Battling Pessimism

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.

Enjoying the family:)

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

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?

Quicken?

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?

Selling gold

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.

Getting the itch!

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!

The Jones' Syndrome

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?

Taxes efiled!

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!

Help me understand the stimulus?

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?