It's nice to get paid.

Last week the second of my June paychecks arrived. On the same day, a $250 stipend also showed up in the mailbox. The first of the June paychecks is still AWOL, but it still felt pretty darn good to have some money flowing in to counterbalance the steady gush of money out. Even though I had plenty to get me through the entire summer if need be, I was inching toward the point where I would have had to "borrow" money from my designated long term savings account at FNBO to pay my bills, and I found that somewhat disquieting.

Today an envelope containing my pay for all of July and August arrived. I have this secret worry that that means they've decided to fire me, but that's probably just my irrational fears taking over. In any case it meant I now have enough to live on until September (barring any big unexpected expenses, of course) and transfer another $3K into savings. I feel rich. Those of you who make much more than I do may now commence laughing at me.

Once this deposit posts, I'll have over $20,000 in my savings account, a new milestone. Throw in my savings bonds, my Roth from 2008, the contents of two other checking accounts and another much smaller savings account, and my stash of emergency cash in case I ever need to go on the lam, and I think I'm doing ok, not great, way too much frivolous spending in the past year to be anywhere close to great, but ok. However, note that that list does not include contributing to a Roth in 2009.

I've been setting the money aside; it's all there in that nice big savings account. I'm just being indecisive about what to do with it. It might make sense to keep contributing to the same index fund I used last year, but I'm finding the current losses a bit harder to stomach than I'd imagined.

FNBO has been promoting the option to set up multiple accounts, probably in an effort to compete with ING, and I've been toying with the idea of setting up one account for eventual Roth contributions, one for my car fund, one for graduate school application costs once I get my next stipend check to use as seed money, and perhaps later one for the costs of transitioning to graduate school. It might help me focus more on specific goals and keep me from coasting on the idea that I've got this big chunk of money so I can quit worrying so much. On the other hand, I'd still have the bulk of the money sitting there with no particular purpose at the moment, maybe a house fund for ten years from now, but nothing tangible so it might not help with that as much as it might otherwise.