I didn’t mention it before, but I got a raise at my day job about 2 months ago. It wasn’t huge, about 7%, but I’ll certainly take it. By the way, I started by asking for 15% so either money is really tight at work or I’m being phased out.  :)

Anyway, the point is that I made no plans of what to do with the extra money except to ‘pay it toward debt’. I’m pretty good about sending all excess money each month toward debt payments, but I also want to protect myself against spending inflation thanks to my now higher earnings so today I set up an auto-withdrawal to my long term emergency fund account. I left a little extra on my new ‘take-home’ pay (what gets deposited in my primary checking account) and sent $120 to my emergency fund. That will put us very close to the new emergency fund goal by the end of the year and as I also hope to have the credit cards killed off later this year so I will be able to finish funding the account then.

You’ve heard it before,  but I’ll say it again, paying yourself first is always a good thing. If you find yourself fortunate enough to see an increase in earnings this year take the time to actually DO something with the extra money rather than just giving it a general purpose or category in your head. Directing it to another account immediately will allow you to easily continue your lifestyle and start saving for something important.

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