Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Cliff Diving & When Is 2% Not 2%?


Well we got our first paycheck since falling off the cliff.
We have it direct deposited into the credit union.
My eyeballs nearly exploded when I saw a check with $300 LESS in it....$300 less for 2 weeks.
Yikes!
I grabbed the calculator and saw that if that $300 was 2% of our income, we'd be pulling in $390,000 a year.

Ummm, last I looked we were no where NEAR that neighborhood! lolz

BTW--someone making $390K a year is seeing $7,800 LESS in their take-home pay this year.  I am sure they are feeling the pain of that as much as all of us who make way less and are not seeing our 2%s.

Then I remembered that we have local taxes for the year, that are taken out of the 1st 2 paychecks in January, so January's pay is less anyway.
But still, that didn't cover a $300 reduction for 2 weeks of work.

And then Hubs brought home his paystub and there was a note on it.
A note explaining that the bookkeeping dept. of his company was asleep at the switch and took too much for something or other out of everyone's paycheck, and they would be adding this amount back in to the next check.

With the position we are in with the money, this "problem" was a non-problem for us.

But if we had no savings or emergency fund and needed Hubs entire check to cover our expenses for the next 2 weeks, having a $300 hole in the funds available could have been trouble.

Living paycheck to paycheck, with no savings would have meant going without things(hopefully not needs-like food or delaying paying an electric bill or mortgage payment)or putting some things on credit.
And if we had credit card debt already, it would have added to our debt load and/or added to the fees and interest we had to pay.

So my question to everyone......if your paycheck was reduced in error and you didn't have access to a significant chunk of money, could you weather that storm without financial repercussions?

Clearly $300 taken out of our paycheck in error was NOT a foreseeable problem, so there was no way to lessen it's impact.
Unless we lived below our means and made putting money aside for emergencies a priority in our financial lives BEFORE this happened.

Shit happens.
Make sure you aren't caught without a shovel.

Sluggy

11 comments:

  1. I have a ef fund that we could fall back on but this is one of the main reasons I want all my debt gone because job loss is a real fear

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nobody is safe anymore, except the politicians and their buddies.

      Delete
  2. $300 wouldn't be an issue, but we've dealt with other lovely payroll surprises ($16K) that changed our entirely yearly budget.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yikes!
      Feel blessed that you can weather a $16K change....

      Delete
  3. I guess I'm weird, but am not bothered by the 2%.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know if everyone is bothered, I'm just annoyed at anything politicians do in general, including this. lol

      I suppose if your budget is stretched so thin that this 2% has a REAL affect on you, you need to rethink your lifestyle choices and/or your employment choices, ya know?

      I know Frances keeps it real and she's got her sh$$ together. ;-)

      Delete
  4. I have a shovel and I bought it with a coupon and on clearance! I live to make you proud.
    We have money set aside and would be fine. Frugal living=sleeping at night. We could make it a few months without too much trouble and then I could start to sell things and if all else failed we could live for years off of Den's 401k. I would hate to cash it in but I would keep a roof over our heads. I'm pretty sure that I could come up with something before that though. Mind you I would be complaining and you would be involved. hahaha

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh come on! I bought mine with a coupon and you bought yours with reward points! lol

      RE: Extreme Money trouble....I hope I never have to hear you complain about that..... ;-)

      Delete
    2. I hope neither of us have that problem. But not to brag about us or anything but I think that we would cope better than most. And hell would we have some interesting posts!

      Delete
  5. We'd be OK. Can't say this would have always been the case. I got email notification that contributions have stopped to my 401(k). This is the first time in I don't know how long that I haven't contributed towards my retirement. It's a strange feeling indeed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hopefully you'll be able to start up those 401K contributions again soon at your next workplace.

      Downsized home, socking away for retirement....maybe the current employment snag is also part of the universe putting out some synchronistic vibes for ya.

      Delete

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