While doing my daily roundup of checking all of my financial apps, I was very pleased to see that my $400 bonus for opening a Cap One checking account was received yesterday! I wasn't expecting this until the end of April.
Originally, when I thought this was coming a little later, I was going to send the entire bonus to one of the credit cards I am working to pay off. Since it came earlier, I decided to mix it up a little bit. Every year, I am eligible for a $250 wellness reimbursement from my company. This year, I decided to purchase a new fitness tracker, and a strap for it. That only gets me to $247 and change lol, so thankfully I have a standalone receipt for protein powder I can use to make up the difference. As long as my receipts are submitted by somewhere around 3/20, I will receive this in my 3/31 paycheck (it's processed quarterly) - I will likely submit the receipts Friday, so wellllll within the timeframe needed.
I was originally going to purchase these items out of my federal tax refund money. I decided to pay for these items out of the bonus, since that's here first. I rearranged the amounts going to this credit card based on the "snowflake". It's all coming out the same in the end, just adjusting the individual snowflake allocations. Because I'm a bit of a lunatic. I'm still on track to pay off all but 2 credit cards by April/May, mostly using snowflake money. Of the 2 remaining, one is a store card on a fixed interest promo (it was for my bed), and so I'll likely just continue making the payment as scheduled. The other is a MasterCard that I would actively like to get the balance/utilization down on. Looking good!
As I work through my planning, I realized I am ready to start using buckets for my savings - for whatever sinking funds I identify, and some upcoming expenses that I am saving for in the short term. Long term general savings will probably just stay in my attached savings for now, but this will help me organize these things. I opened a savings account online with Ally Bank, and created 3 buckets. Homeowners Insurance (this will be a sinking fund I will start funding in August, after I pay this year's premium in full out of general savings), Plastics (this won't get used just yet, but extra money coming in later this year that will be used to directly or indirectly fund plastic surgery), & Education (any money I allocate for anything having to do with my degree program. Lots of individual fees coming up that I want to make sure I know how much I have funded). I'm sure this will continue evolving. I'd like to be able to fund my car insurance in advance to pay the premium in full twice a year, instead of monthly like I currently do. It won't save much, but even the $30 it'll save helps. Not sure what else may make sense in the near term, but I'm sure I'll come up with a way to make it more complicated than it needs to be 