Showing posts with label debt goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt goals. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Yeah for the bonus $
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!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Say a prayer!
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!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Savings is up!
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!
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!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Only a week into March
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!
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!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
March Goals
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 :)
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 :)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
State tax money here!
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 :)
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 :)
Monday, February 22, 2010
Ebay You Rock!
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!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Baby Step 1!
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!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Canceling our vacation
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!
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!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Crunching the numbers
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!
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!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Cleaning House
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!
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!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Good News and Bad News
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??
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??
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Ray of Sunshine
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!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Numbers
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!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Were Back :(
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 :)
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sleepless night
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.
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.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Nothing much to report.
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!
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!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
2009 Goals
Are debts in general are 2 credit cards ( a small kohls card, and a mastercard) a student loan, a family loan and two car payments 7,000 for one $13,000 for the other.
1) Have an Emergency fund of $1000 --after CC's are paid I want this to go to 2000 (we currently have 700 in this so this will happen in January)
2) Pay off Kohls CC-$200-this should be done in January
3) Pay off Mastercard-$4,000---this should be done with tax money
4) Pay off my mom/dad's loan (long story, but we owe them $1,000--this will be paid off with tax money)
3) Pay off student loan or car--we owe about the same on both $7,000 so when we get to this on the snowball we will look more closely at which one should go first...but one will definatley be gone by the end of 2009.
4)In general I hope to have our debts below $20,000 all together--$15,000 would be awesome but medical bills usually squash us! Plus homeschooling costs for us are around 1500-2000.
5) I hope to lower my food budget from $600 a month to $500.
6) Lower general expenses--already hit a few of these--we lowered cable from extended to basic and our cell contracts are up the end of January...we don't intend to renew them. We are striving to lower our water bill, electric, and gas as much as possible.
We are not planning any vacations..we are going to an every other year plan for vacations. This past summer we went the beach so this year we plan to stay home. That will save us 2000 alone.
I am also really bad about household renovations. This year we are determined to do NOTHING to our house unless it is an emergency repair job. No painting, no redecorating, no nothing! This is where most of our debts have gone..we bought a fixer upper 5 years ago and we are still fixing it up! But this year it is going to stop! We have put in new electric, new water heater, new furnace, new air, new stove, new gas logs, new floors, new windows. So really the chance of anything breaking and needing repairs are pretty slim and likely covered under some sort of warranty.
Well I think that would be my pf goals for the year..what about you?
1) Have an Emergency fund of $1000 --after CC's are paid I want this to go to 2000 (we currently have 700 in this so this will happen in January)
2) Pay off Kohls CC-$200-this should be done in January
3) Pay off Mastercard-$4,000---this should be done with tax money
4) Pay off my mom/dad's loan (long story, but we owe them $1,000--this will be paid off with tax money)
3) Pay off student loan or car--we owe about the same on both $7,000 so when we get to this on the snowball we will look more closely at which one should go first...but one will definatley be gone by the end of 2009.
4)In general I hope to have our debts below $20,000 all together--$15,000 would be awesome but medical bills usually squash us! Plus homeschooling costs for us are around 1500-2000.
5) I hope to lower my food budget from $600 a month to $500.
6) Lower general expenses--already hit a few of these--we lowered cable from extended to basic and our cell contracts are up the end of January...we don't intend to renew them. We are striving to lower our water bill, electric, and gas as much as possible.
We are not planning any vacations..we are going to an every other year plan for vacations. This past summer we went the beach so this year we plan to stay home. That will save us 2000 alone.
I am also really bad about household renovations. This year we are determined to do NOTHING to our house unless it is an emergency repair job. No painting, no redecorating, no nothing! This is where most of our debts have gone..we bought a fixer upper 5 years ago and we are still fixing it up! But this year it is going to stop! We have put in new electric, new water heater, new furnace, new air, new stove, new gas logs, new floors, new windows. So really the chance of anything breaking and needing repairs are pretty slim and likely covered under some sort of warranty.
Well I think that would be my pf goals for the year..what about you?
Friday, December 26, 2008
New Year Goals
As you can tell from our ticker...our debts total $36,790. Our goal is to have it down to $25000 by June. This is very challenging and really quite dependent upon no major expenses popping up. As well as the lowering of some of our bills. The big killer for us in the new year is our medical stuff. We have $250 deductables for every family member. My kids get allergy shots weekly so they hit us with those deductables early on.
We have already kicked cable down from extended basic to basic. My husband wanted to get rid of it all together, but basic is only about 15 a month and I feel it is nice to have for the occasional sitters we have over....namely my dad who can't sit without having the remote in his hand. So we compromised and took it down to basic...that is about 25 channels. We know all about cancelcable.com, hulu and netflix so I realize almost all of those channels are accessible via internet. This may eventually go...we will see how gazelle intense we get!
We also will be kicking our cell phones plans out at the end of January...that is when our contracts are up!! Yeah! We both can not wait for that! That will put roughly $75 a month into our snowball!
Another factor that will play in helping us achieve this will be our tax return. We usually get between 7,000 and 9,000 back. I know we are idiots for having that much withheld, however, once we are debt free that will change! Right now, it seems like tax season always helps us out. The return comes in handy and we are just not diciplined enough to save it so we let the irs do it for us---yes, I know--INTREST FREE. I am sure Dave Ramsey would be saying "You are paying stupid tax."
The important thing is that we both agree this will change when we scream "We are Debt Free" WE WILL SCREAM THAT SOMEDAY! I just know it!
I am already dreaming of a massive yard sale this summer! I plan to sell everything but the kids! I hope to make them worry that they are next!
Another factor we have added to achieving this goal...and the most important added event.....is we are praying continually for God's help in specifically achieving this goal.
Jesus instructs us to pray specifically in John 14:12-14
"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me [1] anything in my name, I will do it."
So if you are on a journey to become debtfree....take time out of your busy life and simply pray for guidance and help specifically with this goal.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Rewarding ourselves
I love this idea on Bible MoneyMatters. They shared how they motivated themselves to save their 6 month expenses by saying at the end they could buy a 50inch plasma TV they wanted badly. I could see that motivating some people.
We had earlier this year nearly put ourselves in more debt by plunking down around 600on a Walmart Credit card for a flat screen TV for our bedroom. However, God was watching out for us and the TV we had picked was not available. This forced us to drive to another Walmart to look at their selections. On the nice drive we talked and realized we were crazy to put this on a card. So in the end we did not purchase the TV. We have never used this credit card and have nothing on it...I think we wish to keep it that way!
When the sales came around the day after Thanksgiving....I will admit we were tempted to use that card for the first time and buy ourselves a TV. But something kept pulling at our hearts not to do it.
I may show this idea to my husband tonight. Perhaps it could be our reward to give ourselves the TV we want in between babystep 2 and 3 in the spring of 2009. Of course, only if we have cash! But it would be a nice pat on the back and perhaps a motivational tool!
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