Budgeting For Overtime

By virtue of working on second shift, the shift where we work until the work is done, we are pretty much guaranteed overtime every week. Sundays tend to be short, maybe 6 hours at the least, 8 hours at the most. Mondays are always at least 10 hours, and then every other day is right around 9. After breaks, it tends to work out to an extra 4 or 5 hours or so. From what I’ve been told, after the show later in the summer, we’ll be pulling 50-60 hour weeks.

In my budget and my snowball spreadsheets, however, I’ve only been accounting for 40 hour work weeks. So last night, I calculated the average of my paychecks so far. There’ve only been two, so it’s not an accurate dataset, but I plan on updating it after every paycheck. I also calculated my weekly allowance and my monthly bills (insurance and cell) on a true average monthly basis, rather than a 4 week basis.

Result? My monthly payments and snowball have been increased by almost $100 to $1,295.34 ($457.39 snowball). Doesn’t seem like too terribly much, but that extra $95 reduces my total payoff time by an entire 5 months! That’s not reflected in just one or two debts, either – every single debt is repaid at least 2 months faster. My expected payoff date dropped from February 2014 to September 2013, which is well, well ahead of my May 2014 goal. Seven months!

In other news, a collection agency just decided to report my Comcast debt to Experian. The report date is an entire week after I had paid it off. A dispute has been filed.

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Related posts:

1. Budgeting For Savings

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