Last week we found out that Tony is getting a raise for his monthly teaching assistantship stipend, which works out to about a $160 increase in our monthly income after taxes. Woo hoo!

This is particularly exciting because we weren’t expecting it at all. We thought it was a mistake when the deposit was higher than normal last week. But he called and they confirmed that yep, it’s a raise, and we can expect that amount every month from now on.

Today when we sat down to rework the budget for September, we were amazing at how much money $160 is when it’s put to work in a budget. In the past we probably would have blown that extra money and still felt strapped for cash at the end of the month. Now that we’re budgeting, this extra money will make it a lot easier for us to reach our goals.

We decided to divvy up the extra money between savings and debt. We’re putting an even $300 toward savings, which is about a $75 increase. We also upped our debt payment by $75, bringing it up to $325. We still won’t make our final credit card payment until November, but our final payment will be small.

We haven’t decided what to do with the extra $10 floating around in our budget. We might tack it on to our entertainment budget just to give us a little extra mad money every month. Snowflakes and other miscellaneous income will continue to go into our savings account to save for Tony’s tuition, our future expenses, and emergencies.

Yay for raises! We weren’t expecting to see an increase in our income so soon, but I’ll take it!

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