What to Do With an Extra Paycheck
When financial stress has been part of your life so long that it has caused epigenetic changes that you can pass down to your children, your dreams, both when you are asleep and when you are awake, are about scenarios even worse than your current reality. If you missed a credit card payment, then you dream that your car is getting repossessed and your mortgage is going into foreclosure. If your SNAP money runs out in the middle of the month and the peer to peer lenders tell you to get lost, you imagine that your cousins will be unwilling to float you a few packages of ramen noodles. You don’t dare to dream that, instead of getting two paychecks this month, you will get three, but this sometimes happens. It depends on your pay schedule. Employees who get paid on a biweekly basis hardly live a charmed life, but every so often, three pay periods end in the same calendar month. Think of it as the green money equivalent of a blue moon, which is when two lunar cycles end in the same calendar month. For help strategizing about what to do with a windfall that you worked hard for, contact a Boca Raton debt lawyer.
Three Payday Months Are as Rare as a Florida Snowball
The people who get paid bonuses are the ones who can live without them, since their regular pay is already high enough to meet their needs. Your third paycheck this month is not a bonus; it is simply a case of paychecks coming in slightly faster than financial obligations can gobble them up. Your chronic financial stress has already altered your brain to where you skip past the daydreaming and immediately realize that this extra paycheck will not make a dent in your debt.
Yes, you can use part of it for a little splurge, less than ten dollars, one spicy McChicken for you, one for your child, and one for the cousin who generously floated you a few packages of ramen noodles a few months ago. If you can put part of this extra money toward the principal of a debt, you can at least ride that emotional high for the next few months until the next time a green money blue moon rolls around.
If the Idea of an Additional Paycheck Makes You Panic, Your Problems Run Deeper
You know things are bad when a temporary improvement to your financial situation causes you even more anxiety than the usual pageant of bad news. Perhaps you can use your windfall to settle a debt for less than the face value amount, but be sure you get the creditor to agree to this in writing before you pay. You might even use the third paycheck to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy and discharge the debts that you have no hope of paying.
Work With a Debt Lawyer About Making the Most of a Debt Repayment Opportunity
A South Florida debt lawyer can help you get the biggest possible debt relief when you have only a small amount of money to put toward debt repayment. Contact Nowack & Olson, PLLC in Boca Raton, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finance/articles/the-two-months-for-three-paychecks
