We Want To Be Debt Free!

Yeah for the bonus $

2010-03-19T16:25:00.001-07:00

Happy dance! Happy dance! My husband got the 3% bonus...this makes his 8th year in a row! I forgot about him getting his raise so that will make this bonus mean about $1600! DH has a assured me that every bit of this will hit our credit card. Yahoo!

Say a prayer!

2010-03-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, say a prayer! My husband's review is tomorrow. Every year he has worked with this particular company he has gotten a 3% bonus. That is the highest bonus they hand out. It means about $1500 after taxes for us if he gets this. I am soooo hoping he gets another 3% He will know tomorrow if he gets it..but we will not see the money for about 6-8 weeks. So say a prayer for him! This will help build our money to slam the credit card :) Well, it least that is what he said he would do with it. I hope he will do that along with our money over our $1000 ef fund. We will see!

Eat out day

2010-03-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote one of my goals this month was to only eat out one time. Well, we did that last night. I was not feeling well, exhausted from a full day of swimming with the kids at the Y. Our homeschool coop had a big swim party. I came home and just felt too beat to fix dinner. I should have prepared something ahead of tiime, but oh well. So my husband hit the road and picked us up some Chinese. I am still within our food budget and we get paid next week...so I don't feel too bad about it. I am thinking we will use our gift card for The Outback in April. I have some busy weekends ahead anyway.

Credit card bill makes me want to vomit!

2010-03-12T16:22:00.000-08:00

Just got our new and improved credit card bill in the mail. Ugh..I so want to throw-up! We paid nearly $56.00 in interest for one month! I am really hoping to point this out to my husband when he comes home. I sooooo want to put everything we have on this and end it ASAP! Our card raised our rates from 12 ish to 14.24%. I am thinking we should see if we can find a transfer deal that is a better interest rate. Not sure where to begin on that...but I can't imagine we can not find a better deal somewhere!

Income is up too!

2010-03-11T19:02:00.000-08:00

My husband called me from work today and was tickled to discover that his pay had raised by nearly $200 a paycheck....that is $400 month! He gets raises every so many years. We had not been paying attention to how the last few years have flown by and he was due for this. Needless to say..it put a little smile on my face today!

Savings is up!

2010-03-10T08:29:00.001-08:00

I updated my side bars..nice to see the car debts going down. One is now below 16,000 and one is below 10,000. Over all debt is now under $39,000. Nothing big, but small victories are nice to point out!

Our bill is not due yet for our credit card so we have just been pushing money into our savings account.

Today we are at $1,853.00 We go back and forth on what we will do. My husband is still hoping for a good bonus. The most he can get after taxes is about $1,500.00. His review for this is in about 2-3 weeks. After the review he will know the amount, but it takes another 6 weeks before we see it in a paycheck. In the meantime, he just wants to pile the money into savings. I guess he likes the thought of hitting the card with a giant payment at once. I guess it does not matter. Yes, we are paying some interest out, but not much and at the rate we are saving it may only be a few months before we can knock the whole debt out.

I am hoping when our credit card bill comes he will change his mind and slam any money we have over $1,000.00 onto the credit card. I guess we will see!

Only a week into March

2010-03-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

and I already blew one of the goals! Well, it was still a good buy though. We were offered 1/4 of a cow for $125. The cow was a Black Angus Cow and from a local farmer that my brother-law knows. We split the cow with some family members and dished out $125. So I doubt I will be sticking to my goal of only $500 this month on food:) I guess it is slightly possible....but that means I would have to spend only $250 for the next few weeks of March. I guess we will see :)

D's mother gave us some pork too..so perhaps I could stay under since I will need no hamburger, roast, pork, sausage, type meats. I have a whole stack of chicken that I just bought. So I guess...I may still possibly meet this challenge???? Only time will tell!

March Goals

2010-03-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

I have noticed a trend among pf bloggers of setting monthly goals. So I thought I would join in on the trend and set a few of my own. So here we go!

Get our credit card down to $3500..I really hope it will be even less than this..my goal is somewhat conservative.

Maintain our EF at $1,000

Stick to only spending $500 on food and clothing.

Eat out no more than 1 time (we receieved a gift $50 gift certificate to Outback steak house...so I forsee a date night this month :)

Those are really all the goals I can think of at the moment. Perhaps in the future I will shoot for more detailed ones. But for March, I plan to keep it sweet and simple :)

2010-02-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

I was inspired by Moneysaving Mom and decided to do a little freezer meal cooking day of my own. I accomplished quite a bit yesterday. We are not big casserole eaters, but I am always on the lookout for ways to make breakfast amd lunch meals ahead. So here are some of the things I made ahead.

Southwest Rollups--made about 40 of these. They freeze beautifully and are made with homemade refried beans, shredded cooked chicken or ground beef, salsa, and shredded cheese. My kids love'm

Pancakes--I made about 60 and froze about 6 to a baggie

Pizza sauce--I simply bought this in a large can from Sams club for like $3.00 and froze them in smaller portions. I use these for quick cal zones and pizza cracker lunches.

Packaged homemade brown sugar cinnamon granola packets.

May not look like much, but I really did not start making stuff till late on Sunday evening. Still, these will keep the temptation at bay to run to the store for expensive convenience foods or to Mcd's for lunch.

If you have any receipes to share to help spice up breakfast and lunches...feel free to share!

Almost done with Scouts!

2010-02-26T17:23:00.000-08:00

I love the benefits cub scouts and boys scouts give boys. For the past 7 years my husband and I both have been very involved with a local cub scout pack. Our second son crosses over tomorrow into Boy Scouts. This event takes place at a big event known as Blue & Gold. For many reasons (to many to go into) we are not enrolling our 3rd son in scouting. So this will be our last event as leaders. As much as I have enjoyed it..I am really burned out on it!

As the saying goes for churches...so it does for scouting.....10% of people do 90% of the work. I have been working all week on the table decorations and place settings for 35 people. Each den is responsible for setting the table for their den members. In our case, it is not just our den members and their families, but the boy scout troop they are joining. I have had to spend some money out of our pocket for this event. But I have worked hard to keep my costs way down. I even found free printable place cards online. I used my printer to make most of our table decorations. I had to buy some Styrofoam, snack cups (to hold mints/nuts), and we bought a large piece of wood to make plaques to hold career arrows. It looks like we spent around $40.00 on this event. We bought our dinner tickets over a month ago. So I am not counting that. Part of me hates being the one doing all the spending, but I am so ready to just be done with it. It least this is the last of it :) My husband did not want me to spend money out of my designated amount for our food/clothing expenses...so we took this money out of our slush fund. Still, I want to hold tight to as much money as possible to hit or credit card next month.

Oh well, no point ranting..tomorrow it will be overwith...the pressure of being den leaders will finally be lifted. If you have a child in any program and you are not in charge or running it. Please know that the work the other parents put into the program is alot! Show them you appreciate it..they will like hearing it:)

Selling Our Stroller

2010-02-26T11:35:00.000-08:00

We have a very nice Jeep Wrangler stroller that we purchased for our last son. He was the only baby in it so it is in very good shape. Plus, I hardly ever used it! Retail for this stroller ranges between $120-$159. I know these sell very well even used. We have decided to sell ours. Our 4th son is a ball of energy and does not like to be the "baby." He is all about being like his big brothers. He is not even 3 yet, but has been totally potty trained for about 2 months. He did this all on his own! Best potty trained baby I have had :)

We are definitely done with having babies (hubby took care of that one!) So, even though he is not quite 3 we think we are done with this stroller. Just the other day we went for a walk around our block and he refused to sit in the stroller. He made it too! I thought for sure he would beg me to carry him half way..but he did not. So I truly think we will not miss it. We still have a much easier to haul around umbrella stroller. I imagine that is the only thing I would want to take anywhere anyway.

Well, I am not sure what I should sell it for...I am think $60.00 would work and that I should post it on craigslist. It has all the bells and whistles..even a speaker system for an ipod. Again, I never even used that feature:) Two drink holders, plus a snack tray for the kid and toys to strap on. It is a pretty sweet stroller. Especially when compared to the one my other three kids were hauled around in. Whatever it sells for, the money will go to our next CC payment! Yeahooo!

State tax money here!

2010-02-25T11:22:00.000-08:00

Our state tax refund came in the mail today! Yipee. It is not very much but it does look like we have a shot at getting our CC down to $3,500 or less. Right now we have decided to just pile it into our savings since we just made a payment to them. We will then throw in the Ebay money and any extra we can into the savings over the next few paychecks. Then when the next bill comes in we hope to slam it with a big ol payment of $500 or more.

We have one more possiblity of some extra money. My husband gets evaluated at work soon and for the past 6 years he has gotten a 3% bonus which amounts to about $1,500 after taxes. I can't wait to report exactly what we pay and exactly the CC debt. I think it is slightly more than $4,000. We have not charged anything since before Christmas...but I know we have just been making minimum payments while building the EF. I am just biting my nails on this one... I am so anxious to get that puppy gone!

I have a few more earning money ideas up my sleave...but I will share them as they come :)

Staying on tasks

2010-02-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you...but I love having a set of tasks written out before me and seeing them checked off one by one. I have tried dayplanners for this purpose, however, it was cumbersome to carry them around and hang onto them. The ideal solution for having tasks laid out would be an iphone....but alas...there is no room in my budget for such a luxury:(

I have recently discovered a neat little program that is doing the trick perfectly for me. I am on my mini dell computer quite a bit throughout the day checking email, researching things for homeschool, checking the news, and just surfing the pf blogs. So it is ideal for me to use something on my computer. This program is a free shareware program called Desktop Reminder. This program is simple and easy to use. One simply downloads it and she is ready to go. I now just type in tasks that I wish to accomplish..along with the dates I hope to have them done by. The moment I turn on my computer it opens up immediately widely on my screen and the tasks list are staring at me in the face. The perfect reminder! I downloaded the program about a month ago and I love it! I also love the feeling of marking things as completed :)

Feeling accomplished is important to me as a homemaker. Most people take for granted that little satisfaction that get from a job where a task is completed or done and overwith.

This can be a challenge for a homemaker, because we all know that housework is never always done or completed. Yes, I may get one load of clothes washed, but there is another one right behind it:) Not to say that does not happen to those in a regular job. But you get what I mean. Housework can be such a thankless job.

I am now using this program to keep track of my goals for becoming debt free so I thought I would blog about it to you all:)

Battling Pessimism

2010-02-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

I realize achieving a debt free life seems impossible to many. At times, it seems impossible to me as well as my husband. But I simply don't want to hear that it is impossible! I want to be told "You can do this!"

I have a very close relative. She and her husband have lived on modest incomes their whole lives, but they have been very disciplined. The lived below their means, in a small house. Paid it off in less than 10 years. Tithe religiously to their church. They have a nice comfortable savings account. They have no debts. Yet, when I mention this as my goal..she at times can be pessimistic. She does not know my exact situation..but she just has this attitude that there is always something that comes up and takes it away. One can never truly get ahead seems to be her motto.

Despite the fact that they are currently debt free.......she still seems to feel when she gets rid of one thing..something else will come along and take it. Recently her gas bill lowered, but then her electric bill went up. I get what she means by the two steps forward....one step back, but a person like her should be patting themselves on the back. But she is not! I don't get it. She just seems to feel saving money is always a battle.

One one hand...I find her inspiring....on the other hand she makes it seem like life with money will always be a battle. I guess I don't care to hear that right now.

In away, it is personality issue more than anything. You know the saying...is your glass half empty or half full? I prefer to think I am half full.

Ebay You Rock!

2010-02-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

I just sold some junk...and I do mean junk. I can not believe what we made...$113! We sold some curriculum books for homeschooling and scout uniform stuff. Nothing especially pricey.......but it all sold and it all added up to over $113! Once we get it all shipped out and the paypal money squared away. I plan to transfer this into our next payment on the credit card. So get ready, the card is going down baby!

$1,000 or $2,000 EF?

2010-02-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

Most of us agree that $1000.00 Emergency fund seems low for true emergencies. I am tempted to save $2000.00 for our EF goal..just because I fear our washer and dryer may bite the dust this year. However, my husband can't stand the credit card. So I think we are simply going to make due with a $1000.00 goal until the $4,000 CC is gone.

With all the changes going on in the credit card world....I really fear ours changing. Our credit card is a MasterCard through our credit union. We have never had a fee and the interest rate is not huge, but not super low either. I think it is around 11 to 12%. So far we have received no letters stating they are raising the rates or charging us a carrying fee. But I fear the day they do! I am hoping since it is a credit union one that they won't do that. I also have a Kohls charge that I keep at 0 balance. I only use it cause you can get deals when you make purchase there. I have gotten 30% off deals. I never charge more than what I can immediately pay off with our cash clothes fund. But I will kick this card to the curb if they charge me a fee for having it. We also have a Kroger Card. It too has a 0 balance and we use it for gas now and then. But if I get a fee for having it...out she will go too!

Have any of you seen changes such as fees for your cards? What about store cards...like Kohls and Krogers?

Because of this fear...I am in agreement that we should try and get our CC gone and then build the EF up a little more. That way...if the fees come the cards can go!

10$ in ECBS!

2010-02-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

Totally stoked..I just qualified for a survey from CVS and earned $10 in ECBS! The last one I did for CVS I qualified for and earned only $5. I hope they keep sending me these. I don't think I have ever earned $10.00 for 10 minutes of work! Not a bad return in my mind :)

Baby Step 1!

2010-02-19T21:26:00.000-08:00

Ok..I had hoped to accomplished more...but one must stay in a positive mindset in this up hill climb! So we knocked out a few things. We paid down our family debt from 4500 to 3000 and we raised our EF from 700 to 1000. We still have state tax money coming and possibly some bonus money. We also are having to pay for our sons lost retainer. We are truly hoping our insurance will pay for this. I truly think we have the right to $3000 in orthodontics so I think these will be covered. If so...that money will go to our CC debt. Our hope is to knock down our credit card to around 2000 over the next few months. But at this moment it is still hovering around 4000. I would like to have an EF of 2,000, but my husband feels 1000 will be fine until the CC is gone. After the CC is gone we hope to raise it to 2000 and then tackle the student loan.

Right now...I just feel tickled to say Baby step one is done!

Ugh! Kids can reck a budget so easily!

2010-02-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

First off..I love my boys dearly, but boy can they put a wrench in one's budget quicker than a squirrel can run up a tree!

My 14 year old lost his retainer. Ugh! We have torn the house and cars upside down trying to find it. No luck. So we called the orthodontist. He has to have new molds made and they want payment up front. So next Monday I will have to pay $250 up front. They will bill our insurance and they may pay all or some, but it will be awhile before we get that money. We warned the boys that we would only pay one time for lost retainers. After that the buck falls to them! Our 11 year old lost his once and hasn't since...that was more than a year ago...so I think he learned his lesson. We should get our tax money tomorrow and we get paid on Monday. So after Monday I will post what we are able to do with our return. I do not expect much :(

Allowances

2010-02-17T17:40:00.000-08:00

I mentioned that I would talk more detailed about our kids allowances. We are big believers in giving kids money. I would much rather they learn mistakes with money now...when it is a small amount. Than to learn it later with much larger amounts.

If you are not giving your kids allowances...then I say consider it:) Use it as a teaching tool. When we first began this (nearly 4 years ago) it was hard for my husband to watch our kids burn through their allowance. To blow 10 bucks on junky pokemon cards. Or to waste it on buying some cheapo toy. I am not kidding when I say I had to hold him back from going ballistic a time or two when they made such decisions or worst....lost their money! But now he sees that I was right on this. That letting them make mistakes is hard...but a necessary step to lead to learning!

First, I will explain our rules about allowances. We pay for virtually nothing for our children. Not even gifts for their friends birthdays. We buy no movie tickets, to trips to Kings Island, no small church events...nothing..nada...zilcho! We think we are benefiting from this big time! They are responsible for all such expenses. The only exception has been paying for camps...boy scout camp or church camp. However, we do not provide spending money at such events. We buy minimal clothing...not their wants. Right now, I know some need shoes...I will pay for those...but one thinks he needs new shirts and I disagree. So if he wants them..he can pay for them. He has requested a pair of black jeans. He has none, so I may pay for those. We have encouraged them to save %10 always...but this is for unexpected events and they have learned to understand such advice. Still they have made many money mistakes.

Our older son once blew all of his savings on some playstation 2 game. I think he saved for a few months and bought Guitar hero. My husband encouraged him to wait one more payday...so he would not wipe out all his money. But he did not heed our advice and he blew all his money. The next day he was invited to the movies and he had no money. It truly hurt to not let him go. I think most parents would have gave in...but this is part of the learning process children need to go through. You see, we have another very important rule NO LOANS. I will admit...I wanted to give it to him...but I knew he needed to learn this now. As we all do!

This was a painful learning experience...but it has truly paid off. My son almost never goes below $10.00 bucks in his wallet. Unless it is a day or two before payday..he won't part with it. He learned from that experience...that is wise to always leave a little something in the wallet:() That is what I want him to learn!

My other son is very much a saver..he hates to have less than $100.00. Sometimes I am disgusted that he has more than I do! Now our two year old has quite a nice stash growing, but we do take money from his stash when he is begging for a toy cause his older brother bought some star wars action figure....etc. Currently our 7 year old has over $40.00 He recently spent $20 on a wii game. We encourage our kids to grab their wallets when we leave the house. The little ones give me theirs to carry..even our 2 yearold. When we return home they put them back in these wooden boxes that they keep special things in. Their uncle carved each of them a beautiful treasure chest box and they keep their money and special items in these boxes in their rooms.

I get that some people think this is absurd,but we have seen the benefits of teaching our children about money. I would much rather we let them make mistakes now with $20 than to grow to be a 20 year old and make mistakes with $1,000's.

I am thinking when our oldest hits 15 we may increase his to $25.00. But force $5.00of it to go to a checking or savings account. For his birthday this summer I would love to kick it off with $100.00. I would ask the grandparents to all contribute to it as well. We want to encourage him to start saving for his first car.

Well, what about you...do you give allowances...did you get one growing up..do you think we are wrong....right??? I love hearing from ya bloggy friends!

Our Line

2010-02-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share what an ordinary payday looks like for us. We have been using this same system for about 2 years so it seems like such a boring topic...but some out there may find it interesting and hey who knows....maybe even helpful

We got the term "Our Line" from the cash flow planning DVD by Dave Ramsey. There is a funny part in the video where he shares a conversation he had with a debt collector. The debt collector was doing his job of harassing him for money owed. He explained to the debt collector that he simply fell below the line....The line of their budget...the bottom line. The debt collector at first said "What, are you kidding." and Dave said...."Do I sound like I am kidding?" There was silence then the collector said quickly "Well, how do I get above the line?"

I found this amusing, but it did give us the idea of creating our line. Now this is not quite the same meaning. Dave believes in giving every dime a place to go. We are just not that detailed oriented. Perhaps if we were we would not be in debt again:) But despite racking up debt from our household renovations last year..this system truly works for us and did even while racking up our debt.

We decided on needed amounts of money for our family. I get $300 every two weeks. I am expected to purchase our groceries, household needed items, clothes, and anything else I wish out of this money. My husband gets $200 every two weeks. He takes care of misc stuff out of his....windshield wipers for the cars, items for our computers, his lunch (which is quite cheap..they have a cafeteria at his work and most of his lunches are under $2.00 total..he takes his drinks and snacks to work plus oatmeal) He also will pick up stamps or mail items we need to mail and if we are low on an object like milk he will stop and pick something like that up now and then.

Our children get strict allowances. We feel this has worked out really, really well! Most people looked shocked when they find out that ALL of our children get allowances...including our 2 year old. We feel we benefit from this more than people realize. Our 2 older boys get $20.00 every two weeks and our 7 year old gets $10 and our 2 year old gets $5.00. Now hear us out on this. We buy NOTHING for our children except birthday gifts and Christmas gifts. They also have forced savings amount. I provide minimal clothing. I may explain our allowances in a more detailed post later.

So we are taking out of the bank every payday exactly $555.00. We make sure there is it least $200.00 in our checking account. This amount is to cover our gas in our cars plus misc. things such as a copay at a Drs. office or the occasional surprise thing that pops up such tickets needed for some event at church. Or we have to pick up medicine and my money or my husband's money is nearly gone. So it is our catch it area. There is often money left over in our account from paycheck to paycheck and that is fine cause it gets rolled over in out debt repayment. This is an area we work to communicate on. We do not debit without discussing it unless absolutely necessary. The only exception is our gas...who likes to pay cash at the gas pump! Eeek...I know I don't.

So our line is $755. We make sure we have $755 in our account left when we do the bills. We pay the bills, we see that we have $1,035.00 left over. So after the necessary bills are paid that amount minus our 755 is what we have to either put in savings or pay on a debt. Then my husband withdraws $555 and bring this money home to divy out. Granted this is not the way most people would proceed with a budget. Perhaps we should be more detailed, but truthfully this what works for us. We are comfortable with this system. I truly spend less with cash. I am always counting the groceries out in my head as I walked through the store. I always make menus out before I shop. I buy just what we need and extras only when the needs are met.

I do have one envelope in my wallet. I call this my clothes/entertainment envelope. I try to put $50 of my $300 in every two weeks. I do my best to not spend this and to let it grow. Currently some of my kids need shoes so I am hoping to grow this to $100 next week and then to buy three of my kids pairs of shoes. I hope to find a buy one get one 1/2 off sale.

This system truly saves a lot of grief. We really don't have to have a budget meeting too often. My husband knows our line. So when he sits to pay the bills...this is what we both agree on. Bills get paid and sometimes there is money for savings or debt and sometimes weird bills pop up and take that money...such as Dr. bills or a serious need such as tires for our cars or some other necessary but large household expense. Lately we have paid the minimum on our one credit card and just worked on our savings. This has seemed slow growing, but I know it is all we can do unless we give up things that we have not felt like giving up. The year we paid off our credit cards before...we gave up cable tv, cell phones (we had prepaid only) and we had no gym memberships. I know we could do that all again...and who knows....my husband may want to do that all again. He truly hates having credit card debt. There is one more thing that may help us pay it down sooner...if he gets his bonus. Usually he gets about $1500 a year in bonus money. We do not usually see this till June. But that would certainly help!

Well, I hope this long post was helpful to some. There are ways besides extremely finite budgeting that can work..I truly feel ours is one of them.

Enjoying the family:)

2010-02-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

Valentines is a little low key for us. My husband bought me my favorite chick flick movie from a flea market...."You've Got Mail" I so love that movie...thank you honey! I picked up some simple valentine treats for the boys out of my grocery money and we took them to open swim time at the Y. For most of the afternoon we hung out there and simply had some good family time. Our 3rd son is currently taking swimming lessons at the Y so he was anxious to show us his stuff.

This is the first class or outside activity (other than church and homeschool coop) that our 3rd son has ever participated in. He truly needed peer pressure to learn to swim. He just will not let us teach us and he is 7. So I feel this is truly a necessary activity for safety reasons. Our older sons often go to free swim with their friends. Being members has really benefited us in those ways. There is simply not much to do around our small town in the hills of WV. But it was nice to treck out through the snow and go swimming.

To top of the evening....I made our favorite Chinese dish of sweet & sour chicken. Then my husband and I began working on ebay stuff. We have quite a few things to sell. I have some books that I would like to post on Half.com but I honestly am not sure how it works and the rules. Would love to figure the ins and outs from an outside source. Any ideas???

Recharging my spirits

2010-02-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

I think when people get on this trip of becoming debt free...we hit hills. By hills I mean we have our ups and downs on the journey. There are days I feel truly gazelle intense and I search the sofas for all the spare change I can find. Then other days I just feel like splurging and getting that extra latte drink.

Balance seems to be the key, but is tricky to hold onto! Things were feeling a little gloomy around here since our taxes were less and now we are likely canceling our vacation plans. When I get down like this I reach for inspiration. Things to keep me going. I love to check out youtube and see if there are anymore debt free screams. (If you are debtfree..make a video...I love to watch them!) I love watching videos of others saying they achieved the impossible. I also find myself surfing the financial blogs more and reading my Dave Ramsey books.

Last night....I popped in the Cash Flow Planning Dave Ramsey DVD that we happen to own. It is the only Dave Ramsey video I have, but I love it :) I would love to see the rest of them. I love his humor and intensity for achieving the lifestyle of "Living like no one else!"

We are not at the point of truly living like no one else..so we can live like no one else. We have cell phones, cable tv, kids in Kung Fu lessons, and even a membership at the Y. Part of me would love to truly crunch the numbers and see how debt free we could be if we got rid of all those things for a short period of say a year to a year and half. Work the extra jobs and really, really, really buckle it all down. Where would we be in a year and half. Would it be worth such a sacrifice? Hmmmmm something to ponder.

I just thought I would share with you some ways I recharge my spirit when it comes to defeating our debt. What about you? What do you do to keep you and your family going?

Canceling our vacation

2010-02-13T10:59:00.001-08:00

Well, our sale fell through and it looks like we are going to be stuck with more credit card debt than we hoped. My husband thinks we should scratch the reunion vacation. My parents purchased us one night at the hotel for this summer...last summer. Then they told us about it at Christmas time that it was our Christmas gift from them.

My husband feels "Gatlinburged out" as he puts it. We have just been there so many times that he is kind of sick of it. Now with money tighter..her really feels we should just skip it and take the kids on a day trip to something closer. He is checking today to find out if we cancel it if they can get their money back. I feel bad on one hand about canceling this trip, but it does lift a huge wait off of us and that feels good.

If we scratch this trip it will help us in getting out of credit card debt faster. We are also thinking of changing our with holdings. We honestly let the govt. hold onto too much of our money.

I am not sure how my family will feel if we cancel the trip. My oldest son feels like my husband about going to Gatlinburg. So I don't think the boys really care if we go or not. I will keep you posted!

I sooo want an Iphone!

2010-02-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

I have been getting so many emails lately from fellow homeschooling mommies and they all say "sent from iphone" Right now we spend around 70 bucks for our two phones (my husband has an unlimited data plan on his for work purposes) I think the iphone plan would nearly double what we currently pay.

So I know it is not in the cards right now, but boy am I jealous at times. I love the thought of sending emails, having the apps and all the other cool little techy features in the palm of my hand. The little green bug of envy is biting me!

Snow much fun!

2010-02-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

Our afternoon would have been spent at our local homeschool coop, however, snow came our way and it was canceled. Our afternoon was free to tackle a project so I chose to get started on our homemade valentine cards. I searched the web and found a few ideas I liked and we went with it!

I went grocery shopping Monday night and picked up (out of my grocery money) $3.00 worth of gum and made these cute little guys with my kiddos.

Ours were a little different. I have a cricut machine so I had it cut out 100 hearts and 100 question marks. I taped the gum together with the question marks sticking out of the top...as antenna. This is cheaper than the suggested purchase of twizzler candy. You could use pipe cleaner if you had that, but I did not :( I then just taped my hearts on and my kids drew smiley faces on the gum. We were given some stickers from my mom so those were used as well, but cost me nothing. So for the price of gum $3.00 we made 50 valentines. We are attending a homeschool valentine party this Friday and there will be a lot of kiddos there!

Quicken?

2010-02-08T09:20:00.000-08:00

I am married to a big time techy dude. He works and breaths computer lingo. Our house is completely networked...we have over 8 computers all linked to a mainframe in our house. Every television is hooked into our computer system and people are amazed that our 7 year old knows how to flip the computer on and scroll through our files to get our movies up and running on any television.

I, of course, love this! However, he is sometimes very set in his ways about things. New computer programs or operating systems have to be pretty good before he will change to them. Quicken is one of them.

Now first...despite our lack of great work in the financial department of our lives...he is honestly awesome at keeping our accounts square. He loves to balance the checking to the penny and he checks them online daily. He has always used quicken and he does it quite well. I personally stink at it and really fear if he should ever die on me....I would be totally lost at keeping it straight.

Well, to my point! I realized as we were doing our bills last night that we have been using the same quicken for it least the past 8 years. So I asked him what version of quicken we have...it is 98. I have a feeling that is quite old. I have a feeling a lot of changes have likely happened...perhaps some good ones! Ones that might make quicken more user friendly to myself! So, do any of you out there use quicken? If so, are you on a newer version than us....can you compare them????

Now, don't bother trying to convince me to switch away from quicken...I seriously doubt I could persuade him to leave it:) But I am thinking he might consider an upgrade. What do you think?

Savings up by $100

2010-02-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Ok, it is not as a big of step as I would like...but it is up :) We now have exactly $700 in savings. We may have come up with a way to pay our credit card off. We have a few big ticket items that we may have sold. We will know in a few weeks. If so...we should be able to hit our goal of $1000 in savings and our credit card gone when the money is combined with our taxes! Our tax money is due for deposit on February 19th. So keep your fingers crossed! I know I am!

Taxes filed

2010-02-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

Our taxes were completed and efiled. But the news is depressing. We will not be getting back as much as we had hoped. This will mean a lot of changes in our goals. Payday is this coming Monday. I am hoping my husband and I can sit and crunch some numbers, write up some budget goals and see what we will be able to achieve. It does not look like it will be enough to pay off our credit card like we had hoped. This is going to make for a tight year and we are going to have to crunch some numbers, sell some goods, pray for overtime and bonuses to come through.

On the upside....we close on our refinance tomorrow (if the blizzard heading our way does not interfere with the lawyer making it to our house!) Our interest rates lowered and we will be looking at a smaller mortgage payment and a smaller amount of time. We will also get one month with no mortgage payment. So that will help in some ways on our savings and payment goals. I also have been having no trouble sticking to our food and personal budgets. Feeling in control of something feels good. With sticking to our personal budgets, selling a few things on ebay, having a yardsale, and one month off from a mortgage payment....who knows perhaps our goals will be achievable.

I just really hope we can find time to sit and do this.....put the budget to paper kind of time. That is always such a struggle. By the time the kiddos are in bed and it is peaceful enough in our home to discuss such issues..I am too wiped out to do it! Well...keep watching and hopefully we will be posting soon some concrete goals and budgets :)

Made it! Sort of :)

2010-01-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

Well, technically we made it through the weekend without touching our food budget for eating out. But we did eat out. This weekend was my birthday and my husbands too! We are born just one day apart...plus a few years :) My husband's brother and his wife surprised us by showing up on Saturday and whisking the kids away to their house for a two night stay. Plus, my parents gave us a gift card to Applebees! Needless to say, with the kids gone and an Applebees gift card in hand...we went out!

My jubilation came to an end the next day. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. with a runny nose. A severe head cold made its presence known to me through out the day. I am still fighting it today. I feel I have been in a fog for the past three days. I am getting quite sick of chicken noodles soup :( So on Sunday, my husband piddled around finishing up some unfinished house projects while I was sacked out in our bed. Such a bummer to have no energy and to be sick when my kids were away. But it was also nice to not have to deal with them on top of being sick.

I finally drug myself out shopping yesterday. The kids have been plowing their way through the food I bought already. Still, I am quite proud that we made it through without busting my food budget :)

Still Dining In!

2010-01-22T07:09:00.000-08:00

My cupboards are nearly bare, but my food budget is gone. So I am trying my best to make it through to Monday (our payday). However, I must brag on the family. They have all been such troopers!

My 5th grade son has been very inspirational. The other night (Wednesday) he was so encouraging for us to just have left overs...as was my husband. He is my tightwad child. He hates to part with his money and he knows I am trying to stick to a budget of $250 every two weeks.

We did not have enough of any one dish...so we had a variety of meals that were pieced together by kids preferences. Spaghetti for the little ones and barbecue chicken for the olders. Side dishes were varied. I was really surprised that my husband was insistent on "making do" He is usually the first to say..."Lets just eat out!"

I have told him that I need him to be strong on this point..so I am proud to say he kept us grounded on staying in to eat something.

Thursdays we eat at the grandparents house and we always have tons of leftovers for Friday. So tonight we will be eating left over beef stew. I have stuff to make Swedish meatballs and a steak and potato dinner this weekend as well. So we should make it through the weekend!

It is so nice when your family members are supportive of your goals. We could have ate out. We do technically have money to do so. But I told my husband last month that I need him to really inspire me to stick to the budget of food and eating out. When he caves...I easily cave! I think he got the message and he was totally inspiring and encouraging on finding something for us to eat that night when I was so tempted to eat out!

So my message today....be supportive of one another...it helps!

More good news!

2010-01-20T16:09:00.000-08:00

We got a call from our bank today..the one we are refinancing our house through. I assumed he was calling to set up the closing date. Supposedly that will happen sometime next week. But what was really good to hear was that our interest rate dropped another 1/2%! Our mortgage payment (which includes taxes and insurance) will go from 1,180to 1,030! As well as from a 30 year to a 15 year! I am totally stoked about that! Prior to this percentage drop..we were looking at it being about $15.00 more than we were paying. We simply felt that was worth it considering we were going from 30 to 15 yrs. Well, actually it is more like 11 years because we pay bi-weekly. I feel the sun shining today!

My gas bill is lowering!

2010-01-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

Just a tidbit of good news. Just got my gas bill. We are on the budget program and the bill I just recieved says that our budget has been reviewed and it will change with the next one. It will go from $108 to get this.......$44! I can not believe my budget will be just $44.00! Needless to say I am doing the happy dance :)

Crunching the numbers

2010-01-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

Tax season is upon us! We are one of those stupid people who let the government hold more than they should. So for us tax season is a good thing. We look forward to getting our stuff filed asap and getting our money back. This year we figure we will get back just enough to cover our credit card debt. I imagine we will have our money in hand no later than April 1. We almost always get our returns in mid March.

So here are the goals we have set.

We stand at just 600 in our savings. Between now and April I imagine we will have no trouble getting this number to $1000. That means that on April 1 we should have our credit card debt gone and $1000 in emergency savings.

Our goal between April 1 and the end of June will be to save up $2000 for our vacation. We go on a family reunion trip each year to Gatlinburg TN. We usually visit the aquarium, play golf, visit a few shops, and visit a few kiddie car rides. This year we have decided to skip all that and spend one day in Dollywood. We stay in the some hotel as our whole family. We have a really nice family suite already booked and one night even paid for. This suite has 2 full bathrooms, a king size bed and two queens, two balconies and a full kitchen. It runs around $300 a night. So we will be spending around 600 just for the rooms (it is a three night stay. We will spend a couple hundred on gas and just money for food down and back. I am not quite sure how much dollywood will cost, but I am guessing around $250-$300 for 6 of us. The rest of the budget is cushion money. Our kids have allowances all year long and they are required to bring their own money for their little souvenirs. So I think $2000 will cover it.

You might wonder about that part....food only down and back? Well, I have a cool family deal here. My grandparents have 7 children. Those children have spouses and children...and most of those children now have children. Needless to say, we practically take over the hotel we stay in for that weekend. There are between 60-70 of us at this reunion. As a gift to all of us booking this particular hotel they give us this giant kitchen and dining room area for the weekend. It is sort of a conference room with a kitchen. So my mom and all her sisters make out a menu and hit the grocery store the first night we arrive. We usually buy about $400 worth of groceries and split it among the families. Our portion is usually around $30! For 6 people, 3 dinners, 2 breakfasts, and 3 lunches...that is a steal! We have huge dinners cooked every night and we all eat in the conference room. Breakfast and lunch items are available as well...but it is a come in and fix yourself kind of thing. So our dinners are together, but we go run around Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge areas at our own discretion.

Well, back to the numbers. In order to have the 2000 saved we now know we will need to set aside close to $350 a month. We do plan to have a yard sale in May and that will help. But I do think that barring no major catastrophes..this is doable for us.

After our vacation, we will set aside a little more money for some school supplies and a Christmas fund.

I am truly hoping to not charge a dime between now and next spring. Then our van should be paid off and we will have a real shot at paying off my student loan. Oh happy day that will be!

Well, those are the numbers for us. Many may think we should not even be going on vacation. But this was booked by my mother for us as a early Christmas gift. Last year we were there and she surprised us for paying for this years room for a night. We have been doing our reunions every year for about 10 years and we have done them in Gatlinburg for the past 4. It just seems to fit everyone perfectly. The older people enjoy the shopping, Dixie stampede, comedy barn and sight seeing. The younger kids enjoy the rides, miniature golf, whitewater rafting, etc. So it fits everyone for an enjoyable vacation.

The one thing we are determined to not do...is to charge this vacation. So the goals are set! Wish me luck!

Dining in is fun to do!

2010-01-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

Nothing much to report, we just did our bills and we have no credit payments with this paycheck. They all occur at the end of the month. We just added a little to savings and are striving to stay within our personal spending allotments.

On one good note, I have not ate out any for nearly 2 weeks. We were given $75 in gift cards for Red Lobster for Christmas. However, we decided to splurge it on our whole family as opposed to just my husband and I. January 2nd was a Saturday and we knew we would be starting up school again on the following Monday. So we took the kids out and spent right around $100. I took the over amount out of my allotment of $250 for two weeks. The kids really enjoyed it. It was an awesome night out and they were all perfect gentlemen. I really love it when they behave...especially in public! So I decided to challenge myself and see how long I can stay away from eating out...and so far so good! Of course, being snowed in the last few weeks has helped too!

Eating from the pantry challenge

2010-01-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

Money Saving Mom is doing a pantry challenge for the month of January. I am not in on this challenge, but I do feel inspired by it to simply use up some of our stuff. I am hoping to add more money to dour savings by slimming down the food budget. Our food budget is pretty tight..so this is a challenge for us. I only spend between 100-125 a week for a family of 6...with one of those being a 14 year old you can see what I mean by challenge.

Here is a list of some of the things we do to keep our budget low for food. This is not rocket science, but I think some people do not realize how doing some of these simple things can add up to large savings.

1--We drink only 4 things...lots of milk, water, tea, and a minor amount of 100% juice products. Of these 4 things...we drink water mostly and it is from our filtered fridge..not bottled.
We do not drink coffee or soda...those items can really bite your budget!

2. I buy very little if any packaged food products. I do buy boxed pasta and some basic canned goods. But I don't buy things like Hamburger helper, frozen dinner pkgs, cake mixes, or packgaged cookies. Besides the fact that most packaged things are unhealthy...they are also expensive when it comes to trying to feed a family of 6 with them.

3. I do buy off brand items most of the time. There are a few exceptions...I prefer crest toothpaste but will deal with Colgate. I prefer Jif Peanut butter, but usually buy the larger off brands anyway. Other than those...if there is an off brand available for a better price..I get it.

4. I buy off brand large items from Sams.
I recently got some dish dtg....here it is pictured. This will hopefully last us 6 months or more. To inspire me to make it last longer...I write the dates on the pkg. I also buy laundry dtg. off brand from Sams. Our last purchase of laundry dtg was in October....my bucket still has likely two more weeks of dtg in it and the large container cost under $10.00.

Well, those are some of the things I do to save a buck on groceries...perhaps I will post more later :) So what are some of the things you do?

Sprucing up my coupon box!

2010-01-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

The holidays came and went....and my coupon box sat. I just did not have time over the past month to get this puppy put to use. I bought more in bulk at Sams and less at the grocery store. Today I had some time on my hand so check it out :)

The before shot...my pile to cut and box to clean out!

AFTER I purged and refiled! You will notice...it is a tool box..that was my husband's ingenious idea. I love having it securely closed and a handle. My old shoebox was always close to being dumped out. (The pink card is hiding my name and number)

Wooh...glad that is done...now just keeping my fingers crossed for some good deals this coming week.

Don't forget...the small stuff can add up!

Cleaning House

2010-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

I am a minimalist at heart, but honestly having 4 kids makes living as a true minimalist quite difficult. I do strive for this...I am constantly giving things away, having yardsales, and minimizing packaging. So I decided my blog should represent that side of me...so I just the basic minimal one...with an earthy tone. I do like tans and beiges. My house is mostly tan with pops of red...my other favorite color :)

I also plan to update our profile...cause being debt free by spring 2010 is not going to happen. I have not really crunched the numbers, but it is quite possible by spring of 2011. With the exception of the new truck my husband purchased this past fall...well...new to us! My van should be paid for by then, I should be able to pay my student loan off by then with our tax money. Barring no major catostrophes occure and NO REMODELING! Will see! I will definately be credit card debt free this spring....I think the goal will be to not get back into credit card debt..ughhhhh that seems to be the true challenge!

Hurry up Bank People!

2010-01-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

We applied for a refi with our mortgage company. We are changing from a 30 year mortgage to a 15 year. We are also lowering out interst rate by nearly 2%. We applied for this refi back in the beginning of October! Still waiting on the final paperwork. It is frustrating to wait this long. My husband phoned yesterday and they said we are now in phase 2 of 4 phases. They warned us it could be a 90 day delay due to the overwhelming amount of people trying to take advantage of the lower rates, but this just feels ridculously slow...especially since it is a straightforward refi. We are already customers with this mortgage company. They take our mortgage payment out of our paycheck every two weeks and we have been with them for over 7 years and have never missed a payment. We are not asking for more money than we simply owe therefore there is no appraisal required.

Ughhhh.....I just want it overwith and done. But of course, they are really in no rush...I mean they lose money right!

Cute envelopes!

2010-01-05T07:50:00.001-08:00

Who says budgeting can't be cute and fun! Check out these envelopes.

I personally do not do the envelope system. My husband and I each have an allowance. My amount covers the groceries, misc needed household things, and any extras I desire....such as a new book or makeup. My husband's allowance is his food money and misc. splurge money. His is quite small but he feels it is enough. Anyway, I just keep that set amount of cash in my wallet and when it is gone it is gone. We both feel debiting gas is more convenient than paying cash for gas in our cars. Other that that we do not debit anything.

Still, if I did do envelopes..those babies are cute!

2010 Goals!

2010-01-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

Putting these out there is scary, but necessary! Last spring we became credit card debt free.....but a few months later we were back in debt. I have stated in previous posts that remodling did this to us. It seems to be our curse. Or perhaps, my curse. I love remodeling our house. I know that if I would quit with the remodeling then credit card debt would not occur. I am not a big clothes shopper, I am not one to put little things on a credit card, and I am not addicted to internet shopping. I am addicted to remodeling.

So, my husband and I have vowed to not lift a finger in remodeling, painting, anything for an entire year. The only exception would be an emergency fix...like our sink leaking and damaging our floor, etc. We are getting some Lowes gift cards from my mom for our upcoming birthdays and we have decided to use that money to fix some minor things...trim in our kitchen and our bathroom, repair a door knob, and replace a ceiling fan that is broken.

We really should be debt free of credit cards again this spring, but we have a few events coming up that we know we must save for....so here are the goals written down

1) Pay off our credit card

2) SAVE $4000 by this summer for the following reasons
Emergancy savings of $1000 (we have only $600)
Vacation savings--$1500
Homeschool supply savings $1500

3) Attempt no remodeling!

4) With the exception of our traveling on our vacation trip..I will vow to not eat out more than once a month

5) Workout more on my treadmill...I try to do this it least 3 times a week.

6) After our vacation and after school supplies are purchased I hope to save another $1000 for Christmas while growing the emergency savings to $2000. This is a hefty goal. My husband did get a little raise for inflation and we lowered our premiums on our healthcare. He is now making nearly $82,000 a year. It will be sad if we can not manage to save it least $3000 by the end of the year :(

Well, that is it. I will try and post more and keep this blog updated on progress. I have to say though...that we are truly doing well with our cash budget. I have been keeping our food budget to $100 a week and my husband has been working hard at spending less too. I think the eating out will be a toughy! Wish us luck!

Credit Card limits lowerd again!

2009-12-13T12:35:00.001-08:00

So disgusted with our Kroger credit card company. My husband thinks I am crazy to let this bug me, but it truly does. I know we don't plan to use our credit cards, but it still is insulting for my limits to be lowered.

Yesterday, I got a letter in the mail from Krogers. They lowered our limit from I believe it was close to 6000 to 2700. We currently have a CREDIT of $30.00 with them. My husband accidentally overpaid them. We keep wondering if they will pay us interest?? I am not holding my breath!

This year alone, I have charged around $3000 with our Kroger card. We have paid it off and we have at times paid interest charges. So I was sort of shocked to get this letter lowering my credit. This is the 2nd card, of the 4 we have that has done this to us. It just seems insulting. I also think it lowers our credit score. Which really irritates me cause we are in the middle of a refinance. My husband assures me and so did the mortgage company that our loan is already secured based on when they we applied.

Still this angers me. I mean our tax dollars have bailed out these banks big time yet I still feel us regular good paying customers are the ones being screwed over by them.

My husband keeps saying that I am taking this too personal and the bank holding the card is just punching in numbers and looking at numbers. Then he adds..."Who cares! We are not using this card ever again anyway!"

So, am I alone in this...does it bug you when this happens to you?

Good News and Bad News

2009-11-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

I finally found some time to sit with my husband and crunch the numbers. We discovered some good things and some bad things. Here they are in a nutshell...lets go with the good first :)

SAVINGS---We have $1060 in our savings right now.

CHRISTMAS- We have budgeted about 750 and have already spent 300...so we have 450 left in our Christmas allocated money.

REFINANCE- We are in the process of refinancing our home. We will go from a 28 year mortgage to a 15 year mortgage...actually since we have ours taken out every two weeks it is an 11 year mortgage. This will cost us about $30 more a month than what we are paying now. When the process is complete we will have one month free of a mortgage payment. That will be a little over $1000 extra. We might leave this in the account to take care of the $30 extra a month we will need to pay out. Or we could put this on our credit card debt....not sure yet what we will do?

OPEN SEASON CHANGES- We discovered that we could save about 1/2 of what we were paying for health insurance. We are switching to one that cost us less and has no deductible. Our old insurance had a $250 person deductible...being a family of 6 this always killed us. Since we are all healthy most of the time...we get stuck paying for everything. My kids would go for their check ups...or one time visit and we would have to pay the whole thing..cause we had not hit our deductible plus the co pays. Even though they would never see the doc again or have any other issues. This insurance requires us to use certain doctors and pay $30 copay per doctor visit. Our family doctor is in the plan so I don't for see that to be a big issue for us. I believe this will put about $200 a month more into my husbands paycheck and I no longer have to stress about paying $1500 dollar deductible each year!

Now for the bad news :(

DEBT: We discovered we owe a little more on our credit card debt than we thought. We owe exactly $4000 after paying our bills. We stuck $1000 on the debt to bring it down..it was at $5000. We could put our savings money on it, but I would rather have the $1000 in an emergancy account. We do plan to utilize skip pay at Christmas time with our credit union...this will give us an extra $700 dollars in December. We plan to apply that to our credit card debt.

So our new goal is to be down to $3000 credit card debt by January and to maintain $1000 in our emergency fund. I might push for $2500. Hmmmmm I am thinking...what else could I sell??

The simple things add up

2009-11-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

As a simple homemaker and homeschooling mom to 4 boys, I am limited on what I can do to help us pay off our debts. It is not feasible for me to work a job outside the home when my husband can snatch overtime and make 10 times what I would make working. But still their are ways as a wife I can contribute. The most beneifical way I have found to help the family budget is in the kitchen. This week I worked extra hard at making the most of our food budget. I stocked our freezer by doing a baking day this past Tuesday.

I managed to make 3 casserole dishes, southwestern rollups, 5 batches of pizza dough, and 2 pkgs of cookie dough. I try to spend 2, 3 days a month doing intensive cooking. This not only saves me time and energy in the kitchen..it saves us a bundle of money too! I am not as tempted to eat out when I know coming home from church that southwestern rollups or pizza is ready to go.

I am hoping to make a few more meals tomorrow and I am currently under budget by nearly $60 for our food this week. With my freezer full of meals I hopeI won't need to spend that extra $60!

Scary Mail

2009-10-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

Kind of disgusted today. Opened our scary mail to discover our new Visa card from our Credit Union. They mailed us a letter about a month ago saying that our credit union card was switching over from a MasterCard to a Visa and our interest rate was going up from 13.99 to 14.99.

Did we do something wrong? Have we ever gone over our limit? Have we ever made a late payment? NO, NO and NO! So why do they do this...ugh it frustrates me that our government gave these gut sucking companies extra time before the new credit card laws take effect. I knew when they handed out that 6 month grace period these companies would screw everyone over that they could. Are they picking on the people who screw them over? No, they pick on their good customers. The ones who actually make their payments and make them on time. I mean come on! I have heard all the news of the new fees coming our way. You know, the ridiculous ones..such as fees for not using your cards. My husband said this will be our last card. The fees are becoming to scary to keep track of. We are determined that we will be paying it off and building our savings to a decent amount like $10,000. Then cut the puppy up.

I am tempted to apply for a introductory 0% card. Just to transfer this over. Do you think that would be worth it?

P.S. Happy Halloween...we are trick or treating in costumes from our stash...no money spent on this holiday...except for a bag of candy for the treaters. Hope yours is spoookilish!

Budgeting for Christmas

2009-10-30T18:51:00.001-07:00

Our house has been full of sick kiddos and a sick momma this week. Needless to say, not much can be accomplished when mom is under the weather too. However, Christmas has been on our minds. I got a few items earlier this summer for the parents so I don't think I will be spending the full amount I have budgeted for them.

Here is a run down of our budget for our family.
DS14 $150.00
DS11 $150.00
DS6 $100.00
DS2 $75.00
Parents $50 X 3 = $150
Brother1= 25
brother 2 =35
Sister-n-law= $35
1 niece= $25.00
Cushion of $5.00

total= $750

We might do some Christmas shopping next week. I have a $10.00 off $100.00 purchase from ToysRus. My two little ones have requested items that are around 50 a piece. Our youngest wants a Fisherprice Castle and our 3rd son wants some giant star wars thing that has wheels. We usually buy our kids just one nice big item and then fill in with 2-3 small items. These would be their one big gift. I am afraid that if we wait too long the items will be sold out. So I might do that next week when they are both 20% off plus use the coupon. We will see how the numbers play out when we do bills before I decide. I am a person who likes to get her Christmas shopping done early and in stages.

Our older children are very involved in Martial Arts. This year they are requesting quite a few things from a Martial Arts magazine they get in their class. Things like gloves, kicking bags, staffs, etc. However, my sons Sifu (teacher) said the magazine offers a discount on Black Friday. So I may be shopping that day online for them.

I am thinking we will save for our emergency fund and fund Christmas by splitting our overages in half until our Christmas fund hits $750. It could work like this...lets say I have 300 left over after bills and expenses. I will put $150 in our savings and $150 in our Christmas envelope. I will write on the Christmas envelope $150. If there are items I purchase during the next week or so for Christmas I will pull it out of the envelope. However, I will stop putting money in that envelope once the numbers written on it have reached 750..not when it is necessarily holding $750. That way I can be shopping for the sales and best deals for the kids. Last year I waited till I had it all saved and found myself scrambling to get a hold of the one or two special things they really wanted. Since my kids don't get a ton of toys I like them to it least get one or two they really wanted.

So what about you?? Are you planning your Christmas list yet? How did you budget for it? Do I look to be spending too much or too little in your opinion?

Selling gold

2009-10-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have some gold jewelry. Mostly rings with some precious stones in them and a gold bracelet. I never wear any of these. They are not precious heirlooms..and I have all boys anyway. So I am tempted to sell them..but not sure how? Should I go to pawnshops or use those mailers you see on TV, or maybe Ebay them? Those mailers look too good to be true. I keep hearing that gold is way up and now is the time to sell. What do you think? I don't imagine I would get much for these things. Maybe $50-$100 at most. Just now sure which way to sell is the safest and where I might get the best amount of money.

Ray of Sunshine

2009-10-27T12:37:00.001-07:00

Despite our nasty plunge into credit card debt and wiping out our savings...we do have some good financial news!

We have decided to refinance our house. We will be going from a 28 year mortgage to a 13 year mortgage! It is a streamlined refi with no appraisal necessary. We lowered our interest rate by nearly 2 points and shrunk our time in debt with our house. I say it will be a 13 years because we have always had our mortgage deducted from our paycheck which comes every 2 weeks. If you are not already doing that you should! That extra paycheck or two really adds up. By doing this refi we will save roughly $190,000.00! Who doesn't like that number!

Our mortgage will go up around $25.00 a paycheck, but that is worth it to us. We will get one month off of not paying our mortgage when this transitions over and we have chosen to leave that money in the bank. Thus...the one month off will easily negate that extra $25.00 payment for a year or more.

My husband was so excited when the numbers came in..he was jumping for joy at the thought of being debt free of our mortgage in as little as 13 years. This has truly motivated us.

Now we are thinking of other possibilities...like really becoming debt free. Our van will be paid off in just one more year. If we start snowballing...who knows perhaps we could get rid of the student loans, car payments, credit card and our house in like 9 years! That would be awesome. You might be thinking I am dreaming and maybe I am ...but who doesn't like to dream big!

Numbers

2009-10-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

I really, really, really hate posting this, but this is what people read debt blogs to see! I know you want to see how far off that horse we fell, but I truly do hate posting. Here goes nothing!

Credit Card Debt 2,300.00
Family debt 4,500.00
Student loan 6,653.00
Car 1 10,826.00
Car 2 16,145.00
Total debt: $40,424.00

Savings....a whopping $300.00

I will update my side bars stuff soon.

So you might be wondering what our goals are. Right now we are determined to work on baby step 1 and get our savings up. My husband recently switched to a different department at his job that offers more overtime. So hopefully that will help in building up our savings. We have some things we are trying to sell as well. Other than that we are just socking it away paycheck to paycheck. We really hope we can get to $2000.00 before Christmas. Then we will use some of this for Christmas expenses. Our tax return next year will take care of the debt just like it did last year, and the year before that and the year before that.....do you see the cycle???

I wonder if anyone else gets into this cycle...debt, tax return, debt, tax return??

So there you have it. Our ugly mounting debt staring us in the face. There are a few things that are looking up for us....and I will share that in a later post....stay tuned!

Were Back :(

2009-10-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I hate to say I am back to this blog. But I know posting stuff last year at this time truly helped us to achieve our goal of being debt free with our credit cards. Around May of last spring we finally paid off all our credit cards. We were debt free of credit cards, but not completely debt free. We had about $3000 in our savings account. Then we got stupid again. I got the itch to do some "light" remodeling, my husband said "We should take that small vacation with the family."

We traded in our car and purchased a used truck. This was totally unnecessary and totally a want of my husbands not a need. Our payment stayed the same but the time we will owe is now longer. Our mini home improvement hit snags as they always do. What we thought we be just a few thouseand dollars went way more than that. Our budget for homeschool supplies went over by about $400.

Needless to say, by midsummer our savings was gone and we were using our credit cards on the house project. We decided to add a bedroom in our basement and to finish our basement. Our four boys have been two to a room and the rooms are not big. Our two oldest were constantly fighting. So, yes these technically unnecessary thing put us back in debt. But honestly the peace of having those two in their own bedrooms has been worth every penny!

Then we added a deck onto our house...another $2000 project that was not truly necessary.

Then murphy showed up. Our airconditioning unit (which was only one month beyond it's warranty) had a bad part that cost nearly $1000 to fix. Our dishwasher then broke. That was another $500 down the drain.

Ok, we fell. We fell off the horse big time! But I feel the need to get back on the horse and show the world we can do this. I need to show myself we can do this.

Please join in motivating us :)

Not wasting my time with Half.com/amazon.

2009-03-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks for everyones tips on where to sell stuff without paying fees. However, most of my books are only going for $1.00 or less. I don't feel it is worth my time. Besides, it could be months before they are sold and we need to get this stuff out of our house. I have some curriculum stuff that I will sell when the boys are finished, but most of it will just go to our upcoming yard sale. We are planning to have a huge neighborhood sale in May. I honestly can't wait for this sale! I hate clutter and my corner in my basement houseing yard sale stuff is nothing but clutter!

On another note. I am happy to report that our first project in our basement is complete. We built a network closet. It houses our main household computer, battery back up, and office files. We dry-walled, painted, put up shelves, put in a zillion outlets (all hooked up to a special battery to handle a possible surge), and put down armstrong stick tile flooring. We still need to put up a ceiling, but we will wait until the other rooms are completed to allow for easier access to the wires. I took video, but I plan to show that at the end. A simple before before and after video.

The best part is---we have done all of this without using any credt cards! We are still credit card free! I am really proud of this little fact! We are really pacing out the projects and using our cash flow to pay for it.

Last night was another terrible night with kids waking up other kids...all this does is confirm how helpful kids having their own rooms will be! I really can't wait!

Best way to sell your stuff????

2009-03-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of stuff we need to start selling. We especially have a lot of books. Curriculum books and computer books....things people buy usually buy. I was wondering if anyone knows where I should sell them. Amazon, Ebay, or some other place. I don't care to pay fees unless they sell....does anyone do that? I recall there being someplace that one could sell books on and the only had to pay a fee if the item sold...but I can't remember what it was. Perhaps I imagining it?? If anyone knows, please share! Thanks!

Stocking the freezer

2009-03-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

I have a personal goal to stick to my budget on food, but also to stock my freezer. I have been creating menus for us that have more left over nights as well as meatless meals---such as grilled cheese/soup dinners. This week I bought a ton of meat. Our extra upright freezer was completely empty!

Right now we have some ground meat, chicken, stick butter, 3 pork roasts and 4 pkgs of cheese....not much I know. But I am really adding to it each week with whatever freezer friendly deals I can find.

I have been inspired by Moneysaving Mom's post to make more freezer meals. One of the ways I blew my budget was eating out at fast food joints. As most of us know---one of the easiest ways to blow one's budget is to eat out too much. It is just so easy to do when we have nothing easy to quickly cook for dinner. I am hoping having some pizza dough in the freezer will help with solving this dilemma I plan to make about 8 frozen balls of pizza dough. We eat about 2 large pizzas for dinner so this would give us 4 nights of pizza. I figure it is just as easy to make 8 batches as it is just one and yet I only have to clean the kitchen up one time.

We eat dinner with the grandparents on Thursday so I am thinking I will make Thursday my baking day. Knowing I don't have to cook dinner will give me a chance to really get busy in the kitchen with stock up meals. I plan to surf and see if I can find some other tasty freezer meals. If you know of any....feel free to share!

Shopping this week

2009-03-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, I blew it bad last week. We have not done our budget yet, so I am not sure how much I went over. But today I am climbing back on the horse. I will be withdrawing my cash and I have promised to stick it! Wish me luck!

Pay day coming up

2009-03-06T20:26:00.000-08:00

Pay day is this coming Monday and I am already working on our dinner menus. The past two weeks was a bust. I went over budget, I failed to use cash, and I did not make out dinner menus. No menus almost always leads to us running out of food. I am blessed that my husband does not mind this happening now and then, but he has encouraged me to strive to stick to it a little better with this next paycheck. I am determined to do it!

I also need to account for some shoe shopping for my ever growing boys. Their feet seem to grow at ridiculous rates! My two oldest boys already wear shoes sizes bigger than mine! My oldest really needs two pairs.....dressier ones and a pair of tennis shoes for playing around in. Since we homeschool, I am sure we will get buy with just buying some off brand tennis shoes. But for their dressier style ones they will likely want world industries. Sometimes I can find those on sale for around 35.00. Our youngest could use a pair as well. So heres to hoping I hit some good sales next week!

Invention Idea

2009-03-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

We all have heard that using cash forces one to spend less. I totally agree with this....however getting the cash is not always convenient. For us, it means driving a ways to our credit union. If I take cash from an ATM I get hit with fees. Plus, who likes to deal with cash at the gas pump.

The past few weeks I thought I was keeping a good mental track of where I was using my debit. I just went into our quicken and it looks like I am over budget by about 15.00. I really need about $25.00 to make it through the week (milk, bread, meat). So I am really kicking myself for not using cash.

Wouldn't it be cool if there was some gadget much like a calculator that you could keep in your wallet and plug the info in and it and it would stay until you told it to erase the data. My mental calcualtor tends to loose track apparently.

Oh, well. They say you spend more because it is not passing through your hands and this may be true. But I also think that if I could look at some gadget in my wallet that said "You have $25 left in your budget."

Oh wait...they did invent that...I think it is called a pen and pad!! Perhaps I should stick on in my wallet.

Our family could get bigger.

2009-03-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Strange things have been happening in my family and today was a kicker. My brother called and asked me to watch his 1 year old daughter. His wife has been leaving for weeks and coming home for a day or so then going a-wall again. She has no family that she in contact with and she has left one baby already with an ex-boyfriend. However, my brother is not the best fit for a caring parent either. He has some issues as well.

There is really more to their story than I could share here, but basically there is a good chance they will both not care for their baby and leave her to my mom. However, my mom and I spoke frankly tonight and I can tell she thinks I am a better fit for raising my niece than she is...she loves being a grandma and would like to remain grandma.

Months before my niece was born my husband and I discussed this possibility. We both already had a feeling the parents would not be the kind to stick around. Now that the mother is starting to leave her constantly it is looking more and more like that is a real possibility.

After this week's events it is kind of creepy to know that my husband and I have decided to go forwarded on doing our best to add rooms without adding debt to our home. Sort of like God is preparing us for this very real possiblity. Now more than ever, the need for rooms is beginning to appear. I assured my mom that I would take my niece in a heartbeat if my brother wanted me too. I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope and pray he grows up some and takes care of his daughter, but if he can't I totally will. I am just going to pray that God allows what is best for the baby to happen and for security to come to my niece quickly.

Sleepless night

2009-03-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

The camel's back is broken. Last night was the final straw. Let me back up and explain our situation. We live in a simple 3 bedroom ranch house. It is a nice size ranch. Our living room is quite large and open to our kitchen and dining room. This house will be plenty big enough when it is just my husband and I. We have a nice flat yard(big deal in hilly WV) and we live in a nice neighborhood. We just love our location.

However, when we bought the house we only had 3 blessed children. We did not intend to have anymore. I love that accidents happen, so to speak. I love that my little guy is here. But we bought this house thinking we were only going to have 3 children living in it. Before #4 came along our oldest had a room to himself and #2 and #3 shared a room quite well. But when #4 came along that all had to change.

The ages of our children has caused issues with room sharing. The 13 year old and 10 year old are simply at the age where they desire their own rooms. With the exception of the short time period before #4 came along they always shared a room and they are both ready for that to be over with. The fighting and bickering that goes with room sharing is wearing my husband and I down. You send them to their room for punishment and the other walks in and tempers flare...you tell them to clean their room and they bicker over who picked up what or left what trash where and so on. It is really draining on parents to listen to it all. I know many do and have, but there is more going on then just my two older ones.

Now our younger two are young enough to not mind sharing, but they are simply not compatible sleeping partners. Our third son has always been a restless child...waking up constantly...having occasional nightmares...climbing into our bed etc. Our littlest guy would sleep beautifully if his older brother did not wake him up with his issues. On the rare night that #3 is not waking up #4 will have issues and wake #3 up and so on and so on......

It is a constant nightmare for my husband and I. We are woken up every night by one child or another...sometimes 2 or 3 times. Our 3rd son can't help how he reacts when he is asleep to a nightmare. He simply jumps out of bed and swings his door open in absolute terror. This wakes #4 up. Of course, #4 is a good little sleeper, but he is young and 1 to 2 times a week he might wake up. You can usually sooth him quickly and get him back to bed quite soon, but during the whole soothing time #3 is waking up. It is a roller coaster ride that seems to never end! Last night I went nuts being up and down and dealing with the chaos of it all. I honestly don't see how my husband functions at work after nights like last night.

The remodeling that we are torn about doing is creating two bedrooms in our basement. We have about 2000 square feet of unfinished basement. It is very dry...has a sump pump and 8 foot ceilings and heating. Part of it does currently have carpeting and a ceiling. But the walls are simply painted cinder blocks. The other half is concrete flooring and exposed rafters...no drywalling at all. We have come up with a design plan that would give us a nice finished family room with two bedrooms that are 10X13 and 9X14 in size. The bedrooms would have to have egress windows and closets to be considered rooms.

We should completely do away with this whole plan until we are debt free. I know that..I keep saying that....but then night time comes and I am literally crying for more bedrooms for my kids.

After last night...I am broken...I want these rooms. I also want to remain credit card debt free. So what are we to do!!! My husband finally said we are going to go forth on this project. But we are not going to charge a dime.

What does this mean for my blog. Well, I am still paying monthly bills and I am not incurring debt on credit cards or home equity loans. I just don't know how quickly it will go down with just make standard payments. We have a few more things to come in with some dough--taxes, upcoming yard sale, and possible bonus money. We do not plan to dip into our emergency savings either. So far my husband has used his personal spending money to purchase wood for building a closet in the basement. Why a closet first...well we need to house our network somewhere. So this closet will be our network closet...housing our main computer and wiring for the house. Our house is completely networked and we have a heavy duty computer that stores most of our files/movies/mp3 etc. He is techy like that. We already have drywall in our garage so this part is inexpensive and easy. My husband is very good with electricity and wiring so we won't have to hire someone for a lot of this work. If we need things looked over then my uncle (an electrician) will do so free of charge. We paid an electrician a few years ago and had our whole house updated--we went from 100 amp to 200 amp service. So we were prepared to eventually finish this basement.

The biggest expense will be the egress windows. We will try and do most of the work ourselves. Still we are far off from purchasing those so I am not going to sweat it right now.

The point of this post is that we are going forth but we are going to go slow. It will probably take us a year to complete. I will post some pics along the way if you like. My husband thinks we could be done by late summer, but I am the one that is more realistic on these adventures and the time they take to complete than he is.

This will raise our homes value and bring MUCH NEEDED peace to this family. I just hope it won't bring more debt. That will be my goal..to do this without incurring any more debt as we pay on our auto loans and student loan. If you think these are way wrong choices feel free to share. But I think our decision is to do as I have stated.

Getting the itch!

2009-03-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

Oooh, it is starting to itch! The weather is warming up and tax money is in..my savings account is growing, my credit card debt is gone and now all I want to do is spend! When the warm air hits all I can think about are household upgrades!

Lets build our patio, lets finish those rooms in the basement, lets finish the trim here and there. Ooooh it's terrible for me. I feel so bombarded by beautiful ideas for our home and I just want to do them all! Especially as the temps go up!

Does anyone else feel this "spring fever"?

If you were to look back over our past history in quicken you can see that every tax season we pay off our credit card debt then we swear we won't rack them up again, yet spring comes and remodeling ideas strike! The credit cards get charged up all over again.

I so want to stop this from happening this year! I need to stop this from happening. I told my husband to no listen to me one BIT! Because he is the most awesome and sweetest husband in the world. All I have to do is say "Let's build this, or do that." He will so desire to please me that he will do it! We have pinky sworn to one another though that this year will be different! I just need him to turn a deaf ear to me and my ideas and to stick to his guns too.

This year we will fight temptation and we will not venture down the remodeling path...we will stick to our personal budgets and if projects can't come slowly out of those then they will not happen at all. I just need to get a handle on my remodeling addiction. Help!

Money in the mail!

2009-02-25T19:57:00.000-08:00

We just got closer to our 2000 emergency fund....about $97 dollars closer! I opened my mail today and discovered a check from a health care facility for $97.00. Apparently we overpaid last year and had a credit. Needless to say this money will go straight into savings!

Two Week Budget

2009-02-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

The current two week budget
Income--$1305 (DH had some overtime)

Wife's money-$300
DH money-$200
Kids allowance--$50
Gas/auto- $100.00
_________________________total standard monthly expenses $650

Bills:
Auto insurance- $85
Parking- $35
Cable-63
Netflix-18
Phone-28
Coop-45----this is a program my kids are in for homeschooling--we pay this 4 times a year--this is the last one till next fall.

License's for cars--62--due once a year
____________________________________________

We should have about $319 left over.

This money will go into our savings.

We are not doing as well as I hoped but that is because we failed to calculate our property taxes even though I mentioned them being paid off, my dh did not have them written up in our quicken. So I took a quick glance and thought they were covered. So that brought our EF down. We are not at $1000, more around 700. But this time next month I should not have coop bills or license fees. It won't take long for us to build up our EF fund. As soon as we get it to 2000 we will start tackling debt again. I really hope that by the time we have our yard sale in mid May we will have $2000 in savings. Even though most programs recommend just $1000 in an emergency fund we simply do not feel that it is enough. I feel $2000 will cover most things that could go wrong for us...such as our washing machine breaking or minor household disaster. Our cars are under warranty and are not old so we don't have to worry about auto stuff. We still have state tax money coming in and we also hope that DH gets some bonus money --that is usually about 1500. We have one more major expense coming up and that will be buying our children's curriculum for next year. I believe we need $1000 to cover the curriculum I have chosen for 3 of my children.

You might notice my pie is not at 20%! Even though I don't post my debt payments we are making them. We have our car payments taken out so I never calculate them in these posts. Look at my past budget posts to see a more detailed explanation.

Well that is all I have to report. I know I should report this a little neater. I love how JW did his, but I am not as computer literate as he is. I am doing my best, even though we are not where I thought we were ---as far as our savings account goes--we are still doing well with sticking to our personal budgets. I think that is where most people fail. They buy those lattes and don't see how they add up. Keeping our personal spending in check, doling out allowances to our kids and sticking with our budgeted amount for our auto/gas has made a huge difference. I am also discovering peace of mind..that is the best part of all!

So I will keep on keeping on!

Last two week Budget update!

2009-02-24T10:35:00.001-08:00

So here is the update on what happend with the last paycheck.

Last budget recap
My budget was 300--I actually only spent 237! Unfortunately, I did not take the cash out of the bank and therefore my husband says it is gone Not unaccounted for just not available to go back into my pocket. I will explain what it went to in a minute. But still I was proud to be so under even if I don't get the extra cash in my hand.

My husband was over but only by about $5.00

We were under on our gas expenses too. We spent $37--budgeted $100

Here is where some of our money ended up going that we did not budget for--but we are not under so I feel good. We were invited suddenly by the grandparents to go to an indoor waterpark. They paid for the room and park admission. They also borrowed a huge 15 passenger van and therefore paid for the gas too. They refused to take anything from us. We tried to pay for their dinner at the resteraunt and they refused to accept it. So we only had to pay for our food on this trip. The kids only had their allowance money to spend so we had no need to dole out money to them. Now understand the food there was expensive. We did pack a cooler filled with breakfast items and snack foods. It is a long story to explain the room situation. Basically we were there at 12:00, but did not get our room until after 5:00. So we spent the afternoon in the waterpark and ate in the waterpark--as opposed to going out in the snow to eat out of cooler in the van. But still our total mini vacation came to about $106.00. This included a dinner at Ryans for 6, lunch in the park, and a swim outfit for our youngest. We brought a handmedown suit that turned out way too big and uncomfortable for him. It had a built in life vest. So we bought him a two piece swim suit--shirt and shorts to keep his little body warmer than just trunks.

I think the reason this did not set us back is for 2 reasons. We always leave a $50 cushion amount in our checking account..so couple that with me being underbudget on my area and gas we were able to swallow this amount without pulling money out of savings. Which is our goal..to spend no more than 650 every two weeks on family needs and expenses. So even though this was not "budget" for...we did stay within our budget parameters!

The Jones' Syndrome

2009-02-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend I found myself having to enter the most dreaded store....Lowes. Everytime I go in there my husband says I get the "Jones'Syndrome." We entered the store looking for a mirror for our bathroom. We did a much needed inexpensive update to our main bathroom. We removed a 1960's mirror/medicine cabinet/light fixture unit. We patched up the wall, painted, and hung a new light fixture. Instead of getting an expensive medicine cabinet we are looking for simple mirror.

Anyways, I was in the store looking for the mirror and the hunger hit me. We live in a simple 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement. Our basement is only halfway finished. We actually could make our home a 5 bedroom by simply building a few walls/closets and adding egress windows (with fourboys ranging from 13-1 you can see why I would love for them to all have their own rooms!). But all those "simple" things really add up in costs. When I am away from the stores and away from wealthy friend's homes I don't desire them. But the moment my kids invite someone over or we visit a friends home or we enter the dreaded home renovating stores my hunger to expand, update and redo my home hits me.

My husband reminds me that these desires are not in line with God's will for our lives. I realize many pf bloggers are not of the Christian faith and find those striving to live by the Bible as silly or unnecessary, but to us it is something we desire. I know his word says to "Owe no man nothing but love" and that is what I truly desire. I feel guilty having debt. I want this burden gone. But when this bug hits me--or as my husband titles it---this Jones' syndrome, I start to get the "gimmies" and "wantitis".

It is hard to balance doing home renovation projects as well as paying down debt. Does anyone else struggle with this?

More Purging ahead

2009-02-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

I am feeling so cluttered lately. I have a humongous yard sale pile. It is growing by leaps and bounds, but this weekend I am determined to grow it even more. Last summer I went around my neighborhood and handed out fliers. We live on a circle type street so I thought it would be cool to have a "block" yard sale. So I advertised to my neighbors the date I picked and took care of all the advertising. I announced it in our paper and bulletin board and put up signs on all sides of our entrance. It was a huge success. A ton of my neighbors participated and the traffic was astounding.

Last week I was taking my kids for a stroll around the block and 2 different neighbors asked if I was going to have the block yard sale again. They were already looking forward to it so I assured them that yes I we will be doing it again. I expect this year will be an even bigger success.

This is one of those rare Saturdays that we do not have anything planned. So I am planning on purging and decluttering and sprucing up the home front. It feels good not only unload the burden of debt but also the clutter in my home. I am looking forward to having a clean start to a new and less cluttered life in general. I am really trying to let go of feeling like "stuff" is needed. Perhaps I will share some pics too :)

So are you planning to have yard sales, or have a purging weekend anytime soon?

Walking tall!

2009-02-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have not posted much, but honestly I have not had anything new to tell ya! I must say since we paid our cards off it feels SOOOOO GOOD to be credit card debt free! We have been living out of our pantry this week. I feel more and more determined to keep up my tight hold on our spending now more than ever! Paying stuff down is motivating. We have just stayed put most of the week. We also worked a little on our bathroom, but this was projects that we had budgeted for and/or already had on hand. Just chillin around the house, homeschooling the boys, and staying out of the stores!

Oh, have you heard of the lady who has set a goal of spending no more than 1500 for the year on her groceries/toiletries. That is one tall order, but cool to watch her try!

Loving your Budget

2009-02-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

Many months ago we took on the endeavor of creating our first budget. We looked at budgeting like many people do at first--with fear in our eyes. The idea of creating one sounded like total drudgery. The first few months are almost always a complete failure. Trust me when I say we hit a point that I wanted to just throw in the towel. Some unforeseen expense pops up, or you food budget just won't cut it. I get that at these times you just want to give up. But don't! It truly takes a good 3-4 months to find a balance and even then occasionally something unexpected will occur. That is OK! Don't let these little bumps in the road get you down. Even after 7 months of doing my budget for food I hit occasional weeks when our pantry just seems to low and the food sales are just too little to make my money stretch. I just do my best and roll with the punches.

Even after getting knocked down a time or two I have learned that if I really stick to my budget to the best of my ability I am still far better off than I was before having one. So don't give up and keep working on it. If 200 for food seems to low don't feel bad about upping a little to just $225. I raised our budget 3 times before I found our comfort zone. That is the key word "comfort zone". You want your budget to be workable and to be obtainable and you don't want to have to beat yourself up in order to obtain your goals. Make it realistic. When you finally have a week or two of keeping within the budget give yourself a pat on the back! Just understand there will be weeks when it will fail and that is OK!

A cute Debt Free Scream

2009-02-13T21:44:00.003-08:00

I just loved hearing this little girl...their ideas for the ornaments is cute too!

Credit Card Debt Free!

2009-02-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

Oooh yeah...tax money came in and we are officially credit card debt free! Check out my pie..a big chunk is gone! We also paid off one personal loan of 700, tires(for car), threw $1000 on the other personal loan, personal property taxes as well as all current medical bills.

Our EF is also now over $1000. I will punch up exact numbers later this week when I have more time. I just feel so relieved to know that we are down to just four debts. We have a car payment, van payment, student loan, and a small 2000 personal loan. We have chosen to snowball payments onto the car loan. We owe about 7000 on that loan.

I am stoked! I finally feel like I am seeing some progress.

Power Outage

2009-02-12T08:56:00.001-08:00

Last night we were hit with a ferocious storm. It wiped out electricity in most of my town. Having no lights made for an interesting night for a family with 4 boys! They loved lighting all the candles and having their flashlights in hand. The excitement started to wear off after about an hour.

I suggested we work on their school work so they could enjoy the the next day without any....they were all for that! So we sat up reading our history and science lessons. The boys worked on their copywork, spelling words, and creative writing.

One good thing was that I had our dinner nearly cooked right before the lights went out. Well, it least the main dish was done....we had meatloaf and applesauce. It least we did not have to run out somewhere to eat! Not sure that would have worked anyway, since most places were in the dark just like us!

Two Week Budget

2009-02-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

This weeks budget numbers look quite boring. We really did not have much left over after bills. We have chosen to throw the money left over into our Emergency fund as opposed to slamming it on our debt. Our tax return should be here no later than February 17th. We know we will have our credit card gone with this money, a personal loan gone, tires paid for car(needed for our car to pass inspection)and a few minor medical bills. Anything left over at this point will go to our emergency fund. We feel it should be it least 2000. Once we reach that milestone we will start attacking our car debt. It is around 7000. So even though this looks lame for a debt repayment blog, it will pick up soon!

Income= 1165
Family expenses:
300-my money--for food and anything she wants
200-my husband's money...for food, anything he wants--he eats out at work too
50--gas for cars
50-kids allowances
50-cushion money and/or medical expenses such as occasional copays or that thing that recently broke in our home, or the remote that was lost or the need for magic erasor to take off the permanent marker that was drawn all over my furniture (With four boys anything is possible and this cushion money takes care of those things!)
Total 650--this is our line _______________ we deduct 650 right off the bat and then pay bills and anything left over goes to either debt or bills.

Donation to our church-50
Water-88
Trash-21
Gas- $134
Medical-89
Sallie Mae- 75
Total= 457
1165-650-457 = 58
________________________________

Emergency Fund=548

Keep in mind that we have a great deal taken out of our paycheck before we see it. Our mortgage, car insurance, car payment, and van payment are automatically removed. So I don't bother showing those on my budget sheets, but we are paying our normal due payments to those items.

Also the 650 is our so called line. We don't always spend it and when we have it left over we throw it in our change jar in our closet. When we have a good bit we will snowflake it to our CC in the past, but when that is gone it will go to our car payment. We purchased awards for our local scout troop and they have yet to reimburse us. We are owed around 75. My husband should get a check for this amount tonight at a committee meeting. That money will go to our EF fund as well.

Creating a set line has really simplified budgeting for us. We take 650 out every time--whatever is left over is used to divvy up among bills/debts. We use to have this at 500 and found it always too little. This took about 3-4 months of budgeting to come up with. But now that it is there it is quite comfortable and makes doing bills SO MUCH EASIER. We know what we need to live comfortably and that let us feel in control.

Do you have a set amount??? I would love to hear family sizes and set amounts of others???? I use to feel ours was too big and perhaps you will think so, but we have peace with this amount and comfort in our lives. Finding that balance is sometimes a challenge, but gratifying when achieved!

No Stimulus Petition

2009-02-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

If you haven's signed it then please do so! Lets not burden our children with this SPENDULUS bill!

http://www.nostimulus.com/

I heard about this on Fox News videos..it is legit!

Upcoming budget

2009-02-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the night we do our bills. Tomorrow is payday! So be sure and check back later tonight and I will hopefully have our 2 week budget up!

Good News!

2009-02-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

Last week I was speaking to my mom and I mentioned that we were hoping for our tax money to be here in a few weeks. I then said that we would be making our final payment to them of $1300.00. This is one of the 2 personal family loans we have. One was to them for helping us cut a tree out of our yard a few years ago (it was a HUGE tree that required professionals). The roots were damaging our foundation. The other personal loan is to a set of grandparents. They gave us money when we first bought our house to replace all the windows. Both loans were with the agreement that we would pay them $1000 each year at tax time. We have faithfully done that.

But this year will be the last that I owe my mom and I was tickled to let her know that. Well, today my father phones me. He wants my husband to come over and help him with some computer stuff. Then he says "Hey, your mom said you were planning to pay us off this year...what do you think you still owe?"

I felt a little nervous. I thought maybe he was going to disagree to what our records show. There were a few minor things we added and took off. An example would be that for Christmas, my mother asked me to purchase our oldest son's gift for her. She told me what to buy and I did. But rather than have her pay me. I told her DH would deduct it from what we owe. So for that reason my first thought was that my dad was having a disagreement with the amount.

My husband keeps meticulous records on our quicken so I knew we had a way to verify this. But it did not matter, because that is not why he was asking.

He said "Well, how about we call it even at $700.00?" I was like "are you sure??!!!" I then assured him that we could pay it and he was like ..."no, you guys just pay us 700 and the loan is done."

Some of you might be saying this is no big deal, but with my family it is! My dad is the biggest tightwad I ever met, and he does not hand money out like that.

I think my parents were feeling guilty because of all the gifts and aid they have been giving my brother over the past years. Who totally deserves none of it.

My brother is a complete druggy, alcoholic, deadbeat type of dad. I know that sounds terrible, but it is the truth. He is nearly 30, but I don't think he will ever change his ways. We are completely opposite...as opposite as two siblings could ever be. I was the good girl growing up. Never did drugs, never got in trouble with the law, have always paid my own way kind of person.

My parents totally support him. They built him and his wife and kid a huge garage apartment on their property. There is no rent being paid, they have bought him about 12 cars since he was 16. He has wrecked or damaged all of them. Plus they have dropped a ton of money on his college bills (which he always dropped out of) and credit card bills for him as well. Now my mom also does free babysitting constantly.

As for me.. they bought me one car for a graduation gift a used one for around $3000. They never paid for any of my college and they have never given me money without expecting (as they should) repayment. I have always paid them whatever I borrowed back. Which has been very little over the years.

Because of the differences in how they have treated my brother and I over the years...I have vowed to always do my best to be fair with my kids. So them giving us a little of this borrowed money back as a gift seems fair considering all they have given my brother.

I told my dad over and over it wasn't necessary and he was like..."No, just consider it a gift and go on a vacation or something with the kids." Of course, that is not what we will do, but this will allow our tax money to stretch further on paying off more debt! I did update my debtometer to represent this deduction!

Another side note--they invited us over for dinner tonight too! There a savings in that as well!

Still on budget!

2009-02-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

I still have my $25.00 bucks left in my bi-weekly spending budget. I promised the kids that if I could fit it in our budget we would get pizza for dinner friday night plus some soda.

I think that is the liberating part of having a budget. I no longer feel bad for splurges like pizza. If I am within our budget....then no problem! I have really become better at planning our meals and budgeting for excursions based on our schedules. When I made our menu out last Sunday, I left Friday blank in hopes that nothing would prevent us from affording some pizza. We almost never buy soda so a couple two liters and 2 $5.00 pizzas from Little Ceasars and we will be set!

We will probably watch a movie on netflix too! I love easy, fun, cheap family nights! Who knows....we may pull out some board games as well!

So what are you doing for fun this week?

Where did JW go?

2009-02-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

It looks like JW from Need to be Debt free has removed his blog....if so I am really bummed! I loved reading that blog. I hope this is just a glitch. Anyone have any ideas????

Taxes efiled!

2009-02-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

Last night my mother-in-law/accountant..efiled our taxes! I have never efiled them...does anyone know how fast you usually get the moolah deposited?

All I can say is this money will wipe out 2 of our debts and easily fund our EF! So I am anxious to get it in my bank account!

UPDATE:
I just received our email notifications saying it has been accepted by the IRS..According to them it will likely be deposited Feb 13! Oh, that would be so cool! I so hope that is when we get it! E-filing Rocks!

Personal Spending Update

2009-02-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

As you can see in our budget, I get $300 every two weeks and I try and stretch it to cover all our food and any other necessary things we may need. Yesterday I did my shopping for this week and I am happy to report that I have $25.00 left in my pocket. I truly feel I can make it easily to next Monday with that amount.

I did snag some good deals at Krogers. I made 2 trips because with my first trip I realized I forgot my coupons. So with my first visit I spent about $62.00 on things like milk, bread, meats, produce, jelly, and cheese. So I walked out with the buying just the necessities. Then I went back with my coupons later in the day when I had to make another trip somewhere else(we live a very short distance from the store so this was not a big deal.)

I walked out on my second trip with 9 boxes of cereal (honey nut cheerios, trix, and multigrain cheerios), 4 pack toilet paper, 3 Johnson buddie soaps, and 2 containers of baby powder. My price was $12.33!

I have my menu figured out, we are well stocked in veggies/fruits/meats/breads so I feel we are doing much better staying on budget!

Are you hurting the economy?

2009-02-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

Well according to Fox our frugal habits are killing the economy. Maybe so...but I am marching on! No longer will I help the the big credit company CEO's line their pockets. Instead, I vow to pay off debt and save to line my own!

How about you?

Husband screaming for us to go GREEN.

2009-02-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

We got some lovely bills over the past few week. An especially large gas bill about made my husband go nuts. It was for $288. We are not on the budget and in the summer our gas bills are like $30.00. We thought last months bill was bad..it was around $160.

But since we are on a budgeting system with our money we need to change this. We have had some really cold weather this year with record low temps, so I am sure that is part of it. Our furnace is only 2 years old and we have a digital thermostat. It is set at 70 during the day, but drops to 65 at night. We have new windows in our home as well. Except the basement. We also have a door that leads into our garage that is quite flimsy and I am sure we are losing heat through it as well as under it. It should be an insulated metal door, but it is an interior door. We have insulation in our attic, but could use more.

But all of these fixes take a good bit of money. Rather than pouring any more money into the house we are going to go the conservative route. We are lowering our thermostat to 68 during the day. We have told the kids to layer up. We have wood floors and I swear they make our house feel colder than if we had carpet down. We are limiting the showers and really getting skimpy on the amount of water in our tubs. Things must really smell before the get dumped in the washing pile. We are really trying to conserve electricity as well. My husband constantly walks around the house and tries to unplug anything not being used. Kind of funny to see him on this go green kick.

The other thing he decided to do was to call the gas company and get us on the budget. I think they set it a bit high but it should lower eventually. They are making our monthly bills go to $134.00 This will definitely help, but I will miss the $34 bills that we had last summer.

So do you budget or just pay what is owed?

Breakthrough!

2009-01-31T05:53:00.000-08:00

I know this story will seem minor, but to me it screams "Breakthrough!" in our changing our lifestyle.

Our roads are quite nasty right now. The local schools have been closed all week. So you know the roads are bad, however my pantry was really low on just about everything a family of 6 could need. My husband is quite protective and was concerned about me going out alone in it to get the groceries. So we piled the kids in the van and drove to Aldi's.

I love Aldi's. It is the best grocery store as far as getting the best bang for your buck. Anytime I go there I always save a ton.

Back to the breakthrough! My husband sat in the car with the kids watching a dvd while I ran in to get our goods. As I strolled the aisle I noticed they had some awesome bathroom faucets in brushed nickle finish for 34.99. If you have not priced faucets lately then you will know that is a heck of a price. We remodeled last year one bathroom and would like to do a small face lift to our second one. The most expensive part in our bathroom face lift will be replacing our faucet. The one we have is quite nasty. We already replaced the shower one. We also need a new mirror, light fixture above the sink, and new paint job.

Anyway, I was really stoked to see such a great deal on a faucet in the right finish (I don't care about high quality). In about 3-5 years this bathroom will need a complete overhaul---tile torn down and tub busted out, new vanity etc. So I don't need a long life span for this faucet. We just want to make our bathroom look a little more presentable for 3-5 years. So I phoned my husband cell phone and asked him if he thought I should buy it.

This is where the breakthrough occurred. He paused and said "No, I think we need to let this go....we didn't budget for it."

I nearly choked. In the old days he would of been saying....yeah get it. We have cash for it. We could buy it and not have to slap it on our credit card. But he is absolutely right....we did not budget for it.

As I hung up the phone, a smile crossed my face. It is so nice to have a husband who is on board with me in this strong desire to be debt free!

Help me understand the stimulus?

2009-01-30T22:39:00.000-08:00

I kept hearing from relatives that we would soon be getting $1,000 stimulus check again. Then I read over on credit card free's link to a New York Time article that the stimulus will not be a check but a payroll tax decrease in the form of $1,000 per married couple (after you have earned 8,100 income).

So let me see if I am understanding this. My husband gets paid every two weeks. So basically the government is saying they will give us a decrease of $1000 on our payroll taxes. If you get paid 26 paychecks a year that works out to be about $38.00 more a paycheck.

Does anyone think that amount will make you run about buy more stuff?

If anyone makes money off of it...it won't be the banks, nor the car companies, or electronic corporations. It will be your local McDonalds, Starbucks, Krogers, or the infamous Wallyworld that will likely see that $38.00 bonus money.

If you think I am wrong with how this plays out then please explain what you think it will mean. I think the giant check of $1,000 to people is more likely to stimulate than $38.00 extra dollars every two weeks. I am all for trying something new, but I kind of doubt this form of delivery will work.

Just for the record....I am personally against all of this stimulus stuff. I am a republican and very much for less government and less taxes. I would have hated to see these giant corporations and banks fail, but I do feel that we would have recovered. I think letting some big corporations fail would lead to smaller ones starting off, more of bringing the gap from rich to poor closer kind of thing..but that opinion is for another post. What's done is done. Now I am just thinking about us and how to better our family by becoming debt free.

So how do you feel about this delivery of the stimulus money? Do you think it will help and help quickly?

Our $2.97 date night!

2009-01-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

I thought I would brag a little about our past weekend. My husband and I have our birthdays back to back. We are 9 years and 364 days apart! Anyhoo, we were given a great gift at Christmas time. A certificate for free babysitting along with a $50.00 gift card to a favorite seafood restaurant. Earlier this year we were given some free movie tickets. Then on our date night some grandparents dropped by and surprised us with more certificates for the theatre. It was their way of paying for our snacks at the theatre.

So on our date night. My brother-in-law and his wife showed up with pizzas for our kids and shoved us out the door. Well, they did not have to shove us....we practically ran! We went out to eat first, then we ran around to a few stores window shopping. We did go to a book store and I got a book. We used a gift certificate that was given to us plus a 30% off coupon I had at this particular book store. The book was like $4.00. The gift card is a $25.00 one, so we still have some money left one it. then we window shopped some more. It was really cold out and we had another hour before the movie, so we headed through a Tim Hortons drive through and bought hot chocolate---thus our $2.97 price. We went to see the film where we enjoyed popcorn and soda. We made it home close to midnight and gabbed some with the awesome sitters. Our boys always have a blast with Uncle D!

Ohh, it was so nice to have a night out, but even better knowing it cost us virtually nothing!

The best Christmas present ever is free babysitting! Be sure and give that to someone you know next year!

Fun time Canceling our Phone Plan

2009-01-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

I am sure others have had this experience, but it was a first for us! My husband called AT&T to cancel our cell phone plan. We wanted to keep our numbers and go to go phone method. Our contracts ended last week. If we had canceled prior to that we would have been charged over $200.

So with our contract up he gave them a call. The call lasted for nearly 2 hours! He had to be transferred from person to person. It was really ridiculous. Two different people tried to tell him he could not switch the phone to as we put it "go mode."

My husband was very firm and knew it was possible so he kept demanding to speak to a person higher up. Finally he got someone who knew what they were doing.

After two hours the plan was in place. We had to spend $15.00 for each phone. We plan to deduct it from our personal spending money areas of the budget.

It was very apparent that their true goal was to tell us we could not change and to keep us in their contractual type plans. They tried to woo my husband into another contract as well. The person who knew how to switch us understood why we did not need this plan......we had over 4,000 minutes in our rollover bank!

It may have taken a few hours, but it feels great to no longer have an $80 a month cell phone bill.

Trapped!

2009-01-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

Want an easy way to save some dough! Stay home!

We have been trapped due to the lovely ice/snow storm sweeping across the nation for the past two days. I am running low on diapers! But more snow is on the way this evening. I really need to get to Aldi's if I want to stick to my food budget. Anytime I shop anywhere else my money does not go quite as far. So I really hope I can get there this evening and get the rest we need for this week. Especially diapers!

Are you trapped with this storm?

Tax documents are in!

2009-01-26T06:45:00.000-08:00

We have recieved all of our necesary tax documents and have packaged them up to go my mother-in-law. She runs her own buisness doing peoples taxes. We get the nice family discout---Free! Plus we get the fast family speedy service---jump to the head of the line!

She is so fast, we will likely see our stuff done with-in the week. I was looking in our quicken accounts and discovered we received nearly 8,000 back last year.

If we get roughly the same back this year then we will be able to pay off our last credit card and a personal family loan. We borrowed money from my parents last year with the deal that we would not have to pay them the $1,000 back until tax season. We had a tree in our back yard that had to be removed. It was a huge pin oak and the roots were hitting the foundation of our house. It cost a little over $1,000 the remove it and rather than putting it on a card they were gracious enough to offer us a free of interest loan with the condition we would pay them with our tax refund this year. The other personal family loan is to another set of grandparents. We bought our house 5 years ago and it needed new windows really bad. We did not have the money for them and the granparents insisted on paying for them. We made the same deal with them, that we pay them $1,000 each year at tax time. So this year we will pay them $1,000 and owe $2,000 still. We have never not paid them so everyone is fine with these loans. Still, I will be glad to be rid of them just the same!

You may be wondering what we did with last years tax money. Well we paid our personal loan and we paid off a credit card with it then too. We were down to no credit card debt. We racked up our credit card again redoing two bathrooms in our house and taking a vacation to the beach. We were not planning to spend so much on our bathrooms. It is sort of a funny story I will share in another post.

But I will be honest, we are bad about clearing our credit card debt just to turn around and jack it up again.

We hope to be different this year. We plan to do no more remodeling to our house that we can not pay cash for immediately. We have no plans of anything big, but we do need some small things here and there. Trim in a few places, one bathroom needs a new light fixture/mirror and faucet. It also needs painted. But nothing major like we have done in the past.

We also are not planning to go on any major vacations. We do hope to take our kids on a few day trips like to an amusement park or water park. But no big trips like to the beach or on our annual family renunions to Gatlinburg TN.

We have watched a lot of Dave Ramsey videos and are now seeing the error of our ways. We no longer wish to live paycheck to paycheck. So even if appears that we are one of those poeple who will not succeed at this debt free thing I hope you will stick with us through this journey. I started this blog for an incentive....to have people prod us along and keep us on the straight but narrow path to a debt free life!

Two Week Budget

2009-01-25T10:53:00.001-08:00

Here Goes!

Salary--minus our autopay of our house and two car payments= $1165

Household budgeted expenses:
Wife $ for food and spend money=$300
Husband $ food/gas for his car and spend money $200
Kids Allowances= $50.00
Gift for neice baby shower= $25.00
Van Gas- $50.00
_____________________________________________________
Total Houshold expenses for this two week period= 625.00

Bills:
Electric Bill= $110
Parking for husband at work= $35.00 (this is a must)
Auto Insurance= $103.00
Vonage phone bill= $29
Misc. Medical bill= $15
Cell phone=====THIS IS GONE! It was around $85 a month! Our contract ended this month....we are going go phone method and using our spend money to buy our cards. We plan to get simple $25.00 ones for right now....eventually we plan to buy the $100 cards that have exp. dates of 1 year. We don't really use them much except to call one another.
_____________________________________________________
Total Bills= $292Total of all expenses/bills= 917

Money left to snowball= $248
We sent payment of $160 to the credit card and the rest went to our savings.
Our Credit Card debt is now at $4700
Our EF is at $470

Our credit card debt looks like it went up, but when I wrote my New Years Goals I was looking at our December statements. We did use the card this year for Christmas. Of course, we did what most people do and spent more than we planned too. But oh well, I am not going to get too upset over it. The point is we do not intend to use it again at all. We tend to pay it off with tax money and then to get our EF up to $2000. Once the ef is up to $2000 we plan to cut it up. I love the idea of making a plastectomy Video! But until the ef is up I feel better having it in case an emergency does hit. Or as some say, in case murphy stops by.

You may notice the amount my husband gets is up. The last billing he only took $100 but feels more comfotable with $200. He takes out $100 a week and uses it for his gas/food and simple blow money. This week he intends to spend some money replacing some needed parts on our printer. He is really good about putting our needs first. He wanted to kick the khols card out with the last paycheck, so he took out less. But we both feel better about him having it at $100 a week.

I will try an update my bars to the right this week. Be sure and check back!

UPDATE! You may notice I removed the ticker thing....I could not get it to work and gave up with it. I have decided just use this pie chart intstead. Pehaps after we get our tax refund I will get a little more detailed with the debt repayment. Right now this seems easier. I don't know how some people keeps these updated when they have a lot to plug in each month! I am all about simple...so to me this is simple! Please cheer us on!

I want some TARP!

2009-01-23T19:42:00.000-08:00

Vote for the Plasty Awards

2009-01-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

Be sure and check out Dave Ramsey's 2nd annual Plasty awards. Theres are some cute good ideas for how to hack up your credit card. My favorite is the 'Death by Dominos"

Ugh, Medical bills

2009-01-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

Medical bills seem to always trash our budgets. We recently had our youngest allergy tested. I just got the EOB(explanation of benefits) statement. I noticed our insurance raised our copay and our deductibles!

Our copays have gone from $15.00 to $20.0 and our deductible went from $200 individual to $300! So we will be getting a bill shortly for $310.00. We have had two visits and I paid only $15.00 each time for the copay, so $10.00 will be for the shortage on the copay.

This means we will not be paying much on the credit card till we pay this off. You won't see our debt go down much till we get our tax refund. My older kids get shots every week. So we will be getting hit with huge bills for their copays as well as their deductibles.

When we become debt free. We intend to have a nice $2000.00 cushion set aside each year for just medical bills. Our children are thankfully quite healthy. One year our 3rd son had some major surgery. He was born without a soft spot so this surgery was quite extensive on a 6 month old. They had to "create" a soft spot. The surgery and care ran around $180,000.00. However, we paid around $12,000 of it. I know that sounds like great insurance and it is, but no matter how you cut it 12,000 out of anyone in one year is tough!

I just wish they spread these over the year instead of just slamming us with them right after the holidays and into the New Year. It makes for a depressing beginning!

Loving our coin roller machine!

2009-01-22T08:12:00.001-08:00

As I posted yesterday. I am little short for our food budget this week. I explained to my husband how we are nearly out of bread and no sugar. He at first offered me his last $10.00 but I know he will need that so I did not think that would work. Then he suggested I check the coin machine in our bedroom.

We store this machine in the top of our closet. He is really good about dumping his change in there and rolling the coins up. We had a jar next to them that was full of rolled coins. We had about $25.00 worth of coins rolled and a bunch in the machine. He has been saving this money for new tires for his car, but we have agreed that with our tax return this year he will definatly get some new tires.

I am really proud of him for suggesting this money. In the old days he would have said....just go withdraw it! But now we are both on the same page and determined to make our budgets work. Now I feel confident we wont have to touch our accounts this week and we will have a comfortable amount of food in the house too! I will also be more careful when it comes to even thinking of spending more than I know I should...like the 30 I spent on my niece instead of the normal $10 we spend on birthdays.

Probably going to go over our food budget.

2009-01-21T16:59:00.001-08:00

Oooh, I am kickng myself. We spent some of our food money last Saturday eating at Burger King. I am down to $1.00 in my envelope. We have only 1 1/2 loaves of bread and no sugar. I am contemplating borrowing from my son as opposed to telling my husband that I need to withdraw. I just don't think we can make it to next monday with no sugar. I could make the bread. We are big time ice tea drinkers with sugar so I don't know how the kids will feel about going without that for the rest of the week. But perhaps this will be a week of doing without?

I take $300 out every two weeks and try my best to stretch it over our needs and wants. This past week, my neice had a birthday. I usually budget $10.00 for birthday gifts, but I did spend a little more on her. She is my only neice and she turned one. I bought her 2 puzzles, a Dr. Seuss Book, some hair bows and some baloons. Total was around $30.00. So I feel that between that and spending money eating out(another $30.00) I blew my budget. With our sons new diet needs I have to buy more expensive food. When you are buying simple ordinary things like applesauce, spaghetti sauce, jelly, etc, and they can not contain high fructose corn syrup.....you are going to pay a pretty penny. I was use to buying the cheap jelly, the cheap sauce and the cheap soups, but no more. But still, despite his new diet needs I really feel that the over spending on the birthday and eating out is what made the difference this week.

So what would you do?? Make do, borrow, hunt the couch cushions, take out from the EF??

Claifornian's getting IOU!

2009-01-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

Oooh I would be so steamed! I hope this does not become a trend. I agree wholeheartedly that this will cause a lot of distrust among taxpayers like myself who allow the state to hold more than I owe! As soon as we are debt free we intend to change our holdings....now I am definately going too!

Yard Sale Prep!

2009-01-17T16:26:00.000-08:00

What do you do on a night of near freezing temps? You start to prepare for your yard sale this summer. Right??

Well I am! I have a corner in my basement that is dedicated to my annual yard sale. Whenever we find something that we are no longer using, have outgrown, don't like or care for....we toss it in the yard sale corner. I keep large boxes and when one becomes full, I tape her up and mark "yard sale" on the side.

This keeps clutter to a minimum in the house and will also help in debt elimination this coming spring. When we have our annual block yard sale.

More to come on that at later post!

Tonight my husband and 2nd son are at a pinewood derby event. We had a large pot roast for dinner yesterday, so today's dinner is warm ups. At the pinewood event they are serving hot dogs.

Since I did not have to trash the kitchen making dinner I thought I would trash it cleaning out my cabinets. I have only cleaned out about 7 so far and I already have a nice pile to head to the "yard sale" corner.

So if you are stuck in the house, make your time profitable as well as useful by seeing what you can sell!

Knowing when enough is enough.

2009-01-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

I use to struggle with going to the grocery store or the mall and seeing the BIG SALE! The jelly would be marked down to $2.00 a jar.....oh that is a steel! I would buy a bunch. Or the chicken was 1.99 lb....should I buy just a few or a bunch cause it is on sale??

These questions can still bug me sometimes. But I have found that sticking to my budget is my top priority. It takes presedence over the "sale." In other words, I buy what I absoloutely need to make all of our dinner meals, lunches, breakfasts for this weak. Once I have all those purchases of necesity made then I see what's left.

Some weeks I don't have much cash left. Then I know that the extra item isn't worth it for me. It least not right now. My budget is more important. I am trusting in the Lord to provide me with a steal on next weeks needed items.

To some this may seem crazy. Poeple who are always out stocking up their pantries are screaming that I am nuts for not grabbing the deals. Yes, the pantry stockers may get a better bang for their buck, but for me I must stick to my budget.

Perhaps when we are debt free I will be able to stick my full $600 a month food budget into one evelope at the beginning of the month and then really hit the sales throughout the month. Then again, perhaps we would be starving the last week, cause I overspent the first week. Who knows??? But for right now it is more important that I stay under $150 a week.

We may have just started this blog, but we have been on the budgeting system for nearly 6 months. It took a good 3-4 to find the right food amount I needed and to learn this ability to forgo the "steal of a deal." I would splurge the first week and stock up on the deals, just to find us have a few days left before pay day and I was out of money and milk.

So now I buy what I must to make our menu work (which is based on the meat sales) then I take another stroll for the few deals I feel I can afford to get. Sometimes I look in my envelope and see only $10.00 left and know I have to pass it on by!

But I have peace with it now. I know peanut butter will be on sale again and this weaks deal was not meant to be mine.

Two Week Budget

2009-01-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

Ok, so here goes! I had a hard time figuring out how to do this. My husband has always done all of our checking on the quicken. He is very anal about balancing it to the penny and therefore when checks do not clear they get shoved down the line...kind of hard to explain. It is not that they are not covered, but it is simply difficult to look at the quicken and really see what bills were paid with this weeks check..vrs. ones we have accounted for from the last paycheck that have simply not cleared the bank.

Also, my husband has auto draft on quite a few of our bills. So for now I am showing the money we "see" and the bills we are paying out of it...you will catch on in minute. Also I rounded bills up a dollar and income down a dollar.

Income That WE SEE: $1,200

Gas- $190 (this is not on a budget system...in the summer it runs around 25.00 and this months was an "estimate" I am hoping it will be much less next month)
Cable/Internet- $62
Cell Phone (This is the last month! Our contract is up end of Jan!)$83.00
Trash-$22.00
Water- $81
Medical bills- $18.00
My money-$300.00
Husbands money- $100.00
Kids Allowances- $50.00

Total expenses: $906

Debts:
Kohls: $204.00---THIS IS GONE! Yippee! One credit card down and one to go!
My student Loan---$78.00----will this ever end!

Total Spent: $1188
Left over: $12.00Our emergency fund is at $471.

Now we also are paying a mortgage and two car payments out of each paycheck. This money is withdrawn automatically at our credit union. So we don't see this debt. But here are those numbers

Mortgage: Bi-Weekly we pay $557---a month that is $1114
Car Payment 1: we pay Bi-weekly $98.00 a month we pay $196
Car Payment 2: we pay Bi-weekly we pay $164.00 a month we pay $328.00

When we reach the milestone that we are snowballing money to these accounts I will show them, but until then I am just not going to mess with them.

As for our children's allowances....our two older boys get $20.00 every two weeks and our younger son gets $5.00 every two weeks. However, our children pay for their trips and activities out of their own money. For example. Our oldest has been putting away about $10.00 of his money every few weeks for a couple of months. He knows he will be going on a ski trip with the scouts so he must pay for it. His goal is to have $100.00 for the trip. He currently has $80.00. Our 11 year old is a real saver. I love how he is already making envelopes for different categories....mocking me and my envelopes.

Also, out of my $300.00 I buy food, gas for the van, and any extras I may need or want. This week I had to pick up my niece a birthday present. My budget for gifts is always $10.00.

My husband gets $100.00. He buys gas for his car and anything else he needs or wants. He eats out some at work, but he sticks to his cash for those expenses. He also takes lunch to work quite a bit as well.

Well that is it! I am mostly stoked to know that our Kohls credit card is gone! Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or whatever!

At the end of January I will put up our actual debt amounts.

Nothing much to report.

2009-01-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

So far so good. I did go over my food budget, which I have not done for the past three months. But this week was an exception since we had some major food allergies to deal with. Basically our son can have very little processed food. Nothing containing Milk, Soy, or Corn. So I will now focus on purchasing more fresh fruits and vegetables and cooking supplies. His bread will need to be homemade and most of our sauces like spaghetti sauce and apple sauce will need to come from scratch. Most store bought canned items contain corn syrup or soy products to maintain flavoring and freshness.

We were already contemplating a garden...so I was excited to see this post by Oh My Aching debts on ordering seed catalogs. Since we homeschool, we feel growing from seeds will be a neat project anyway. We plan to put our boys to work in the designing and building of the raised planter beds this spring.

Monday is payday....so I will be putting up our two week budget and show what debts we will be attacking. I am hoping to be able to get our EF to 500 and pay off our Khols credit card bill of $200. Then we will be on to our second credit card, which is around 4,000. We should have it gone with our tax refund. After that is when the fun will begin! Getting rid of either one car payment or my student loan. So come back and check out the budget!

So much for snowflaking this week.

2009-01-06T17:24:00.001-08:00

Well, I reported a few days ago that I was psyched to have close to $50 left in my food budget. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. We hit a little snag in our menu this week. Our youngest son was diagnosed at the doctor's office with more severe allergies than we realized. I knew he was allergic to milk, but felt he was likely allergic to something else due to his breakouts. But I could not figure out what it was so we had him tested.

We saw the allergist yesterday and they performed the skin test right away. It appears he is not only severely allergic to milk, but also corn and soy! His condition is pretty bad in that the ordered us to always keep an Epipen around. We also had blood work done to back it up. She explained some things to me about allergies and it is truly important that I eliminate all this from his diet with a hope of introducing to him in about 3-5 years. Our hope is that his memory cells will have died off and he will no longer have reactions to such food. The key to to this is really removing it from his diet as much as possible.

I was feeding the kid lots of soy milk since he was allergic to milk. However, we recently switched him to rice milk and I did notice a slight improvement in his conditions.

But now I must add soy and corn to our eliminated food list. When we say corn, we mean anything with corn.....that includes High Fructose Corn Syrup! Which is in practically everything!

Also, when you find a product that is milk free it almost always contains soy! If you find something that does not have soy it contains corn. I told my husband I imagine it will cost close to 15.00 a week for his special foods.

Tonight I am experimenting with some homemade bread that does not contain corn, soy or milk. I replaced the butter with olive oil so we will see how it turns out. We have a health food store nearby and I plan to go there soon and see what they offer as far as products for this diet.

When we discovered what all he could not have I went to the store to replace a few of our more common foods for him. I purchased some extra fruit for the week, buckwheat pancake mix and pure maple syrup for breakfasts, and also a few minor snack items. Some special pretzels, honey flavored post cereal and orange juice.

Tonight our menu called for a special Chinese dish--Sweet/n/sour Chicken. This has soy sauce and corn ingredients. So I cooked his chicken separate, put no butter in the rice, and gave him carrots as a side.

So needless to say this unexpected shopping spree took all my extra money I had planned to snowflake. But I am still within my budget of $250.00. I really hope to simply not go over that budget or I will simply feel like such a failure.

Cipl Clip Clipping Away!

2009-01-04T17:09:00.001-08:00

I spent most of the afternoon clipping a zillion coupons, taking out expired coupons, and putting in my coupon box my new ones. The papers this week have about 5 inserts in them. Two papers were given to me and I bought one for $2.12. We got our menu done for the week and managed to get the shopping done. Here is the run down what I spent today!

CVS:
I spent $7.23
I received some great coupons via email from CVS that expired today. I bought 2 tubes of Colgate toothpaste and 2 good size bottles of Aveeno lotion. Our youngest son suffers from severe excema and Aveeno is the best products for his skin. Unfortunately it is ridiculously expensive. So I was psyched when I got a $3.00 off $15.00 purchase of Aveeno product coupon from CVS. I combined this with 2 $2.00 off coupons from Aveeno. I printed two $1.50 off colgate coupons from CVS and I had $1.00 off manufacture coupons....making the toothpaste free! So for the price of one bottle of Aveeno I got two bottles plus 2 tubes of toothpaste. Oh, and $2.00 in ECBS

Krogers:spent $38.42 and my reciept says I saved $38.05 with my coupons! That is a 50% savings!

If you live in my area (WV) then watch for these coupon deals.

Softsoap $1.00 minus .35 cents doubled to .70 cents off----final price .30 cents

Cottenell Bath tissue--4 pack is .99 cents. If you have the 50 cents from last weeks paper--they will double..you get some free tp!

They also have their Campell Chunky Healthy Request soups on sale for $1.25 a can and there are 50/off 2 coupons out there--making your soup .75 cents a can. Not bad when you make one of your meals this week Soup/Grilled cheese night!

I bought lots of poultry and had some special coupons from Krogers off my meat purchases. I also picked up some milk, bread, and fresh fruit.

I will need to make a return later this week to Walmart(returning a gift) and then plan to purchase some juice and snack foods from Aldi's which is near Walmart.

I withdrew $250.00 last week on pay day for our groceries. I feel confident in saying I am nearly done till next pay day and I have $47.00 dollars left! I could easily see 25 being snowflaked---barring no unforseen issues.

If I have money left over before the next paycheck...it will be snowflaked!

Here is our Menu just so you know we are actually eating!

Mon- Meatloaf/mashed potatoes/broccoli
Tue- Sweet/n/Sour chicken/rice and veggies
Wed- Pork Roast/potatoes/carrots/rolls
Thur--dinner at grandparents --turkey
Friday-soup/grilled cheese
Saturday-Lasagna/salad
Sunday-leftovers

And one more "Ooooo Yah!" Our water bill came and it is $10.00 less than usual! I guess our tightening up on shower times and baths is paying off!

What was your Sunday like?? Did you clip away too?

Free Stuff is Awesome!

2009-01-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a no spend day, however, today I spent a little cash. I bought 2 bottles of Pantene shampoo/conditioner and 2 bottles of Dawn from CVS. My OOP (out of pocket) was $3.63. However, I got back $2.50 in ECBs. Earlier this week --before I started the "no spend days" I spent around $5.00 and got 2 bottles of Dawn, 4 bottles of Pantene, and 4 cans of tuna. I really love the deals you can snag at CVS. I am psyched because Pantene is my favorite hair product and I have enough to last me a good 3 months! I am just real careful not to overspend at CVS. I have been doing quite well over the last few months staying within my cash budget of $300 every 2 weeks. When the cash is love...even if it is a heck of deal I won't get it.

But the cool event today was getting this New TV!

Well, new to us! My mom bought my dad a 47 inch flat screen TV and they decided to give us their old 52 inch TV. As we sat tonight watching a movie on it, my husband said it was extra cool since we didn't spend a dime on it!

The other expenses came to about $9.00. We splurged on cheeseburgers and fries from Wendy's. We spent more time than we expected to in transporting the TV to our house. So dinner was going to be late if we had stuck to our menu. But it came out of my cash and I have plenty to make it through next week's meals.

Boxes! Boxes! Everywhere!

2009-01-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

If you are like me....you find yourself with a bunch of boxes after the holidays. I have a tip for what you can do with those boxes. Of course, you can recycle them, but I put them to work for me first. Here is how!

I set aside some of them to use for things I sell on ebay. These can make great inexpensive packing boxes. Selling stuff on ebay can be an easy way to add to your snowflake pile.

I use the giant boxes to pack with my yard sale stuff. I have a corner in my basement that is designated as my "yard sale pile." As I occasionally purge various parts of my home...closets, cabinets, junk drawers etc. I find stuff I no longer use, kids have outgrown, or stuff that have simply lost their appeal to me. I take this stuff to my corner of the basement and pack them in the boxes. Come this spring, I will bring the boxes up to our garage and unpack for our annual yard sale.

I detest clutter, so having the items packed away nicely in boxes just makes my basement look nicer while waiting for sale day.

Of course, before I took over the boxes they served as fort barricades for the Nerf War Zone that took place in our playroom. Boys! Gotta love'm!