Frugal Babe

We just spent a great Thanksgiving with some of my husband’s extended family that live near us.  We brought a spinach salad (about $12 for the ingredients), and ate all sorts of great food that everyone made.  I always enjoy hanging out with that group of people, and today was no exception. 

I’m pretty sure that most of them earn more money than we do, and they all like to shop.  In fact, the plan was to head to a mall that was opening at midnight tonight for Black Friday deals.  They were all very excited about it, but I have to say that I’m much more excited about the idea of being asleep at midnight than I would be about going shopping.  Maybe the sleeping part is because I’m pregnant, but I can honestly say that I have very little interest in malls.  I’m still trying to figure out a few Christmas presents - I’m stumped on what to do for my in-laws this year - but wandering around malls and department stores the day after Thanksgiving just doesn’t sound like fun at all.

Normally our library is open the day after Thanksgiving, but this year they decided to close.  I work there on Thursday and Friday, so I get both days off this week.  I get paid vacation time, about an hour for every eight hours I work, which is very generous.  That paid leave is for holiday time, vacation, or sick leave, however we want to use it.  Once I got pregnant, I started hoarding my vacation time.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the baby is born as far as my library job goes, but whether I take maternity leave and go back to work, or decide to quit, the more vacation time I have saved up the better off we’ll be.  If I take maternity leave, I can get paid for more of it (I’ll take my full 12 weeks of FMLA, regardless of how much of it I can get paid for) and if I quit, I’ll just get a check for unused vacation days.  Right now I have 110 hours, and every week I work it increases by 4 hours.  I don’t normally work on Wednesdays, but another girl needed the day off and they didn’t have a sub, so I took her shift yesterday.  That way I didn’t have to use vacation time for today.  And tomorrow I’ve volunteered to go in and empty the book drops, which will take 5 or 6 hours, meaning that I’ll only need a couple vacation hours to get my full paycheck. 

If I keep being frugal with my vacation time, I should have about $2500 worth saved up by May.  That’s a good chunk of change that we’d get if I quit, or a good boost to our finances during maternity leave.  I like looking at my available leave on my pay stub and seeing it increase each time.  Simple pleasures.