I know I haven't posted in awhile. Been alternating busy and apathetic.
I probably won't be be posting per hour earnings anymore, unless its unusual.

here's some tidbits:
Trailer park residents as a general rule, are good tippers. There are exceptions, of course.

People paying by CC are poor to fair tippers.

We only have a few black people in this small town. I've delivered to 5 homes where the person paying was black. 4 out of 5 of those were lousy tippers. My first one left a good tip. 2 let me have the change out of a dollar (.51 and .49 cents). 2 left no tip at all. This isn't racism, its a fact. Not a big demographic to be sure. probably 99% of my deliveries are to white people. The other 1% are non-whites, which include asians, blacks, hispanics, and everything else.

Asians tend to be poor to fair tippers (again, not much of a demographic). There is one fella at the trailer park who seems to be of asian/hispanic descent. He's a good tipper.

People who live in big homes by the local lake tend to be poor to fair. More poor than fair if they pay via CC.

Little old ladies tend to be poor tippers-I think this is just because they just don't know better.

People living in low income housing tend to be fair to poor.

As a side note, I'm told I can expect more hours, now that the "kids" (younger drivers) are going back to school, and that the football games are coming. We'll see!

This has been a fair weekend, working Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Average Friday and Saturday has been about 17 and 18 dollars an hour respectively. Sunday was a disappointment, "only" making 16.40 an hour. In the past, Sunday has been very profitable, but I couldn't tell you how many times the tip was less than a buck or nothing. Its like people are thinking "I have money left at the end of the month! I can get a pizza!" but not give a good tip.

Our jr fair is coming this week, and the company has a trailer there for sales. Its the job of the drivers to keep it supplied. It'll be interesting to see how close we can park to the trailer for the deliveries. I also wonder how it'll affect normal deliveries, seeing as its also the 4th of July weekend (yes, I'm working Friday too). Maybe people will be too tired for cooking on Sunday, and we'll get more orders. Who knows?

Oh, and despite the poor tips today, the last delivery was highlight in that when I was pulling up to the stopsign, I noticed 4 young raccoons running towards me-They hesitated at the street seeing me and my car, but then kept going...right under the car and out the other side. Cute, but considering they were young and it was still daylight, I wonder what happened to their mother.

One month to date

Slow and busy

Did Friday lunch, about 1.5 hours. This has been the lowest earning point since the training days, at just over $13 an hour, and that includes the night shift I also did.
Saturday started off slow, picked up a little bit, and made just a hair over 16.50 an hour. Hey, look at the camels in the pasture! Saw both kinds in a field on my way back from a delivery. Owner must be a shriner or sumpin'. Also made a delivery to "two dollar lady" on main street. Pays with a check just two bucks over.

Sunday turned out to be a doozy. 10 hours, 18.40 an hour, 100 miles driven! First thing the manager asks me to do is go to the lumberyard and pick up some bags of driveway patch. Oh, did I mention I drive a truck? Nah, I don't mind. Nothings going on and washing dishes can get old fast.
One of the early deliveries turned out to be at an address where I'd been paid by a check with a 2 cent tip. I wasn't too happy about another delivery, but this time the guy paid cash with a nearly 4 buck tip. OK, my opinion of this guy improved.
Now, today, I'm supposed to be the first driver off, but one the other drivers called in sick, so I'll be staying later. I don't mind, just extra money for me, and the family is away for the day anyhow.
I'm almost done with the shift, I get taken off deliveries (cashed out, to turn in bank) to prepare stuff for the next day, and eventually go home. A few minutes later the manager comes up and asks me to do a triple delivery, and of course I say "sure!".
First delivery is to a cheap ass woman. Her order is for 16.24. Gives me a twenty and a quarter, I give her the pizza, say "Thank You, have a nice day" and turn to leave..."What about my change?!?", "Sure, how much would you like back?" "Four dollars". Cheapass bitch.

Other than that, a pretty good weekend. We also got our regular paycheck today too.

Today also marked the end of my first month of delivery, having started May 25th.
I made $752 in tips, not including the small change, and about $340 in regular pay. Thats 1092.00. Now, that doesn't account for gas and taxes, so its not quite the "extra thousand a month" that Dave Ramsey says you can make. On the other hand, I'm only part time. A full timer can do better.

We spend a lot of that $752 in things like extra gas, field trips, car parts, etc. Pretty much like blow money. I wound up having $307 left. Some of that will go to gas, some will be what I call "emergency" blow money. In the future, this stuff will have to stop, cause we now have an $1000 emergency fund, and everything SHOULD be accounted for in the budget.
So if something comes up, and regular blow money can't cover it, then something else gets adjusted to make up for it. Birthday presents aren't emergencies.

Forgot to mention, my first delivery Friday was to a retirement part at a factory. 25 pizzas, about $300 worth. I get a 5 buck tip.

16.25 an hour tonight-21 deliveries, and about 90 miles! 8.5 hours for the day. Traded closing hours with another driver to get a few extra hours. This kind of diluted my earnings, since I did few deliveries late at night.
Have I mentioned that when there is a delivery to the local trailer park, it always seems to be on the main street of the park? Well its still mostly true-I have 3 deliveries to the main drag, and one to one of the other roads. I know there was another delivery to the main drag by another driver. I wonder why that is?

Oh, and to the cheap b***h on East main street (in town, not the park)-I hope you like your pizza cold next time...

No work on Saturday-When arrived for my 5PM shift, everyone was standing outside. Storms had cut the power in that part of town. I waited around about 1.5 hours with the others waiting for power to come back on.

Sunday, only worked 2.5 hours, but made 19.56 an hour. Gotta love Sundays and people too tired to cook.

Low point of pay of recent employment-12.10 an hour Thursday, but 15.00 an hour today. How many part time, fast food type jobs pay this kind of money? I'm not complaining. In trying to budget the income for this job, I'm going with $10 an hour, 15 hours a week. Or roughly 450 a month after taxes.

This is important to us, because we realized we made a math error in our budget. We have this "envelope" fund that we take cash out every pay week to go into our envelope system. We accidently put in only 1 envelope fund payment in our monthly calculation, so we now have to cover $337.45 more a month, and that decreases our snowball drastically!

Recently, we decided to "surf" a 21.98% rate CC that has about $1600 on it. New card offers 0% on balance transfers til June 2009. We were approved, got the card, and are waiting for the transfer. Under our standard snowball plan, we'd have paid off the pet CC by May of next year at the latest, but under our super snowball (when thought we'd have $337.45 more per month), we'd have it done by this December. As it is, we WILL make sure its paid off well before June-we sure don't want to pay the cumulative interest charges!

OTOH, it gives us a couple of more cards for our plasticonomy video we'd like to do for Daves show. I'm thinking of a Rube Goldberg set up that ends with the cards going up in flames.

Made an unbelievable 22.10 an hour tonight. 4.75 hours, 52 miles.
Thats more than my "regular" job.
Nothing spectacular happened tonight, except the tightwad who had a five dollar bill in his hand (he had his order on a charge card), but when I gave him the receipt to sign, he put in a $3.00 tip. That was a long drive too, and the place was infested with mosquitoes. whine whine whine.
(you guess who was saying that!)

17.07 an hour tonight, 32.5 miles, 3.5 hours.
Might get my 15 hours and maybe more next week.

You might be interested to know that we aren't going to be putting this money in our snowball right away. My wife is a Educational Assistant, so no income from the school during the summer. She does find other work for the summer, but its kinda rare to find anything that matches her regular income.
As of this point, she has not found a summer job(s) yet. Take those two item and it adds up to potential income shortfall this summer.
Crunching the numbers shows we should be OK til mid-July, but after that, things could get sticky depending on the employment situation, so we're saving my pizza money just in case. We also have some income from some property that could help tide us over, but we'd rather not use it if we can, we like to save it for our future investments. I know thats not the DR way, but its what we want to do.

Friday May 30th

Worked the lunch hour today. Nothing spectacular, funny, sad, etc. 3.5 hours, averaged 15.64 an hour. Washed lots of dishes. Did most deliveries in the first couple of hours. I'm the new guy, but it seemed kinda slow for the friday lunch hour.

Taking delivery

One of Dave's favorite pieces of advise is "get a job delivering pizza's, and make an extra thousand a month". Now, I didn't take this seriously. Until I read "My Pizza Delivery Blog" on the My total money makeover forum, by Patrick. Then I searched for other pizza delivery blogs on the net (lots of bitter drivers, BTW).
So first place I apply is at a national chain. Hey yeah, they're looking for a couple of drivers (looking at the schedule recently, it looks like they hired 4). So I go through the application process, drug test, and orientation, and my first few days on the job. This took about 3 weeks.
So, my first day on the job is on a Wednesday, right before Memorial day weekend. I'm just doing ridealongs with another driver, and learning the "other" duties-box folding, dishwashing, prep work.
My ridealong driver, D, was the quiet type, but willing to speak when questioned. He let me do a couple of deliveries, and keep the tips ($7.00). Offered him 5, since it was his car, and his gas. He waved it off. Good guy. He also got stiffed on a big order to a corporate office paying by CC.

Friday night, I'm doing a few deliveries with another driver, B. Do a few deliveries with him watch, but no tips for me.
Then I'm cut loose.
I do 7 deliveries. Only one is notable in that they said the order was wrong, so per policy I offered to call the store. Her response was "oh no, we need to eat". So back to the store I went. By the time I get there, she's on the phone talking to the manager. I gave him my side of the story, and he just says to call the store anyways, next time.

Average is 12.52 an hour that night.

Saturday! 7 trips again, in 4.5 hours. Includes a couple of long trips. On the same trip, one was a bogus order, they didn't order and the number wasn't in service, and then the next order on the same trip, I ran into a kind of humorous situation, except I got stiffed.
The family had decided to open their pop up camper, and apparently, while the lady who ordered was in it, her son decided to play a joke on her and used a double ended snap hook to lock the door. Problem was, the hook barely made the distance between the hasps, and he couldn't get the snap hook off. That's the scene I came upon. So the lady just sticks her arm out between the door frame and canvas, asks for the CC receipt, sticks her arm out again and asks for a pen. Sticks the receipt and pen out again, no tip. I helped her get out anyway, by pushing on the door frame to draw the hasps closer. Anyone who has had a pop up camper knows how "loose" the door frame really is. Averaged 13.52 an hour.

Sunday, another 7 trips, one free delivery cause a previous order (not mine) was wrong. One trip to my brothers house, nephew answered door, and gave a generous trip-I don't know if it was because he was surprised to see me, or if it was a regular tip for him.
BTW, my brother is one of those people whom Dave Ramsey is referring to when he says "Don't give me financial advice, You're broke". 4 bankruptcies in the last 20 years or so, including one last year. Their newest home is being foreclosed on this fall. So they moved to a different house, still a very expensive one in a very expensive neighborhood, and a hummer parked in the driveway. How do they keep getting this stuff?
Averaged 15.26 an hour. Not bad at all!

It begins

This blog is going to be about getting out of debt, and what we are doing to accomplish this.

In April 2008, I read Dave Ramsey's book "Total Money Makeover". This inspired me to GET OUT OF DEBT!! We have 223K worth of debt, including 2 mortgages. 89K of this is in various credit cards, car loans, and other debts.

Who is Dave? check out www.daveramsey.com
Dave has has a daily talk radio show, and daily TV show, which is aired on Fox Business Network.
Dave advocates a seven step program. You can read about the 7 steps on his website, so I won't repeat them here. He does come into some criticism because his method of paying off debts consists of paying them from smallest to largest, regardless of interest rate. The idea behind this is that early payoffs will inspire you to keep going, and give you more to pay towards the next debt. By using the payment from the first debt you just paid off, and the mininium payment from the current debt, you pay off the current debt faster. You keep repeating this, adding the previous payments you've been making on previous debt to the current debt. This is called the debt snowball, cause as it rolls along, the payments get bigger and bigger. Your remaining debts stay at minium payments until you get to them in the debt snowball.
Really simple, ok?

This is called Baby Step 2, and I'd say its at the heart of this program.

If I had to pay off my largest debt (24K on a CC), I know I'd drop out after a few months and go back to my bad spending habits.

BTW, you don't need to buy ANYTHING from Dave to follow his program. You can find his book at your local library (but don't be surprised if there's a waiting list), and follow his baby steps.