Since I Didn’t Take Any Vacation Time…

by FrugalBabe on July 3, 2008

I got my final paycheck from the library yesterday.  It was a good one, because I had more than 200 hours of vacation time saved up, and they cashed that out on my last check.  After taxes I ended up with over $2000, which is a good windfall.  Over the last year, I didn’t take any vacation time at all – I worked every shift I was assigned, and I also volunteered to be the person who goes in and empties the book drop and checks in books on holidays.  Every single holiday for the last year.  So instead of having to take vacation time for holidays, I was getting paid to work.  I did that because while I was pregnant, we weren’t sure if I was going to quit my job or not.  If I hadn’t quit, I wanted to have plenty of vacation time saved up for maternity leave and to be able to take days off to stay home with our baby after I went back to work.  Since I decided to quit instead, I just got a check for all the vacation time.  Makes all those holidays when I went in to empty the book drop seem very worth it now!

Anyway, I put $1000 of the money into my Roth IRA.  That’s the first money I’ve put into that account this year.  We plan to max it out, so we still have $4000 to go, but it feels good to have made a start.  The rest of the check will be going into our HELOC.  I’m really looking forward to getting the HELOC balance under $20K, and I’m hoping that will happen within the next couple months.  This will help.

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  • http://notesfromthefrugaltrenches.com Frugal Trenches

    As we say in England “well done you”!!

    It reminds me of what Dave Ramsey says “live like no one else so that you can live like no one else”.

    Thank you for the lovely comments on my blog! Glad we “found” each others blogs!

    I don’t know what a Roth IRA is (we don’t have that term here) but I wonder if it’s like our ISA’s which are tax free savings.

    I adore your sons nappies i.e. cloth diapers! Everyone in my family has used them, even when disposables were the rage, when I was a nanny I always insisted on cloth! Sadly, I think there is a commercialization of cloth nappies in North America – people are now bragging about what brand they use! I’m all for the homemade or hand me down versions!

  • FrugalBabe

    Thanks FT! A Roth IRA is a retirement savings plan, but we pay taxes on the money we contribute. Then, when we retire and start withdrawing money, it’s all tax free, including the earnings. This is opposed to a traditional IRA, where the contributions are tax-free when you make them, but all the money in the account is taxes when you withdraw it. If you’ve got a long time for the money to grow, a Roth is generally a better idea, since we never pay taxes on the earnings. It’s tough to give up that here-and-now tax deduction that we get with a traditional IRA, which is why we’ve been dragging our feet on funding the Roth. But now we’re on it! :)

  • http://www.grovesfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com/ Kelly

    That is awesome! When I decided not to return to my job after my maternity leave, I got paid out my vacation time as well. It was a nice little bonus. I am so happy for you to have such a great system worked out. Hopefully I will be there soon!

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