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?"