Adventures in Debt

You’ll notice the nifty, new progress bar over on the right. I’m trying to track how much debt I’m carrying and how well I’m doing at paying it all off. While I haven’t listed all of my debts, this is a good sized number that I’m tackling, well over 50% of my current debt-load, but not the total.  I’m quite pleased with it and got it over at We’re In Debt.com, and it’s quite handy. The King’s a wiz at programming some neat-o web stuff, so I tip my hat to him for this. I’m going to be keeping track of how the payments are going, so stay tuned!

In my current unemployed-but-paid state, I am constantly on the hunt for bargains at the grocery store as I don’t want to be shelling out the big bucks for food stuffs. At my local Price Chopper, they’ve got a deal on 1L bottles of Diet Pepsi, which is my favourite cola drink. It’s only 50 cents per bottle, so each time I’m in, which is several times a week, I grab a couple of bottles. Now if you’re asking why I’m in the store several times a week, that’s because I typically only buy items for the meals I’m making in the next several days. As I’m making meals-for-one, there’s no point in buying in bulk for food stuffs, as I typically don’t use them up in time. And by shopping at discount grocery stores, I save quite a bit of money because I’m getting the items on sale. Plus I’ve also got the time right now, so I get some exercise by walking over and then shopping.

Good day all, my apologies for being off the radar for quite a while. After the travesty that was switching my home phone and internet back to my previous providers, my next goal was to concentrate on work. That was a must, seeing as my employer had recently been acquired and we were all a bit nervous about what was going to happen once the take over was complete. It appears I had reason to be nervous, as I was one of 80 people laid off at the beginning of June. But do not fret, as I was actually quite relieved that it happened, and here’s why:

1. I had already been job hunting for the previous 4 months, and had been on 2 other interviews. This turn of events would now free me up to concentrate my search.
2. I received a tremendous package so that I could actually take the entire summer off if I wanted. The frugal among you are probably now saying that I should’ve started job hunting immediately so that I could take advantage of 3 months of double payments (my package payouts are not affecting by my finding new employment). But seeing as I hadn’t had a proper vacation in almost 10 years, I decided to take advantage of the moolah and take some time off.
3. The IT market is rather hot right now, so for once, I was actually laid off at a fortuitous time. So I am in no way concerned that I will not find another job.

So as you can see, I am not upset in the least about these turn of events, and am in fact relishing my summer vacation. So look for more posts soon.