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What Would You Do With An Extra Paycheck?

July 14, 2007

What would you do with an extra paycheck?  My wife finished her teaching job in May and we thought her last paycheck would come at the end of July.  We were thrilled to discover recently that she would actually be in paid August as well!  My first reaction was to plan another impromptu vacation this summer with the extra money.  Of course then reality set in and we decided to just save it since we’re going down to one income.

Decisions like that are hard to make.  When what you’d like to do isn’t what you know you should do it’s tough to suck it up and make the smart choice.  I guess in this case its short term thinking vs. long term. If we spend it on a vacation we’ll have a fun trip this summer.  If we save the money it will come in handy down the line as we’re adjusting to a big drop in income.

The fear of not having enough money won out over the desire to take another vacation.  We’ve decided to save the money for rainy day.  Of course, just because we’re not taking the vacation now, doesn’t mean we can’t take it at some point in the future.  It may turn out we’re just fine without the extra paycheck and can afford to spend it on some fun.  Only time will tell but for now we’ll sleep a little better knowing we have some extra money tucked away.

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3 Responses to “What Would You Do With An Extra Paycheck?”

  1. Free Money Finance on July 16th, 2007 2:30 pm

    Star Money Articles for Last Week…

    Here are some recent interesting posts from the MoneyBlogNetwork and beyond: All Financial Matters discusses high 401k fees. MightyBargainHunter highlights a $10,000 test. Five Cent Nickel covers the latest Wal-mart roll back. Blueprint for Financial P…

  2. junger on July 19th, 2007 7:40 pm

    I had this issue (not really a problem) in June with three paychecks and split the money two ways: half of it went into our housing fund, and the other half stayed in our checking account. Because my wife wasn’t working for the first part of the summer (she’s a schoolteacher), we are without her paycheck.

    The third Friday in June sure helped.

  3. Ben on July 20th, 2007 6:56 am

    junger, I agree, it is a good issue to have. Sounds like you handled it pretty well :)

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