1st quarter income comparison

As we end the first quarter or 2012 (where did the last 3 months go????), I decided to compare my pay stubs from this time last year with the last one I received for this quarter. We have had a lot of changes take place between then and now and I was curious to see how well I was doing in comparison with this time last year.  Last year I was able to cash out my cafeteria cash remainders since I only had to pay health insurance for myself.

This year, I’m actually paying money out of pocket… and I’m married which changes all kinds of withholding information. I won’t be comparing any take home pay since that will truly not be an indicator of anything—but I can look at how much I’ve earned before taxes, medical deductions, etc.

2011

At this time last year, I had earned $10,418.33 before taxes and deductions. Of this money, $681 came from Overtime & $985.56 came from cafeteria cash.

2012

For the year, I’ve earned $10,041.14 before taxes and deductions thus far. Of this money, $658.57 came from Overtime & $0.00 came from cafeteria cash.

Considering I lost $985.56 in potential income from adding SCB to my insurance plan, I’m only $377 down from this point last year with my overtime income being almost equal…  How is that? Holiday’s worked. This year I earned $564.17 from working on actual holidays as compared to only $121 last year. Most of this extra work wasn’t really my choice. Since I work between 2 different facilities with 2 different holiday schedules, I get stuck working more of them (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

While a lot of the tasks I’ve picked up over the year from work can’t be paid out in overtime (Like Relay activities-- I just get the extra hours worked as added vacation to take at another time), it’s still nice to know that I’m not too far behind where I was in the first quarter of 2011.

And I’m also sitting on a lot of paid vacation right now because of those added projects/work. I have 216 hours stocked away and when I submit my timecard on Friday, I’ll have an additional 12.75 more vacation hours added on top of what I normally earn. It’s nice to know that if something happened and I had to take a whole month off for some freak emergency that I would be able to do it without losing a paycheck.

But I’m thinking a nice day off to play at the beach when it gets a bit warmer is in order… or possibly a day at Disneyland (we know ppl who work there so we don’t have to pay for tickets). Since we don’t really have the money to do anything other than a “Stay-Cation” right now, these would be good options. While I’d love to head out to Utah and see my friends new baby girl and my in-laws, to justify the gas money out there I’d need to take at least a week off—and I’m just too busy at work to do that right now…

Any good cheap stay-cation ideas?

I’m thinking the dollar movie theater… the beach… Disneyland if we can get signed in… and hanging out in the park by our house. It’s important to actually GET OUT OF OUR HOUSE since that’s where SCB spends most of his time.