Bonus!

We got our bonus letters today, at last! This was for the year til end of 2007. I am sure some people will be disappointed but I am not grumbling. It was about half what it could have been, but it's a bonus!!! The re-org has been announced at work and will be in place by June and my thought had been if nothing is changing at work and the bonus comes and is ok then I might jump and just be away from work for a bit travelling. With the reorg announced and with the bonus being what it is, carry on working for now and see what happens from the re-org. It has the possibility of shaking things up quite a bit, or it has the possibility of making things a lot worse. We will see. It is change though and that's the thing that was needed most. Some change that may drive improvements. If nothing improves well... there will be time to still jump. I am not one to do these things in a fit of pissedoffness though. I said I would give it a chance if it had the capability for making things better, so they have a few months.

With that in mind it made the disposition of the bonus fairly easy. I rang up the ex and asked her about the holiday to Spain she is taking my boy to in October. I asked her how much his bit was and it comes to about 10% of what I'll be getting after tax, so I said I will pay for him to go. 10% was the kind of workable figure we work on for my child support for him. I know she would have been happy enough if I didn't give on any of it to her, for him, but to me it's kind of the principle of the thing. We agreed 10% of my income and if I start getting petty and feeling resentful of it it's going to screw me up inside. But, with the bonus, I want to make sure it goes to something he gets benefit from. Something he knows I've paid for for him so he gets to appreciate it. Last year I paid for the car insurance as most of her car use is taking him round places. This year its for his holiday. When we received the bonus letters it had a kind of "right feel" in my head. The rest, well. Two things. First, I will now send off for the divorce and pay the court fee's with that. Second, when we separated and bought my ex her house, the sale of the old house didn't cover the costs so half my savings went into it as well. At the time the boy's child maintenance account was being held in my savings (as it was offset against the mortgage, so it saved us a chunk on the repayments). I've never gotten round to repaying what we owed him into his account so the rest of the bonus will go into that. It doesn't quite cover it, but it's a fair chunk and I will feel better on it. Hey if I never really had it, then I won't miss it, so it seems the best time to do it!!