I've been out enjoying life (and budget updates)

 Hey, friends! Yesterday I went to the state fair and it was fun. Nice warm breeze, not too many people, and all the fried things.

It was a bit of mildly hectic day waiting for one of my endorsers to sign off on a document, but it's all solved now. Yay!

I still have 2 things to deliver by the end of the week, but they should be fairly painless. I will likely wait until the last minute.

Yesterday was a sleepless night because of the trains but I slept with the windows closed last night and was able to sleep until almost 7p minus the coughing. I think it might be heartburn as I used a second pillow and it stopped the coughing.

I love fall weather! It's dark and gloomy and chilly.

Today I have lunch with another human, which will be nice. 

I have to stay on top of my laundry with all this going out I'm doing. 

The money problems weighing on my mind - the car payment! and also what to do with $600 health and wellness stipend.

Well once the information came about the car payment, I automatically just added it to my existing BillPay and just like that it was solved. Prior to this I'd been hemming and hawing about my current BillPay platform not tallying up my balance. But I used a spreadsheet to calm my anxiety and that helped alot. I have it pinned to my toolbar so I can easily access. So I've essentially drafted next year's budget. It has new housing expenses and new car expenses. And we're right around $2700/mon. Yowzers! This is just bills. This does not include food, etc.

I think I'll still keep my Car Fund just in case. But suddenly I let go of trying to game the interest rate and just chose easy. With the spreadsheet and being able to name the account with the monthly expenses (so I can remember), that helps mitigate some of the anxiety.

So I'm sticking with that as the short term solution. So I didn't have to make any changes and just continuing as is.

As it stands, I can keep up with the monthly bills now and when I frontload 401k next year. It'll just cover monthly bills and my monthly allowance. Yay! So money worries averted. 

Phew! You should've seen the notes and different scenarios I was running. Sheesh, and then one spreadsheet of expenses later, all is well. 

I think keeping my living stipend in the car fund is good for now. I don't know yet if I'll add Bonus 2024 Money to it, so we shall see. I think right now I'm loosely just thinking it'll be nice to have a 1 year running start should anything happen with my job before early retirement. And that's as far as I've gotten.

But I also hadn't run the numbers to know I could cover the car expense. So it'll just be a nice safety net for the time being.

I'm also taking a break from churning for awhile while I go out and live life. 

So that's my update, friends.