Monday, September 10, 2012

Baby Step 3 going slow.

August was a low income month.  The last budget we had with an income that was lower, was May of 2011.   We are used to having more money to save at the end of the month.  I find that it really bothered me that we could save very much. 

We did have one problem, the rear tires on my wifes SUV went flat.  The tires were wore through, and needed replaced.   So instead of saving for a vehicle we spent money on tires.

We were able to save for house insurance, a little for vacation, and gift giving.  We also saved $163.13 for emergencies, making a total of  $4,409.45 in our emergency fund. 

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Back to 40 hour weeks.

I've worked 40 hours each week, these last couple weeks.  And it looks like there is more of them to come.  The extra money helps the budget, without it, money is more tight.  Being debt free, we can save for everything normal we save for and pay the bills, but that won't leave much for building the emergency fund.

July ended up pretty good, we started working on our house again.  I really do hate hanging trim.  I don't mind building something, but I hate the small details it takes to finish.  I have started a diet also, so far I have lost 9 pounds in the last month.  I started exercising almost everyday, and have decided to not be lazy and stay busy.  So working on the house in the evenings helps me stay busy.  I have been on blood pressure medication since January.  The doctor told me that exercise would help.  Since I have a check up with the doctor this month, the exercise and diet might help.

We managed to save $739.01 for our emergency fund in July.  That brings us to a total of 4,246.32.  We are almost halfway there.  We also have around $2,090 saved for a vehicle and $1,800 saved for home improvement.  The Vehicle we don't think we'll buy till next year, but the home improvement we are going to use to get the rest of our carpet.  There is still probably 500 square feet that isn't carpeted.  It's slow saving for 3 things at once, but we'll get there.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Back to work.....

Right when I got back from vacation, My job had 5 weeks of 10 hour days, six days a week, and option to work on 7 days a week.   The weather was extremely hot and dry, which made for long days outside working.   At least I didn't have to mow the lawn during those weeks, since my lawn is dead from the drought we are having this summer. 

It is property tax time again.  We saved for the last year for it.  My wife went and paid the first of two payments this month.  We could have paid both, but there was a miscommunication.  So we will pay the second payment next month. 

June ended up pretty good. We had a little over two thousand extra at the end of the month. We split it between emergency fund, car fund, and home improvement fund. This is what my wife wants. She wants to save for all 3 at the same time. Which is going to make baby step 3 take a little while. With the $710.63 we saved, the emergency fund now totals $3507.31. We are now a third of the way to our $10,000 goal.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Summer Vacation

We just got back from our summer vacation.  We have been saving for a vacation over the coarse of last year.  We were able to bring one of our son's friends with us.  It was a fun vacation filled with lots of activities.  It was all paid for in cash, and we actually still have some extra vacation money left over.   We haven't decided what to do with the extra vacation money yet.  Some idea have been discussed, but none are final.

May ended up to be a pretty good month.  We had 5 paychecks instead of the normal 4.  So we had some extra room in the budget.  So we saved some money toward home improvement and the car fund.  We also saved 902.38 toward our emergency fund goal.  We now have a total of $2,796.68 in our emergency fund.  We are one step closer to our goal of $10,000.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Celebrating that we're debt free.

This has been a fun month with our budget. First of all we worked a lot of over time and recieved an annual bonus. This made this months budget over twice the normal budget. So we first paid off our last debt. After that we had to decide what to do with extra money in our budget. We decided to put it in 3 major categories. They were, "The Emergency Fund", "Vacation Fund", and "Home Improvement".

Then we decided to live it up this month. We went and bought clothes for all of us, spending triple what we normally spend in a month. We decided to up our dinning out fund, about doubled it. It was fun live it up a little. It felt great having extra money to play with. I know next month will be back to the normal amount of income in our budget. But we won't have anymore payments except our house payment. It will be great seeing the extra money be put into our emergency fund, rather than being a payment toward our past mistakes. Now that is behind us, and we can start focusing toward our future.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Emergency Fund Goal

We have finnally decided on an emergency fund goal. We took our budget and stripped it down. We took out saving for vacation, new furniture, Gifts (christmas & birthdays), eating out, & home improvement. We came up with around $3300 a month in expenses. We didn't lower saving for Automobile service (fixing the car), pet care, & medical expenses, house insurance, property taxes & gasoline usage. This would still give us flexiblity in our budget.

We looked at what emergencies we might have that we could our incomes and how long they might effect us. We looked at our parents, and their health, their finacial situations. We looked at our jobs and their stablity. We tried to look at any situation that we might use our income and savings, or might cause one of us to take a leave of absence from our job.

We ended up taking the $3300 and multiplied it times 3 months, then rounded it up to $10,000. So we should be okay for 3 months with no income and good for close to 6 months on one persons income. So $10,000 is our goal.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Loosening up the budget.

Now that we are finished with step 2 in the Dave Ramsey plan, we going to loosen up a few dollars in our budget. First we are going to up our blow money by $80 a piece. That gives me and my wife $200 a piece each month. This month we are going to budget in some extra money for clothes. We also got out some extra money for eating out (still using envelope system), we'll see next month if want to leave it higher or not.

We are not making major changes, just a few hundred dollars this month. We'll still have enough to save toward full size emergency fund. We have had a couple discussions on how large an emergency fund we should have. We'll decide soon.

As for now it feels good to be debt free.

Friday, April 13, 2012

We're Debt Free!!!

Friday the 13th wasn't so bad after all.

Today my wife went to the bank today, to pay off our last debt. We have now paid off all our debt except our house. We paid off 49,705.46 in 28 months and 13 days.

It feels so good to finnally reach this goal. But it is isn't over yet, it will never be over, it is now a part of our everyday life. We will still use the envelope system and make a monthly budget. This way of life has helped me and wife communicate so well, our relationship is awesome!

Now it is time for baby step 3, building our full sized emergency fund.

We're Debt Free!!!

Monday, April 9, 2012

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

March is over and we are one step closer to being finished with baby step 2. We were able to pay and extra $2000 on out debt in March.

Comparing last years March to this years. We had lower utilities, telephone, and Satalite bills. We also spent about the same about on Automoble fuel. The car we just purchased, gets better mileage and the whole family fits in. So we use it instead out our gas guzzleing SUV. We have seen about $200 a month in savings the last couple months. The last time our monthly budget for Gasoline was so low was a year ago. The increased prices for gasoline was hurting our budget over the last few months, but the new car's fuel efficency has helped offset the fuel price increase.

We are hoping to be debt free soon. Our next paychecks should be our best yet this year. And we are also expecting an annual bonus. Together these should be enough to pay off our last debt!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Back on baby step 2

February is over and we have put the $550.85 we used out of our emergency fund back in, and we paid an extra $1000 on our debt this month also. We also started saving again for future expenses. We had to up our monthly savings for Property taxes and House insurance to make up for the months we missed. We ended up with 3 months we didn't pay extra on debt to save for a car. I feels good to get back to paying down our last debt.

I was hoping to have done our debt free scream by now, but the car breaking down slowed our progress. The next couple months should be good months for us. I am starting to work 20 hours of overtime a week for the next 4 weeks. I am hoping we will have some large payments toward our debt. If all goes well, we'll be screaming "I'm Debt free" in 2 to 3 more months.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Bought a car with cash.

On January 21, 2012, for the first time, we bought a car with cash. We didn't take out a loan, or get a lease, although the dealer tried hard to get us to borrow just a couple thousands so we didn't spend all our money. We shot him down immediately. We told him, it is just our lifestyle not to have debt, and we wouldn't even consider it.

We have been saving since November, and have been looking at cars almost every weekend since then. We did have to use our emergency fund, so our next task it to build back up our $1000 emergency fund.

Monday, January 2, 2012

2 years on the Total Money Makeover.

Well yesterday marked 2 years we have been following Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" plan. We have paid off 42,037.31 in consumer debt. That is not counting money we have been paying on our mortgage this whole time. I have been using Quicken track my spending for each transaction we make. And I have a spreadsheet which I keep our monthly budget on. These tools have helped me see the fruits of our labors. I have watched out debt go down and our net worth go up.

When we started we were not savers, but now we save for everything it seems. Right now we are saving for a vehicle since my car has died and is going to the junkyard probably. We still in emergency mode. Not paying extra on debt, and saving all our extra money. We were hoping do be done with baby step 2 by now, but we haven't paid off the debt as quickly as I would have hoped. Hopefully we will get a car this month and be back on the debt snowball.

We only have 7668.15 left to pay on consumer debt, then we will start saving our big emergency fund. Wish us luck, cause I want to scream "We're debt free!!!"