Welcome to my daily tracking of income and expenses for the month.

Income for the day: $0.00

Expenses for the day: $79.66

Income for the month to date: $762.80

Expenses for the month to date: $969.80

Net effect: -$207.00

The expenses for the day included sending off an extra payment to the car company. I had been overpaying on the loan for a few months and so the payment they were asking for lately was way less than the minimum I had started to pay when I started the loan. I started to pay the lower amount recently because I was using my debt snowball to tackle another payment. I had the amount set up automatically in ING to go out every month and I was always doing fine. Then this month I got the statement after ING had scheduled the payment to go out and I when I read the statement I noticed that the minimum due was less than what was set up in ING.

I quickly went in and sent in the difference (plus a little bit) in the mail that day. I am confident that it will be okay because I check the mail every day and when I used to mail in paper checks they always got there on time even when I sent them out a few days after I got the statement.

I am just glad I caught that one because I did not want to be stuck with a late fee and a ding on my credit report.

Moral of the story is to always check your statements…even when you have things set up on automatic bill pay.