Sorry It's Been a Month!

Again, it's been another month... I'm sorry.

For most people, summer is relaxing and the season when they have more time. For me, as a teacher, summer is crazy. My work out routines get interrupted, my eating patterns are all off, and so are my finances.

Summer is when I don't have to have a schedule. And I don't.

We have traveled a ton this summer. The Boy and I went to Japan for 10 days, The girl went to Paris for 10 days, The girl and I spent a week in Oregon visiting family, and all three of us spent a week in San Diego visiting my best friend from high school. Sadly, The Husband wasn't able to come for any of it... :(

All that travel has made havoc with my schedules. Including my budgeting. I didn't even write a budget for July, which is awful. On the plus side, however, I did make sure to pay my bills and then paid for a ton of things with my debit card.

Debt is still my enemy. And debt is still winning our battle.

I had some epiphanies over the summer, though. After The Husband's payday this coming Friday. I am getting back to the envelope system. I am also taking my credit card out of my wallet. I'm not going to go to the extent to freeze it like some people do, but I am going to make it less accessible.

I don't even have a debt update. I have some work to do before I'm willing to post numbers again. That right there should tell you something about where my debt stands. I'm usually willing to share the numbers: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The one plus side of our finances is where we stand in regards to what we owe our kids. We borrowed $1500 from each of our kids over a year ago. Our payback has been SLOW but steady. We pay them back $50 a month. Each kid has been paid back $950. We have almost paid back 2/3 of what we owe them. I know I still have work to do there, but we are seeing progress.  The kids know that we borrowed money from them, and that we are paying them back. However, I have felt so ashamed that we haven't taken them to the bank to deposit their savings in FOREVER! Once we get them back over the $1000, I want to take them to deposit their savings... so pretty soon.

Anyway, not much of an update, just talking about date.

Until next time.

Life Lately...

I didn't mean to check out for 2 months, but I guess that's what happened anyway.

Life got busy: the end of our school year, getting one child ready for France, getting another child and myself ready for Japan, and then The Daughter's dress rehearsal and recital for the end of her dance year.

It has been crazy.

Our finances are all over the place, but I don't think they are any worse off than they were when I checked out of here.

Once things settle down and all our bills come in or are cleared, I can see exactly where we are.

I have more money in checking than I should, but once I figure everything out, all that extra will go towards our credit card debt. I also have a few hundred dollars in cash that need to go towards debt too.

Our car insurance for the year is due next week and that is almost $2700. We have enough in our annual accounts to pay the total in full so that is a win. Soon that money will start going towards next years' dance fees. Oh joy.

Our savings account dipped well below where I feel comfortable so I am working to get that back up to my "peace of mind" level. (There should be a refund from our Japan trip (not until September or so) that should hopefully push us back to my comfort level.)

Our solar is actually up and running now. It was actually activated the day I returned from Japan. Our payments start in July, but our first accurate, solar-only PG&E bill won't be until August. I'm hoping that it makes the dent in our electric bill that it is purported to!

We have a few more trips planned for the summer. We will visit family in Oregon and my best friend in San Diego, California. Neither of those trips should be too expensive as I will be staying at their homes. Mostly I will have to pay for the gas to get to each place and some food. They will be nice, but fairly frugal, vacations.

That's my life in a nutshell.

Hopefully it won't be so long before my next post! I know that some of the above really need an explanation!

An Unexpected, and Complicated, Windfall

We received out “Escrow Analysis” in the mail the other day… and actually didn’t think anything of it. We assumed it was either a report of our escrow account over the last year, or, quite honestly, junk mail.

We were right on one of those counts, sort of.

When I opened the envelope, there was a report of our escrow activity and balance for the previous year. There was also an unexpected refund check. Apparently, we overpaid into our escrow account. This is not something we have ever had experience with. In our old house, we did not have an impound account. We paid our property taxes and home owner’s insurance annually on our own. The check was a very pleasant surprise!

We got a refund check to the tune of $1860! Due to this, our mortgage is going down next year, by about $85 a month. I. Am. So. Happy.

It was definitely unexpected money.

Now for the complicated part.

We are buying solar (read: adding to our debt*). And it ain’t cheap!

In order to cut down on the size of our system, we are upgrading our pool pump. Apparently we have a single speed pump and we will save a ton of money, over the long-term, by upgrading to a variable speed pump. In all honesty, it’s all Greek to me, but I like the idea of saving money.

Electricity-wise, we spend the most money on our pool so upgrading our pump will significantly lower our electrical use and allow us to purchase a smaller system. The quotes we’ve received on upgrading our pump have varied anywhere from $900 to $2700. We are going with one right in the middle of the road, about $1900. Our original plan was just to take the money out of savings as it is so worth it to upgrade and will pay for itself in just a couple of years**.

If you were paying attention above, you’ll see that the amount of our refund check is almost the exact same as what we needed to come up with to upgrade our pool pump!

I’m so glad, and appreciative, that we won’t need to take money from our savings to pay for the upgrade. That will keep us above the $10000 mark in savings for at least a little bit longer. (Full disclosure: we have $10000 in our savings, another $1700 in the kids’ accounts, and another $2000 of planned spending money in the bank.)

I was literally stunned when I opened the envelope and found the refund check. The Husband said he wasn’t sure if the look on my face meant really good or really bad; but he knew it was one or the other, ha! I don’t know if that will ever happen again, but the refund was so unexpected and came at such a perfect time!

*I will write a whole post, or several posts, about the ins and outs of buying solar and why it was the best option for us.

**Odd logic, I know. I’ll explain in my future posts about our experiences with solar.

Christmas Plans and Ideas

I know it seems early to start thinking about Christmas, but it’s already mid-April and if I don’t start thinking about it now, it will be here before I know it and we’ll end up in a pickle!

For the couples and (most) adult grandchildren, I’m thinking about doing a “date night/pasta dinner basket”.

I was thinking I could include a fancy-ish pasta, a nice (or homemade) marinara sauce, pesto, a bottle of olive oil, a bottle of wine, and (homemade) canned green beans… kind of a “dinner in a basket”.

Depending on how much I spend I could include something else to complete the basket: a game, a dishtowel, potholder, something for dessert, etc. I think it has the potential to be cute and not too expensive because it would be a gift for two (for most people) and I can spread out the cost of it over the course of several months.

For my family alone, it would be used for 21 (that count is off the top-of-my-head) gifts. I would also be able to give it as one of the gifts I give to some friends. (I have several friends who I give more than one gift, it would be one of the gifts they receive.) I would give the gift as a “couples” gift to those who are coupled which is really where the cost savings comes in.

April Debt Update

Here’s our debt update for April… a little late, but not too bad. As always, we didn’t make the progress I wish we had, but we made progress and our overall number decreased, albeit very little.

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed $1500 from each child and have paid back $800 to each of them, which means we are over half way through paying them back! Our car loan has continued to decrease as well. We have a 0% loan so it’s nice to see the payment actually affect the bottom line.

For 2018, my only resolution, or goal, is to have our credit card balance below $10000 by the end of the year. I obviously started with 12 months, now I’m down to 8 months to go.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $16,077.33        Credit Card at 15.74% interest

            $700                 The Girl

            $700                 The Boy

            $7890               Car Loan at 0% interest

Our total debt stands at: $25,367.33 YIKES! That is still a huge number! The only thing that makes me happy about that number is that it is smaller than the last time I did a debt update! I hope it keeps going down! We paid off $747 of debt last month. We managed to decrease out total debt by almost 3%. As always, I wish it were more, but I’m pretty happy with these numbers.

In order to meet my goal of under $10000 for the year, we need to pay back a minimum of $604.03 per month, not including interest on our credit card alone. We did not make that this month. We only paid of $302. I will shoot for $604 next month and then worry about playing catch up.

I will try to keep track of my progress each month and find out if I am meeting my goal of paying off over $600 of credit card debt per month and therefore on track to meet my goal of credit card debt below $10000.

I am happy to see progress and, for reasons not quite known, April has shaped up to be a very expensive month; due to this, I’m just hoping to get our next statement under $16.000 after interest. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a goal, but it would be continued downward progress and it means I “lived within” my means for the month. And, truth be told, I’m not even sure that’s going to happen. L

Celebrating Small Wins

…and I mean small!

Last week I made several impulse buys: new clothes (for me), books (for me), face wash, hair treatments, etc. It was all stuff I didn’t need and wasn’t on our lists. They were just purchases I made without thinking and, duh, on impulse.

Because they were impulses, once I got home I suffered from “buyer’s remorse” and was able to return them. In the course of two days I returned over $200 of impulse buys. Things I didn’t need and didn’t even really want. (I don’t know why they even ended up in my basket!)

Unfortunately, I think a lot of our debt was due to this: mindless shopping!

I would love to adjust my spending habits to have more mindful spending.

Another small win this week was when we took my mom out to dinner for her birthday. She turned 77 this past week and when we went to dinner, only her meal came out correctly. (I guess if only one was going to be right, I’m glad it was hers!) My meal, called the triple dipper, came out without any dipping sauces. The Husband’s came out without any avocado, and The Daughter’s took forever to come out at all; and all she ordered was soup and salad. I complained to the manager and “for our trouble” we received 50% off all of our meals and a free dessert. Complaining to the manager, in a civil manner, saved us $40.

The Boy is promoting from 8^th grade to high school at the end of this year and as a surprise, his school had him take pictures in a cap and gown. The printed pictures then get sent home with an opportunity to purchase or you can send the whole package back and get nothing. That is, of course, how they get you. I was proud of myself for two reasons though: one, I only bought one sheet (instead of 5) of pictures and we had the money to pay for it out of our “school” envelope. That was nice to have some money set aside to pay for something we were going to need.

I don’t know if this is financial win, exactly, but I’m putting it in the win column. As the temperatures have been heating up, The Kids have spent more and more time in the pool. One night, we also heated the spa and the “bubbles”, or jets, on the spa weren’t working right. They have two speeds, low and high; well, high stopped working. We have a home warranty on the house, purchased for us by our realtor, which covers the pool and spa. We filed a claim and only had to pay our $75 fee. The end result is “it needs a new blower”, which is covered under the warranty…YEAH! I don’t know how much a blower is but I’m assuming it’s more than $75. (It’s only sort of a win because who wants to have to use their warranty?) I’m not happy the blower went out, but I am happy it went out before our home warranty was up and that it is a covered issue! A quick search on Amazon came back with an average of $150 for parts, plus we would have needed to pay for labor if we had to pay for this ourselves, so $75 is a deal.

(*In our first house, which was much older than our current house, we only made one claim on our home warranty policy, for an electrical issue. In our current house, we’ve made three claims: a pipe/shower issue, a problem with our oven, and now with the spa. I’m very glad we had the warranty this year and feel the $225 we’ve paid out total (in consultation fees) has been money well spent and I’m very thankful to our realtor for the gift of the warranty!)

None of these things are “big” deals, except maybe the spa blower, and still none of them make a huge impact on our finances, but they are wins. Wins should be celebrated, no matter how small, so that you recognize them when you see them!

Happy and Sad

I don’t have a whole debt update yet, but I am both happy and sad.

Happy because our credit card debt went down. But, sad because it didn’t go down as much as I would have liked.

Happy because after our next statement (in a month) our debt should be down in the $15,000. But, sad because our credit card debt is in the $15,000.

Happy because there was progress. But, sad because there wasn’t enough.

Happy because we are moving in the right direction. But, sad because we aren’t moving very quickly.

Happy because our whole actually go smaller. But, sad because it wasn’t by much.

I’m sure by now you get the point.

Progress is being made, albeit slowly.

Progress is slow and painful; and it would probably be less so if I was more open with The Husband. I don’t exactly hide our debt, but I definitely don’t discuss it with him. In all honesty, if he knew how deep our hole was, he would probably be shocked.

We will get there. And I will keep plugging away.

Hopefully we will be able to get some real traction in the next few months.