. Right now between the two accounts I have 5 months (6 months if I deferred my student loans) worth of expenses.

The longest I have gone with out gainful employment was 9 months as last time I ran out of unemployment and had to get a part-time job to cover any portion of my expenses possible.

I am thinking of paying off my car loan in the next month. If I do this I will be effectively making sure that I have enough money in the emergency fund to cover 6 months of expenses (8 months if I defer student loans.)

I also need to save something for dentist work that is probably overdue and very necessary.

I guess we'll just have to see how much is in the checks and decide. As of right now today's check is to pay off medical debt, and the next is to pay the monthly bills. The next may will go to savings and after that I may just knock another grand off the car loan.

It's nice to be in a place like this. I've read over and over that if you pay yourself first it will really pay off but its nice to finally see the fruits of that labor and realize by cutting unnecessary expenses I have build myself some solid financial ground to stand on. It's the first sigh of relief I've felt in quite some time.

Also I was wrong in the last post I am on track for the paying off the car this year -$130 or so. I forgot to calculate in this months automatic payment.

Well I had a medical mishap so that went on my credit card as did my earlier purchases. It feels like "the curse" of 3K as that is when my last mishap happened that wiped out my emer fund. Even though I probably only have one check left I'm going to pay it out of the next one and leave the 3K in there. Maybe I can break the curse.

Also I was about $400 off in my calculation to pay off the car this year so I'll have to remedy that as well. Let's see if I can eek out two more paychecks. If not I have two months worth of bill money in there so the cushion will hold. But bills come so what can you do. I don't need to pay interest on my medical expenses especially if I have enough in there already to pay the bills. I certainly couldn't pay off that excess while underemployed without dipping into the emer fund.

I still think I did the right thing by expediting the car payment. The car is at the end of its life mileage and warranty wise it easier to take a 2K hit to build equity in it now than to have to come up with 2K to remedy a car disaster while underemployed. But more so it would be easier to just not have to deal with those payments if for some reason my underemployment lasts through this year into the next. And that way I can hold out hope to still pay down the student loan as well.

Things are very much so up in the air but at least I build a solid foundation to stand on. I am so happy I had to fortitude to stick to a plan. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if I had not taken it upon myself to do this. And I still have a nice camera to show for it to. A hobby to fill up my time in between job searching.

As of tonight I have 3K in my emer fund plus, 4 months of expenses and I will be able to pay off my car by the end of this year even with the income from my part time job.

Even though my temp gig is ending soon I am so happy that I stuck it out and have made what I thought was the impossible possible.

I also hit 2K in my retirement account which feels really nice. I also need to find something else in invest in there. All in all I am pretty happy right now. It wasn't easy to get to this point so now I guess the challenge/focus is to keep the income coming into so that I can pay bills and keep saving while underemployed.

Also got rid of some old stuff for cash which was nice.

I have racked up a few hundred dollars again on the credit card.

I figured out a while back that if I do not give myself enough spending money for a long time this tends to happen.

I need to figure out a way to make it by on less spending money as I will be underemployed soon. I slipped up in the last two weeks with so many hours of work I got tired and lazy and just paid for things I shouldn't have made room for with the credit card.

I've been looking into how to make it by when I'm back on minimum wage and what I am planning on doing looks fine. I'm going to seek out higher earning contract work, and try doing side jobs. Now I'm just having to get in that mindset. I think if I go back to to only the one part-time job I may have to literally freeze the cards as I just don't see myself having the self-control to not use them.

I hope I can change my mindset between here and there.