The Busy Month of December

This was a very busy month. I haven't had anytime to write on this blog. I thought the overtime was over, but it wasn't. I had to work 50 hour weeks all this month. Plus with family Christmas dinners and Christmas shopping, I have stayed very busy.

As for Christmas. We had a budget and stuck to it. We had saved the money for Christmas over the coarse of the year. To cut back costs on gifts, my wife and I didn't get each other anything. Also we didn't exchange gifts with my sister and her husband, we just got presents for each others kids.

We also used online purchases to stay away for large crowds after thanksgiving. Most stores offered free shipping on orders over a $100, the weekend after thanksgiving. We also got a lot of gift cards this year. Some stores offered to send you the gift card, inside of a personalised Christmas card for free.

Our Christmas was paid for in cash, and that makes it a success. Last Christmas we weren't on the Dave Ramsey plan, we weren't saving, and we weren't living on a budget. We had a lot of stress last year. This holiday there may have been a little stress, but none of it was about money.

11 months on the Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover

November is over. It seems that all the overtime I was getting has come to an end. It was nice to get extra money, but its nice working a 40 hour week also. With all the extra hours at work, we still haven't got our addition insulated all the way yet. Now we are working less, we will have to get it finished up.

No big events or changes in the budget for November. So when the month was over we paid $2750 extra on our debt. And I just realized with have crossed the half was point. We have paid off over half our debt. I think I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

My car is definitely a beater now.

Last week my car rolled over 200,000 miles. That has to make my car a beater, right? I bought it in Feburary of 2000 new. Back when I was young and had a totally different outlook on money. Today my view of cars and money is totally different. I don't think I'll buy another new car again.

I have to admit I do hate my car, but I don't hate it enough to buy another car yet. The car gets great gas mileage and is in great shape. Over the coarse of the last year besides oil changes I probably spent only $600 on maintenance on it. That is less that 2 car payments. That is way cheaper than buying a new car.

After we are passed baby step 3, we'll save up money and buy a used car to replace my old beater. But until that day comes, my beater will do just fine.

October summary

October was a busy month. I worked lots of overtime at work. My wife and I also took a week of vacation to work on the house. I get paid for my vacation but my wife doesn't. So the extra overtime helped make up for the week she didn't work.

We spent a good bit of money on the house in October. We sort of divided the extra money in the budget between debt and home improvement. When the month was over we paid an extra $817 on our debt.

This years goals

Over 9 months ago the wife and I started our journey to financial peace. Before we started in January, I posted a list of goals I wanted to complete. We have been focusing mostly on our written budget and paying extra on our debt. But our goals have more than just those two things. And I know I need to just tackle some of the other goals and get them done. There is only little more than 2 months left in this year, and we need to start moving toward the other goals.

2010 Goals.

1. Have a written budget each month.
2. Use the Envelope system to help save and curb spending.
3. Budget Home Improvement costs and not let our house control our money
4. Have a “will” written
5. Get term life on my wife and additional on myself.
6. Have my Wife’s name put on our property.
7. Start a debt snowball rolling!

I'd say goals 1, 2, 3, & 7 are on track on doing good.

Goal #5, we got insurance on my wife, but not the addition on myself yet.

As for 4 & 6, we haven't don't anything but talk about them.

So the first one of those, is get some extra life insurance on me. We have talked about this probably every month since we started. We have priced it online. We just haven't got it done. This should be the first action taken

Second, having a written "WILL". We need to get this done after the life insurance, and also look into having a trust setup for our kids for the life insurance.

Third, we need ask a lawyer if we need to put my wife's name on the property we own, or if a WILL is OK.

Now I just need to get off my but and complete my goals.

Is the month over already? Time to think about christmas

The month as just blown by. I've been working everyday, 12 hours a day. I've worked 18 days in a row so far. These extra hours will may some really good pay checks. We needed the extra money to fix my car and buy material to finish the outside of our house.

A few days ago, we decided to do our Christmas budget, so I asked my wife put one together. I suggested we try something different this year. We have twice as many people to buy for on my side of the family than my wife's side. I have 3 Christmas's on my side, and my wife just has 1 Christmas on her side. So I suggested to wife, that we should spend the same amount of money on each side of the family. It didn't seem fair to have to always spend more money on my side of the family. We didn't budget any money for me and my wife to get each other anything. Maybe when we get out of debt, we will get each other Christmas presents.

After making out our budget for Christmas, we realized our gift money is going to be short. We have been saving the same amount of money each month to our gift fund. It has worked well for all the birthdays we give presents toward. But it seems like we needed to save a little bit more each month. We will probably adjust it a little and hope we come out better next year. For this year we decided to add some of our extra money this month into our gift fund.

Also we had enough extra at the end of the month to pay an extra payment of $1030.00 on our debt.

Another 84 hour week

Just finished another 84 hour week. This is starting to take a toll on me. I am stressed out and tired. Hopefully I have less than a week left of these long hours. I have a week of vacation in 2 weeks, I can't wait for a week off.

Working hard.

I just finished working an 84 hour week. I am working seven days a week and 12 hours a day for a 2 week period, maybe longer. This is good considering it cost nearly $600 for my car to get fixed. It was in worse shape than I thought. But now it seems to drives real smooth.

The extra money is good, but I don't have much time at home, when I work this many hours. I'm looking forward to when I get a day off. But I'm looking forward to the day I get out of debt, even more.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong

I week ago my car started sounding horrible. It seems to have a bad wheel bearing on the passenger side front. At least I hope is just a wheel bearing. My car will finally go to the local auto shop in a few days. Luckily we have a third vehicle. Its an 18 year old truck that we just for hauling stuff.

I got in the truck to go to work and it seems to be not firing on one cylinder. The truck shakes pretty good whens it idling and has kind of a chugging sound. It probably needs new spark plugs, and a distributor cap. But I've been driving it everyday anyway. We have some money saved for auto repairs but probably not enough to cover both vehicles.

Last weekend we used the holiday weekend to work on our house. We started putting on the siding on the back of the house. The siding has been in the garage since last summer, when we put the siding on the other sides of the house. We were able to get the siding up to the second floor. I was pretty happy with what we got done. Afterwards we measured the rest of the area left to cover. It was around 800 square feet, and we only have about 570 square feet left. We are going to have to order some more siding. I really want to have the outside of the house done before winter.

So these are expenses that we are going to have to try to fit in our budget. We should be able to do it without a problem. But I'm not sure it we'll have much extra for paying on our debt.

2nd Debt Paid off!!!

This is the end of our eighth month on the Dave Ramsey's Total money makeover plan. And Today we have just paid off our 2nd Debt. We started with a total of five different Debts Ranging from $7,341 to $13,548 (not counting our house), totaling $49,705.46. Today our debt total is nearly $30,400. Which means we have paid off about $19,300 since we started. We are getting so close to the halfway mark.

Luckily we have been working extra hours and it has been helping speed the process along. We seem to be a couple months ahead of schedule. I hope we can keep up this pace.

This month we paid an extra $1690.13 on our debt.

What won't you sacrifice?

I was listening to Dave Ramsay's Podcast this morning from a couple days ago. One thing he said got me thinking. It was a statement about reaching goals. It kinda went something like this.... most people think about "what can I do", or "what can I sacrifice" to reach a goal. And that these things are the Key to reaching your goal. But the thing that will keep you from reaching your goal is The things your NOT willing to give up or sacrifice. Cause those things are the opposing forces that make goals harder to reach or work against it.

This got me thinking. And I thought of this scenario.

So if a person is willing to work more to pay off debt, pick up an extra job. He is willing to sacrifice time with his family to reach this goal. But what if, to answer the other question of "what will the person NOT sacrifice?" is keeping a new vehicle and the payment instead of selling it off. This is the opposing force keeping you from you goal.

Also, in this scenario what is more important to the person, time with family or the new vehicle. It would seem the new vehicle once you step back and look at it.

So what about my goal?

What is the opposing forces to my goal of getting out of debt? What are these things that I won't give up that are keeping me from reaching my debt free goal, or slowing it down?

1. Not completely stopping our home improvement project.

2. Not selling our camper which is our largest single debt.

3. Not stopping contributions to my 401k.

4. Not stopping saving money for vacation fund.

These things I won't give up. At least right now. We are still on track to pay off all our debt in two years or less. If something changes, we will have to consider doing these things to keep us on track. And after looking at these things, I realize they do represent are good portion of our monthly budget. And if we did all these things we could be out of debt much faster.

So ask yourself, "What am I NOT willing to give up?"

My wife is now insured.

My wife works part time as an RN at a community hospital. For us it seems to work well because, the pay is good and she picks which days she wants to work. She doesn't get any benefits though. No 403B or pension plan. No health, dental, disability or life insurance. We had health and dental on my wife, through my plan at work, but only a $30,000 life insurance through my work's plan. That might be enough to bury her.

We've known for a while we needed to get some term life insurance on her. So I decided to try out Select quote online. The process took way longer than I would have suspected.

First we filled out a questionnaire online that took about 15 minutes. The next day a sales representative calls us and asked the same questions again. Then he set up an appointment for a person to come to our house and take blood, and do a medical exam. We had to wait a couple weeks for the person come to examine my wife. We had a little trouble finding a day when both of their schedules were free. Then it took a couple weeks after that for the blood results and for the insurance company to finalize the paperwork.

The total process took about a month long. Finally when we saw the money deducted from our checking account we knew she was insured. We got $500,000 of term life insurance for the next twenty years for $19.69 a month.

We've been putting this off for a while. Glad to get it done.

It kinda feels like of Financial peace.

As we have been going down the road to financial peace. We have been slowly increasing the amount of money in our normal checking account. Most of our bills come at the beginning of the month, we only have a couple that are toward the end. So when the month starts we need a lot of money to throw at bills. A couple months ago we got our account to where it starts the beginning of the month with $2,000.

This month we still haven't got paid yet, but all our bills are paid. We built the account up so we would have enough to pay most of the bills we have in a month. It is such a wonderful feeling, to pay the bills and know we have the money to pay them. We don't have to worry about, what weeks we get paid, and paying just a few bills, and waiting for the next paycheck to pay more bills. We start out the month and pay all the bills we can find. This is my mind is like having financial peace. Not having to worry having the money for the bills. Maybe it like having a larger emergency fund. Whatever you want to call it, it gives me a little less to worry about.

Also and the end of the month, whatever we have in our account over $2,000, we pay extra on debt. Our system is working out pretty good.

A six paycheck month

My wife and I get paid every two weeks on the same weeks. July was one of those magic months where we each got 3 paychecks. So we had extra money to play with in our budget last month. We used some of the extra money to replace my wife's vacuum and to buy a new back door for the house. The rest we paid on debt.

Also the weeks I wasn't on vacation I was working lots of extra hours. The overtime is coming every week now. Earlier in the year it was harder to get extra hours. Now it seems like I can work extra everyday. So the paychecks I got were bigger than usual. So July being a six paycheck month, really helped us work toward our debt free goal.

So when July was done. We paid an extra $2,288.50 on our debt.

Vacations - and we paid cash for them

We took two vacation this month. First the Wife and I took a trip alone for our 5 year anniversary. We drove out west to see the sights. We went to 3 national parks and to Las Vegas.

Ways we saved money on our first trip was.

We brought food and drinks in a cooler. We ate this food the while driving and while we were in the national parks to eat. This really cut down on the eating out. We also used in the motel rooms to grab a snack or eat. We used air miles to pay for hotel stays. The national parks were only $10 to $25 to get into. We spent about 6 to 8 eight hours in each park. (Arches, Canyon lands, and Grand canyon nation parks.) In Las Vegas we got discount tickets on the strip at vendors to a few things. We used our blow money we had saved for most of our expenses. We used the vacation money to fund the gas.

Our second vacation was a short trip with the kids. We took the camper and stayed at a campground near a theme park. We took one day to go to the theme park and play all day. The great thing about camping is we just load food from our house and we don't eat out a lot. Which makes it cheaper.

Both vacations we paid for in cash. We had been saving money every month for vacation. Overall a success.

6 Months on the plan.

I've been busy lately work a lot of extra hours. It is looking like I will have a lot of over time throughout the rest of the year. That is a plus. So hopefully it will help us payoff our debt quicker.

This month was our worst month so far on paying extra. We only paid $590 extra. Trying to balance finishing the outside of the house and paying off debt has been difficult this last month.

Over all we have been successful in cash flowing home improvement and still paying extra on debt.

I am tired!!!

This month was looking like it was going to be an even lower income month, than last month. I was afraid we wouldn't have much money left over to pay extra on debt. So I've been looking for some extra work. And, I finally got it this week. I worked over 3 days this week, and ended up picking up Saturday also. I ended up with about 16 extra hours this week.

The side effect is I am beat. I keep finding myself falling asleep watching TV. I think its nap time.

House insurance bill is here!

We just got our House insurance bill. As you can see June/July would have usually been a tough time. With House insurance and property taxes, we would be working more trying to get money to pay them on time. But this time, I just got out the check book and wrote the check. It feels good know we have to the money for it.

This is starting to feel like financial peace. Not worrying about the big bills. Saving up for them over the course of the year. And having the money ready for when the bill comes.

This may sound weird to some people, me talking about how this feels good to save up for bills. Some of you may already be doing this, or always have. But we didn't used to save up for these bills. We would remember a month before we got the bill and would start working more and trying to watch what we spent. We really didn't have any plan. But, this year is so much better. Saving a little every month through the year is so much better.

Property Taxes

We just got our Property Tax Bill. The way our Property tax works, is it is split into two payments. One is due in July and the second is due in September. Usually we would scramble to gather up the money for the first payment and had two months to save up for the second payment. This bill would cause an emergency in our finances. In the past we had some years where we barely came up with the money for the taxes.

But not this year. We are on the Dave Ramsey plan! We have been saving every month since January for our property taxes. At the end of May we had $1500 saved up. When we got the tax bill this week, it totaled $1527. So with the money we budgeted this month we have enough to pay it all at once. So I did.

We had a 6 month period to save for our property taxes, but now we have a 12 month period to save for next years. So the amount we save will be cut in half and it will free up some money in our budget. That is always a good thing.

Another month completed

May is over and another months budget is complete. May was our lowest income month to date. Compared to April, which was our highest income month this year, May wasn't even half of April's income. The reason May was the lowest month is because we haven't been working extra. We saved money to work on the house in April, and in May we stayed busying working on the house.

We have been replacing the roof over the Deck and downstairs bathroom. We also tore down the old garage behind the house. This has been taking up all our extra time. Plus is it the season for summer sports and there is always ball games.

Even though we didn't work extra , we were still able to pay on our debt a total of $625 Extra.

A smaller Envelope system

Our envelope system started out with many envelopes and has changed through the months to a lot less envelopes. I will say the envelope system works and helps with overspending. But some envelopes only get used once or twice a year. So now we keep that money in a savings account and keep track how much money is saved for each category.

Our envelope system now only consists of "Groceries and Household items", "Recreation & entertainment", "Clothing", "Gift Giving (birthdays & Christmas)", & "Home improvement". We also cash out some blow money and split it up between us, and we each have an envelope of our extra blow money that we are saving.

The Categories we save in a savings account for are "Auto Service", "Pet Care", "Home Improvement", "House Insurance" & "Property Taxes".

"Home improvement we use in both right now. We use the savings for large purchases, but use the envelope system for when go shopping for small things to keep the spending down. This envelope may go away when it is empty.

One category we should we probably save up for is "Medical". This is one category we have failed to save in. We should probably try to save up at least $200 to $500 dollars. Anything over that could considered an emergency, and then the emergency fund will kick in.

House Insurance

Our House insurance yearly fee is coming up. Which we have been saving for. It hit me the other day that we have added on to our house but haven't increased the insurance. So I called our state farm agent, and he came out and measured the house.

Last year we had replacement cost insurance and it was to the value of $115,000. It had a $500 deductible and its annual fee was $700 dollars. After he measured the house, the replacement cost was either $220,000 or $236,000, using two different calculation methods. I told the insurance agent to use the $220,000. The increase in the replacement cost caused the annual fee to go up to $1,500. Luckily I remembered the insurance lesson in Financial peace university. More risk equals lower payment.

So I asked how much would the payment be it we raised the deductible to $1000. With a higher deductible the annual fee was only $915. This was definitely a winner. In the first year, if there are no claims, I'll be money ahead.

In the end, my house now has double the insurance amount and it only raised my annual fee $215 dollars.

An April to remember

Well April is over, and it was the highest income month of all. Mostly due to annual bonus and selling my Harley. Our expenses weren't as bad as we thought they'd be. The SUV repair and my son's braces were both less than we expected. Thank god!

We also had my wife's and my son's birthdays. But with our "Gift" Envelope (for birthdays and Christmas) we had more than enough money for both their birthday presents. Two birthdays in the same month, and it wasn't an emergency. All of this saving has really lowered the stress in our household. Just having the money when we need it has given me financial peace.

Overall, for the month of April, we did a lot of saving and paying off debt. We were able to save back a large amount of money for home improvement and future car repairs. We also paid an extra $3936.27 on our debt, and our first debt was paid off. This was definitely our best month yet.

We Paid off our First Debt

We have just paid off our 2003 Ford Expedition. We started our Total Money Makeover on January 1st, and had 23 Payments left to pay on the SUV. We have now just paid it off in 4 months. It was our smallest debt, but our largest payment. We now have 4 debts left to pay off. Three 401k loans that we took out to add-on to the house. and a camper loan.

It feels great to have the SUV paid off. All of our hard work and determination is paying off. I am so glad to be on the road to financial peace. Hopefully the we can keep this pace up, and pay off one of the 401k loans in a few months.

I sold my Harley

I just sold my Harley the other day. I've had it for the last 6 years. It took me a while to decide to sell it. I just wasn't getting enough use out of it to justify keeping it. Plus it was always in the way and taking up space in the garage. Also, being on the Dave Ramsey plan, it was starting to look more like a pile of cash than a motorcycle. So I bit the bullet an sold it. Now that cash will help drive us down the road to financial peace.

It's Bonus Time, But Murphy wants his share.

The company I work for just paid us our bonus, based on how the company did on goals it had for profit, safety, reliability, quality, etc. We got about 2/3 of the maximum possible payout. It was a good bonus. But, it seems like every time we get extra money, Something happens. Murphy's law trying to discourage us. But its not going to work. We are sticking with it. I really thought we might get the car paid off this month, but Murphy dropped by for a visit.

We have two large expenses we will have to pay this month. The first expense is the SUV. The exhaust is leaking around the exhaust manifold, and it is sounding more like a diesel truck. Not sure how much it will cost to fix it, but we budgeted back $400. The Second expense is going to be dental work for my son. He has an under bite, and has to have braces to fix it. The good thing is, that the dental insurance actually covers %50 of the cost. We are going to pay our portion up front now, since we have the money, instead of doing a payment plan.

We've had to redo the budget a few times now. The money we were going to pay on debt is being slowly redistributed to other expenses. So I guess we'll wait and see how it all turns out. As for Paying off the car, it might have to wait for next month.

Our First Vacation on a Budget

We started saving money for Vacations back in January. We talked with the kids and decided on two small family trips. We made out a budget for each trip early in the year. We should have enough saved by July, for these two small family trips, and still have some left over. We may take a small trip in our camper with whatever money is left over. We were able to make the reservation for the first trip a month ago.

We finally took our first small vacation a week ago. We took with us the amount of cash we budgeted to spend on eating out, games, and entertainment. Our destination was a indoor water park for two nights. There was enough to do, that we kept busy the entire time.

The hotel room had a microwave and a fridge. We put cans of soda and bottles of water in the fridge to save on drinks. We also ordered a pizza one day and were able to heat up the left over pizza later. We could have saved more money by eating cheaper and using the microwave more. But we had budgeted a certain amount for eating, and it was a vacation. So we spent what we had budgeted and ate at the buffet in the hotel a few times.

It was only a three day/ two night vacation, but we enjoyed the weekend. Since we paid for this we money we saved, it didn't impact this months budget and we won't get a large credit card bill after wards. This mini vacation won't come back to haunt us later.

March's budget summary

March was our highest income month so far. We got some extra income last month that really helped. We also picked up some extra hours at work, which added more. With extra income came extra spending. We redid our budget a few times during the month. We were able to get a few auto expenses out of the way. Camper axles were straightened, vehicles got there oil changed, and new windshield wiper blades were put on. We also budgeted $300 for home improvement to finish the entryway. We also saved back more money than previous months toward our vacation fund.

We also put more money back for recreation and dining, so we could do a little more with our kids. But a side effect was, our auto fuel expenses went over budget. By spending more, we ended up spending even more. This is an effect we will have to remember in the future.

After all the extra expenses, we still had $1200 extra. We applied that to our smallest debt, our car loan.

So far, we started in January with a car loan, a camper loan, and 3 - 401k loans. Our total debt (not including mortgage) was 49,705.46.

Today, April 1st 2010, we have 43,446.32. That is 6893.20 paid off in 3 months.

Our total money makeover thus far.

We've been doing a written budget and using an envelope system for two and half months now. I was really worried at the beginning, that my wife would end up hating the system. The fact that there were limits on everything to do with money. We had never really had limits before. We paid all our bills, and what money we had left we just bought what we wanted to. We ate out frequently, took kids to movies, and was in the middle of a large addition on our house that we were paying for as we went.

Now we only eat out a couple times a month, and not the same places that we went before. Good places to eat, but cost less. I think we have gone to one movie since we started our money makeover. And the renovation on the house has slowed down considerably. There are some weeks were we can't work on the house, because we have to wait for next months budget.

On the flip side, we have paid extra on our debts. Our bank accounts are 3 times larger due to money saved for vacation, house insurance, property taxes, gift giving, clothes, and future Pet Medicine. Expenses we might have had to scramble to get the money for if we weren't saving. Our Total Debt (that includes the house) has changed $4500 in the first two months.

We each have our own Blow money, so we can purchase items gilt free, and not have to convince the other to buy something. I personally take my lunch to work, and try not spend my blow money on sodas, candy, and chips at work. I have been saving back over half my blow money every month so that the child inside me can buy a toy some day. Not sure what my wife does with hers, but that's not my concern.

I asked my wife the other day what she thought of the budget and our new money system. She said that she doesn't mind it a bit. She said it hasn't been that big of a change for her. After talking with her, I feel like she is happy with the process, and realizes the benefits we are reaping from it. For example: She said she went clothes shopping for the first time since we started our budget the other day. She used our envelope on clothes that had been building up money. She spent $180 on clothes and it was the first time she didn't feel guilty for spending money on clothes for herself. She said it felt good to clothes shop without guilt or worry.

So the process is working good for us, and we are going to stick to it.

The Camper is Fixed

We have a travel trailer that we spend a lot of weekends in when its not winter. But we found out last year that the camper had a bent axle, when we had a tire blow out on vacation. We had to buy two new tires on our trip back from Florida. We knew we had to get it fixed this year or we'd be buying more tires. Luckily this month we had some extra income so we budgeted for the camper to be fixed. Plus the weather is getting nicer and I can't wait to go RVing.

I dropped the camper off on Sunday. I knew that one axle was bent and thought we had one bad wheel bearing. Monday the garage mechanics found that a brake drum had fallen apart on the inside, and that both axles were bent. Monday they bent both axles back, and today they fixed the brake drum. The total cost was still less than 50% of what we had budgeted.

I had been dreading this day for a while, and it ended up a lot easier and cheaper than I expected.

The best part was, when my wife went to pay the bill, my father in law drove her and pulled the camper back to our house. And it was sitting in our yard when I got off work....It don't get any easier than that.

Kid's Commission

We added a category called "Kid's commission" in the budget last month. We also opened a savings account for each of the kids last month. At the beginning of the year, we let the kids know if they want money all they have to do is ask for a job, and we'll give them one. We were paying out so much money out of our blow money we decided to make a category. We pay the kids by the hour. The only catch is, They have to put half of what they earn into their savings account. And the other half they get to have to spend. If its been a while since they asked for a job we'll give them one anyway. Also if we need help with something we'll make them help and pay them for it also. But they are learning that if they want money they have to work for it. So now after the first couple months, if there is something they really want to buy and want the money fast, they will ask for a job everyday until they have enough money for it.

The eleven year old, has also been searching out alternative means to make money, so he has been trying to sell some old toys to his friends. He was able sell a few of the toys and took that money to buy a toy he's been wanting from another friend. He is learning how to make deals at an early age.

Our kids may not know it, but they are on their way to Financial Peace also.

End of the Second month on a budget!

Well February is over, and overall it was a successful month. My wife and I are still working more, by picking up extra hours at jobs. We also got our federal tax return at the end of the month. So at the end of the month we brought home an extra $1060.

But we did go over budget on a few categories. Auto service, Medical expenses, and Entertainment/recreation. We have gone over on Medical and Auto service for the last two months. We have decided we are underfunding these two categories and we need to raise them in next months budget. As for entertainment, we had an event coming up in march we had planned to buy tickets for, but forgot to add them in the budget.

After the month was over we had an extra money to pay on our car.
Extra Paid on Debt this month = $650

Self Auto Repair

The rear brakes on my wife's car needed replaced. I ignored the problem to long, or just ignored my wife's comments about it. Anyway by the time I reacted, the rotors needed replaced also. This could cost more than $300 at a repair shop. With only $80 in the auto repair budget, that would blow the blow the budget out of the water.

When I was in high school I worked at a auto repair garage for 2 years, and I've always work in the industrial maintenance field repairing equipment since college. So I good with tools and know how to change breaks. I probably put it off, because I work on stuff all day, and didn't want to do it at home went I got off. But putting this repair probably tripled the price.

So we went and bought rotors and brake pads for $128.07. And this gave me the opportunity to show my wife how to change disc brakes. She didn't get her hands too dirty, she operated the floor Jack and handed me the tools and parts. But she saw the process.

In the end we still broke the budget, but we damped the blow, so it wasn't that bad.

Dishwasher breakdown

At the beginning of the month, our dishwasher broke. The top washer/sprayer(3rd level) assembly fell off. We decided to just wash the dishes by hand for a while. The problem with that is, my wife hates washes dishes. After a week or so, I starting feeling like my sex appeal seems to trend with the amount of dishes I do. So getting this problem being solved is going up in priority. When I finally go around to researching the problem. Buying a new dishwasher was out of the question. We didn't need a big expense while working our debt snowball. So we looked for parts online. We found a site appliance parts pros. They had the diagrams with parts break downs and actual pictures of the parts. We ordered the part standard shipping and it still arrived in 1 day. My wife even put the part in while I was a work. See, I told you she hated doing dishes.

The total Price with shipping $10.87!!! That is alot better than +$300 on a dishwasher.

Home Improvement for Valentines day

My Wife came up with the idea, instead of giving valentines gifts, we would take money budgeted for the "gift given" fund and put it into "home improvement" fund. To help finish the front entry of the house. Last month we had $100 budgeted for home improvement. We finished the drywall and painted primer on the walls and ceiling. The room is a blank slate.

With our changes to the budget we aside $300 this month for Home improvement. The biggest part of this project is going to be the floor. We decided on ceramic tile. We needed to find the right tile at the right price. Luckily we found a lot of discontinued tile at Lowes. We were able to buy the tile, with 20-30 extra for mistakes, and stay in budget. We bought the ceramic tile, cement board, 200 pounds of thin-set adhesive, 2 gallons of wall paint, paint rollers, and painter's tape, all for $271.21. Under budget!!!

Luckily we had all the tools we needed for laying ceramic tile.

We got all walls painted, and all the ceramic tile laid. We have 30 tile to take back to Lowes and one bag of thin-set mortar to take back. That will be about $30 dollars back, and will hopefully be about enough money to cover the cost of grout and sealer.

As for next month... we'll be working on molding, baseboard, door trim, and closet door.

Filing Income Taxes

It is that time of the year again. And I have to admit, I am not the best person at taxes. But, I used to do my taxes in the past. After we got married we started going to H & R block. Last year it cost us $172 dollars. But we are on a budget and in no hurry for the tax return. So we did our taxes ourselves this year. And we mailed them in a couple days ago.

We are only going to get back a little over $400.

But I realized I need to keep better records. Since we have been working on the house. I need to keep all the receipts for exterior doors & windows, and insulation for IRS Form 5695. I couldn't find any of them. We could have had 30% of that money credited back on our taxes. That was hundreds of dollars back we could have had.

Also I pay my medical bills, but don't have any receipts. We need to start requesting receipts for my Medical bills, and File them away. Its hard telling how many thousands of dollars we paid out this year with my knee surgery and other medical expenses. But you need receipts to itemize.

So this year we will do better, keeping records, for more deductions next year.

First Month on a budget is complete.

Our first month on a budget has come to a close. As expected we have went over budget on a few categories. We went over budget on spending by $225. But the good thing is we worked more, and brought in an extra $1600. And all the extra money goes on the debt snowball.

Categories went over on.

Phone Bills - Not over by much, long distance charges got us.

Groceries - We forget about paying for school lunches. So we decided to use the Groceries money for this. We will budget more for this next month.

Car Service - This category builds up over time, and we didn't have any money in it before the month started. We had to pay for auto license plate registration. And we use this category for this expense. This fee was the only expense we had in this category and it put us over budget.

Auto Fuel - We went over by about 1 to 2 tank fulls. We go through a lot of gas since we both have 30+ mile drives to work. This is over probably due to the added work and is acceptable.

Medical bills - We had more bills come than we expected. Medical bills seem to be for visits a month or two ago, and are hard to remember. Plus we all had our teeth cleaned.

Gas & Electric utilities - We have had some very cold spells this winter. We will need to budget more next month.


Saving for yearly expenses

Using our budget we were able to save for vacation, property taxes, house insurance, and Pet care. But no auto service was saved since we went over budget.


1st Debt snowball Payment is......Payments + $1500 extra! we had budgeted for $125, so the extra work is paying off.

Overall the Budget was very close, we will make adjustments for next month. Hopefully we'll get to work as much extra was we did this month.

Activities that don't cost much money...

Our family is used to going out on the weekends. We are used to eating out, going to movie theaters, shopping, etc. It wasn't uncommon for us to spend a few hundred dollars on the weekend. But we have totally turned that around. We only set aside $100 for recreation and dining. So we went out to eat a nice meal for my birthday and we went and had breakfast the morning we went to go early Vote at the courthouse.

So we have been forced to come up with alternative activities to keep us busy. Plus it is winter, and cold outside, which keeps the activities limited to mostly inside. We have played video games together, and had Wii competitions. We gone and visited family on the weekends. We have popped popcorn and had a movie night at home. And the Game of "Uno" is always a family favorite.

This weekend my wife is working, and I was sick of being inside the house. So Me and boys met with my Dad and went and shot .22 caliber pistols and rifles. I had a few hundred rounds in the gun cabinet, so it only cost a couple gallons of gas. My Dad built a fire to help keep us warm. And the boys had a blast shooting guns. They took turns shooting for 2 hours. They had a blast, as did I and my dad.

Their are so many activities you can do outside, I can't wait for winter to be over.

Halfway thru first Month on written budget......

Were are Halfway Through January. We are sticking to the budget. My Birthday was this last week. So we planned to go out this weekend to eat out for the first time this month. I was looking forward to it for a while. But after we got there, my son spilled his entire glass of lemon aide, switch spilled on my lap. Which ruined my experience at the restaurant. This got me Thinking.....

When we plan out something which should end with a desirable result. We are very disappointed when the result is different than what we planned. This is probably one reason why people give up on a budget. They plan it out and put it work, but something happens and the budget breaks. Since we are so disappointed that the plan didn't work we just say "forget it, I'm done". But this is just life. Just brush it off and say "it will end up be better next time". Don't give up when disappointment strikes.

So far we are doing great this month. My wife and I have picked up any extra work we could. We have probably added an extra $1000 to our budget. We have budgeted $400 for Groceries and household items. So far we have spent around $210 dollars and I just went shopping 2 days ago. I was afraid we would go over budget on this, but it seems to be on track.

With extra work we should be on track for a large snowball debt payment by the end of the month.