Making the Most of My Raise

This last pay period both Mrs. B. and I got raises from our employers and I want to make the most of the extra money it brings us. Mrs. B. got a 6.4% raise and mine was 3.5%. In the past, before we started budgeting raises just disappeared into our spending. The paycheque after a raise it would be as if there had never been a raise.

My understanding is that 3% is a fairly average annual raise in North America, so my 3.5% is a little better. Mrs. B. is a unionized Regional employee and does better than me. My problem was how to make sure that this new income was used and not wasted. Well, the big help here is our budget. Now that we are on a budget each biweekly pay it is impossible for that money to disappear without being accounted for. First we have to give the new money a purpose. Since our expenses are already being met, we are assigning the new money to the Debt Snowball.

Now with the addition of the money from our raises, our Debt Snowball will pack more punch and we will see the day we get out of debt much sooner.