The extremely tiny raise that they had been talking about around work finally came through. When I got back to work, there was a letter waiting for me notifying me of this. It means that I get about $54 more in my paycheck each month. I will put it towards the EF.

In another update, I also received the PIN number for my retirement account and I know know how much I have in there. It currently stands at $9061.54. It seems like a teeny-tiny amount when I think of retirement, but I am reminding myself that it was only started about two years ago, it will grow, and that this is in addition to a pension that I will have.

I received some feedback on my budget that I posted on the forms and on the other blog before I deleted those posts and moved everything here. This is helpful. I am going to take it all in and see where I can make changes and tweak things.

I wish I could get a part time job, but as an international individual on a work-visa, I can only legally work for the employer on my visa documentation, and no more than my current 40 hrs/week. Isn't it ironic that they won't let me work anywhere else, but they will let me gamble? Anyhow, that is behind me and I have not spent a penny on gambling since 7/1/2013. A very short while, I know. But I hope to keep it up.

Now for the scary news! After I received an encouraging comment about my employer's retirement scheme, I decided to log on and see how much I had. Now, I have never logged on before. I see on my pay stubs that they started paying in money to this account 6 months after I started working here, so I just assumed that it was collecting in the account at a rate of about $290/month. However, I could not log in or create an account. I called the number listed on the website, and they could not locate me in their system. I had a mini-freakout! Where was all that money going to, then?

This was at the end of the workday and I placed a call to the HR department, but the person I needed to talk to had gone for the day. I called again this morning, and she said that she could not understand it - they have been paying money into that account monthly. She referred me to another person in the Payroll department. I called her, and she said that she could not understand it either, but that she will look into it and get back to me tomorrow.

I feel slightly reassured because my employer's accountants say that they have been paying into retirement for me. They have records of it happening. I can't be mistaken, can I? Can it all just disappear like that? I hope not!