My husband is really enjoying his new job. He likes the people he works with, he likes the variety and he (we! Hah!) like the pay. This boss pays the vacation pay out on every cheque.

Now we need to decide what to do with this extra money. Before taxes it's about $80. With his last 2 paycheques we've just spent the money willy nilly but I'd like to do something responsible with this money.

I've been thinking about it and have come up with these 4 options:

1. Put the holiday pay into an account for when we do take holidays.

PRO: Holiday Fund would become quite large quite fast as we are already saving $110 a month towards UK 2010

CON: Well, not really a con but just that -- that we are already saving $110 a month and that perhaps the money should funnelled elsewhere (either planned spending or going towards improving cashflow)

2. Put the holiday pay towards paying off the LOC

PRO: It's always best to work hardest at becoming consumer debt free.

CON: There would be no 'pay cheque' if/when we actually take holidays, kwim?

3. Put the holiday money into planned spending accounts.

PRO: We could identify more areas to save for (ie. Paying house insurance in one shot instead of monthly) & have savings for a variety of fun stuff (ie. new tv, new car)

CON: Interest is still accruing on LOC, holiday fund not growing quickly.

4. Some crazy combination of all of the above.

As usual do things the wacky dinah way. A little of everything.

What's your vote?

I did a stint of a large chunk of black this week...and my oh my black is hard to work with. It's absolutely impossible to see where the stitches start and end. I'm done with black for a while now. Moved on to other colours.

Okay, so I was tagged by Frugal Dreamer a couple days ago....I'm supposed to do the following:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.

2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.

3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they've been tagged.

THE FACTS OF DINAH

1. My name is not Dinah. It's something else. Dinah is my alter ego and one day I'll tell you all why.

2. I smoke. I admit it. I start and I stop and I start and I stop. I'm working on it.

3. I got married in Glasgow, Scotland at the Registrars Office. We got married at 10 AM, were done by 10:30 AM, back at the hotel and changed by 11 AM, & out for lunch at noon. It was wonderful.

4. I've had glasses since I was 4. I even broke the 'unbreakable' pair of glasses 7 times.

5. I'm pretty clumsy. Stuff falls off shelves and things don't stay put when I'm around. Heck, I don't stay put when I'm around.

6. I'm tone deaf. Completely and totally. I don't understand tunes, melody's, keys, or rhythm. I just sing for the joy of it.

7. I have very large feet. Excessively large. Like size 11 women's large. Sometimes 12. Shoe shopping generally makes me cry.

But I don't know who else to tag...I think everyone's been tagged already. The tag ends with me. :P

I got paid today and saw my pay stub and I realized that I've gotten my yearly increment increase. Although I'm not entirely too sure why...I'm running with it. My increase has upped my pay by $5 so I'm implementing one of Gails ideas again.

Live on your pre-raise income. If you get a cost-of-living increase or a performance raise pretend you didn't and save the extra money you're bringing home each
pay.

I really like this way of saving. You don't feel like you're 'missing' out on anything because you never had the money in the first place. Your incoming money stays the same but your savings increases with virtually no hardship to you.

So, I've set up my 10 weeks of automatic transfers into our savings account for $45 a week. The distribution will be as follows:

$20 EF ($80 a month = $960 a year)
$20 Holiday Fund ($110 a month = $1320 a year)
$2 House Repair/Maintenance Fund ($8 a month = $96 a year)
$3 Car Repair/Maintenance Fund ($12 a month = $144 a year)
$45 a week = $210 a month = $2520 a year

Seeing the numbers out there in print makes everything so much more real and inspiring. :)

I was just commenting on Jessie's Blog about wanting to go camping the same time she is -- June 26 to July 1. It would be just me and Andrew for part of the time as Husband will be working Monday and Tuesday. So I want something more family friendly, not remote, with a store, with cell phone reception, and a beach.

We have some options that I have been mulling over in my head....

1. Go to Bird's Hill Park -- It's only about 10 minutes outside of the city. It would be easy for us. But the big con is that this Park is the Party Park because it is so close to the city.

2. Go to Otterfalls Campground -- I used to camp at this campground every summer until I was about 12 years old. It has some very good memories and is only about 1 hour from the city. The con is that it is a very open park with zero privacy and zero woodsy feel. But it is good for little kids.

3. Branch out and go someplace new like Nutimik (about 1.5 hours away) or Rushing River (about 2.5 hours away).

So many decisions!

Just for fun I thought I'd look up what I was blogging about 1 year ago today.

It's a fun post about trying to be more Green and Cheap. :P

& then if you're an uber die hard Who's A Blogwhore fan you can read the update here.

Aren't they beautiful?!?! I bought them from this Etsy Shop. I cannot wait for them to arrive!

Okay, so I signed up for this thing called Swagbucks...

I'm not too sure how it works but I have been able to figure out that when you get 45 swagbucks you can get a $5 Amazon card. I have also figured out that I'm supposed to urge friends and family to sign up using my referral link...which is right HERE (Click Me!). I've never done anything like this before but a bunch of other personal finance bloggers have been raving about it so I figured I'd give it a go. I've got a handy little search bar in the top right corner of my monitor and I've been doing searches as I go along.

Any gift cards or items that I get from this are of course going to go towards my Christmas fund.