More Debt

Debt, debt, and more debt.

We have spent considerable more money than we have brought in the last few months. So much so, that our credit card debt has increased by almost $3000. Sadly, we are back into 5 figures for our credit card debt. We had gotten it down to about $8900, but now we are back up over $11000.

I’m nearly done with Christmas shopping, so I’m hoping I won’t need to charge too much more on that front.

This past weekend, we spent $700 at Kohl’s. The Girl got 6 pairs of pants, 2 sets of pajamas and 2 pairs of shoes (though one of those was for dance), The Boy got new underwear, 2 pairs of sweatpants and a new pair of running-style shoes, and The Husband got new socks and underwear a pair of sweats. Currently, we only had $200 in the clothing budget and that got wiped out. $55 will come from the kids’ activities envelope to pay for The Girl’s dance shoes. We also got a new toaster, several Christmas presents for different nieces and nephews, and decorative Christmas towels to decorate all my new bathrooms. We will probably carry a small balance on this card. I have half of the money we charged at the ready and the other half will be extended over a couple of months.

Sadly, this month we can’t even say our overall debt decreased because it didn’t, it went up. It went up considerably. 

Truthfully, my only goal for my December credit card statement is for it to be under $11000. That should be doable depending on what my credit card closes at this month.

We continue to make slow progress on all of our other bills. We are still paying the kids back at $50 a month and still making our regularly scheduled car payments. We have paid off just over half of our car loan. We’ve made 31 payments and have 29 remaining.

Our new normal is killing us. Our mortgage and bills have all nearly tripled, and while we can afford to pay those, we have not adjusted our lifestyle to our new normal. We still charge over $3000 per month, but now we can only afford to pay about $600. We need to find a balance and we need to stop charging.

I’m really thinking of going to a cash only budget, like for reals… Once the envelope is empty, the money is literally gone. For a long time, our system worked for us, now, it’s not.

Debt sucks and I am not helping my situation by continuing to use credit. 

Guess Who?

Hi there. Remember me? Brunette Getting Out of Debt?

Yeah, I know it's been awhile... a long while! No excuses for dropping off the face of the earth. Life got crazy. Work got even crazier. Debt got of control and I didn't feel like blogging.

But I'm back. Hopefully, I'm back on track. And I'm ready to get back to paying off debt and being accountable for my finances.

The next time I do numbers won't be pretty, but it'll be real!

Debt sucks and the race out of it is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. I've only done one marathon in my whole life so I need to train! I'll get there... someday!

Final No Spend Update

Hi... Sorry I fell off the face of the Earth for a couple of weeks, but life got crazy!

Alright, I'll start with the bad news.

We did not stay within our No Spend month grocery budget.  We were doing so well and then the last week of September hit us like a ton of bricks. I went to Costco and spent $130, which was the remainder of our money. I got milk, fruit, and a ton of snacks for lunches: granola bars (X2), granola cookie things, peanutes, almonds, trail mix, Pirates Booty (X2),  pringles snack packs, and cornnut snack packs. I was doing well. Then a couple days later, The Husband went to Safeway and bought some groceries, to the tune of $40, then we ran out of stuff at home, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, we stayed in our normal $500, but blew our $400 budget out of the water.

It was not a proud momemt.

There were some bonuses of our No Spend month. We did put a considerable dent in our debt and that was fully due to the fact of the money we saved because of our No Spend month. We were also very mindful of our spending and, because we spend so much time at home, it gave us a lof of time to work on our current home improvement project.

I'm not happy about our grocery budget, though. And I am going to do everything in my power next year, to see that we meet our goals... all of them!

Unusual Spending for October

We are going to have a fair amount of unusual expenses this month.

First of all, we are going to the Renaissance Faire. Secondly, The Girl has costume fees due for her dance teams. Let’s see, our toaster broke at the beginning of September and we still need to replace it. And, oh yeah, our dog needs shots in October. October is looking to be a little pricy.

Many of things can be funded from our sinking funds, but not all of it. We did not plan (or save) for the Renaissance Faire, but luckily, The Husband has some overtime coming up that should be more than enough to cover the day! The Husband makes just over $50 an hour and for overtime he makes time and a half, so a little over $75. On his next paycheck, he should have about 8 hours of overtime, or $600 before taxes and roughly $425 after taxes. The Faire will probably cost us about $200 all told.

The Girl dances competitively, and let me tell you, it’s EXPENSIVE! Her costume fees are due in October, to the tune of about $800. Luckily we set aside money every month for dance in our “yearly expenses” account. There is enough money sitting in the account to pay for all her fees already, extra money in the account will go towards competition fees.

Our toaster broke the first week of September, so we have gone without. Once October hits, we will be buying a new one. We do have some money in our “essentials” envelope. That will buy the toaster as well as some other items we haven’t replaced yet due to No Spend September.

Our dog is up for shots in October. I don’t know what else he needs, but I know he needs his rabies shot. The Husband’s overtime check will also pay for this. Going forward, we are going to start allotting money towards a new envelope: “dog”. We should have been doing this all along, but we haven’t. Our goal is to add $25-$50 a month to the envelope so in the future, we will have the money to cover shots and vet bills. . (Anything left over will go towards debt. Ideally, we could throw the whole amount towards debt but these are things we want to do with the family and making memories is worth it to us to stay in debt a little longer. I’m just so happy he has the extra money coming so we can afford these things! I’m not expecting much left over, but I will take what I can get. We may not have any extra to throw at debt, but we also aren’t falling further into debt!)

Goals

Goals

I don’t usually make concrete goals each month. I tend to make vague goals at the end of each of my debt updates. I want to try making more specific goals each month and then updating whether or not I met them and what steps I took to reach them.

• ·        Pay $1000 towards debt
• ·         Bring our car loan down to under $10000
• ·         Bring total consumer debt total to under $20000

I have a very specific goal I want to meet by the time of my next debt progress report: I want to have paid $1000 towards debt, not including stupid tax, er, interest.

I want $1000 to leave my bank account and go towards debt.

And I’m not sure how I’m going to do it.

We have only budgeted $775 to go towards debt and I don’t know how I’m going to come up with $225 extra dollars. I’m hoping that our paychecks are a little more than estimated and that maybe we over-budgeted in some categories and that that money can help us make up the deficit.

Another goal is to bring the amount we owe on our car down below $10000. Now, disclaimer, this should happen with our regular payments barring any catastrophic happenings.

Lastly, I want our total consumer debt to fall under $20000. It was a MAJOR stretch goal last month, and still a stretch this month, but it’s more doable. In order to make this goal, we will need to come up with an extra $400, above and beyond the extra $225 we are already searching for, during the month so I’m not sure how we are going to make this goal, but we are going to try.

It’s so tempting to use our sinking funds to throw towards debt, but I need to remember, that money is there for a reason and serves a very real purpose. It is those sinking funds that keep us from falling deeper into debt.

September Debt Totals

*I started writing this before all my statements came in so I could get a jumpstart on my progress report, but right now, I am DYING waiting to figure out if I met my goal of getting under $9000 after stupid tax interest!!!! (9/13/17)

Debt progress is still slow, but better than last month.

During the month of September, any extra money from No Spend September has been able to go toward debt, but it’s never enough.

For me, the biggest “pro” of this month was that all of our debts decreased, including our credit card! Some of our debts decreased more than others, but they all went down! YEAH! And we have continued the trend of decreasing out debt every month! I am so done with any increases in our debt total!

Our new normal is killing our debt snowball! So much of the snowball money we used to have is now being funneled towards paying higher bills.

As of my last update in August, we owed a total of $23,118.63. We came nowhere close to coming under $20000 in total debt, but we did make decent progress.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $8968.78        Credit Card at 15.74% - current minimum payment is $231

            $1100             The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1050             The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $10305.25      Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $21424.03

Debt payoff wasn’t as much as I would have liked (but when is it ever?), but it was much better than my last update! We paid off $1694.60 of debt. That is almost $1700 of debt we will never have again! Percentage wise, we paid off just over 7% of our total debt. And I reached my goal, under $9000 in credit card debt! That's a number we'll never see again!!!!

Looking at the numbers, I’m hoping to keep decreasing. Ideally, we’d be able to get under $20000 in total debt owed by my next progress update. but that is still a stretch. There really isn’t anywhere we can find an extra $500 from right now. I will continue to be hopeful, though, and hope that we can throw extra money towards debt as we get into October.

Some things that helped us reach our goal of credit card debt under $9000 was No Spend September, redeeming points on our credit card for a statement credit, and some overtime The Husband earned during the month. I’m hoping we can find some extra money throughout October to help us make more progress.

We are continuing to make slow progress every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, towards savings and paying our children back. We put $50, per paycheck, into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly. Our emergency fund currently stands at a little over $2000 with slow growth each month. It’s not much, but it gives us some peace of mind. That $2000 is above and beyond what we have left over from the sale of the house. That money is still earmarked towards home improvements in the new house and things we still need to furnish it.

No Spend September Updates

9/13

I went to the grocery store last night and I spent more money… totally unexpected and totally unnecessary!

I went to Safeway and I bought “fancy” cheese to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It happened in a funny way. Grilled cheese was our planned meal, but I couldn’t find the cheese The Husband said we had in the freezer. I made an offhand comment that I would just go buy some fancy cheese for fun. Then I opened the fridge to check something else and there was the cheese. The Husband had put it in the fridge to help me out. The Boy heard and asked if I would buy fancy cheese anyway.  What can I say, I’m a sucker!

I went to the store for some nicer cheese (and bananas) and left $16.09 poorer.

We had $39.71 remaining in our grocery budget for the first half of the month. We now have $23.62. I still don’t see us having much we need to buy in the next couple of days. The cheese was a frivolous purchase, but we did use our No Spend September budget to buy it. Of our $400 grocery total, we have $223.62 and we are nearly half way through the month.

My goal for the rest of the month is to NOT buy any more splurges like ribs and cheese and see where our budget takes us. I want to try to only buy our normal purchases.

9/18

Shocking, but we spent more money… I went to the Farmer’s Market and bought pluots, peaches, and grapes to the tune of $8.80. That brings our running total to $15.02 for the first half of the month, or $214.82 total.

Then, yesterday, The Husband decided to make tomato dumplings, a family favorite, but the recipe called for short ribs so he had to go buy those and he bought a few other items at the store. He spent $15.79. We now have just under half of our food budget for the month of September to spend. We have $199.03 left, but we are over half of the way through the month. We shouldn’t need to buy too much more this week but next week we will need to stock up on “week 4” groceries, fruit, and milk.

I know it’s a little early, but I am optimistic we will succeed in staying within our $400 budget!

Wish us luck!

Bank Balaces

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post like this… if ever.

We have accounts at three different banks, though we only really use two of them, and we have multiple accounts at each bank.

BANK 1: $26,940.02

                Checking: 127.57

                Savings: $26,061.61

                The Boy’s: $350.67

                The Girl’s: $400.17

BANK 2: $735.26

                Checking: $108.97

                Savings: $626.15

BANK 3: $26.27

                Checking: $1.27

                Savings: $25.00

Looking at those balances, our situation doesn’t look too dire; however, when you factor in debts like our credit card, car loan, and house payment, I see a wholly different picture!

I do think it’s a good idea to get a picture of where all our money is and how much we have. Our debt progress is always better when we are on top of our finances, both coming in and going out.

We also have several retirement accounts. I have a pension and a 403(b) account and The Husband has a 401(k). We contribute monthly to all of these. As of this year, The Husband will be maxed out on his contributions and we will start increasing my contributions until they, too, are maxed out.

We are not looking at our net worth, but at our available funds.

It’s good to know how much we have and where it is!

Just like I do posts on where our envelope money is and where our debt is, I want to (occasionally) do posts on the money we actually have!

How about you? Do you know where your money is?

Emergency Fund vs. Savings

I have been doing some math this morning. I have “a lot” of money in my savings account. The vast, vast majority of it is from the proceeds of the sale of our last house. The proceeds were not enough to put 20% down on our new home, so we put 10% down and kept the remaining money to make improvements and to buy needed items for the house.

(When you go from 1100 to 2500+ square feet, 2 bedrooms to 5, and 1 bathroom to 3, you definitely need “stuff”; things like hand soap, shower rugs, towels, beds, etc. Those things added up for sure. 2 months later and we are still buying things we needed to make this house a home. And we are so grateful that we have that money available to us and that we don’t have to fall further and further into debt to furnish our home!)

However, even before we sold our old house and bought our new house, we had an emergency fund. It was definitely a baby emergency for sure! I didn’t have peace of mind with only $1000 in the bank. Due to that, I found a “savings challenge” created by the blogger at Medium Sized Family. It’s a non-threatening way to save an additional $1000 in a year, just one week at a time. Additionally, we add a small pittance of $50 a month to our savings. It’s not much, but it does at up to $600 a year.

On to the actual numbers:

                Savings account total: $26,061.61*

                Emergency Fund: $2,230.34

                Proceeds from the House: $ 23,831.27

* This number does not include The Kids’ savings accounts. We owe them money and are slowly working to pay them back as well, but their balances are not included in our totals. It also does not include our account where we set aside money for our yearly expenses. $600 per month is deposited into that account but the balance fluctuates widely so I don’t count that money as savings.

We are continuing to try to slowly grow our emergency fund. Ideally, at least until we are out of debt, I would like to have $5000 as an emergency fund. As of right now, we aren’t even 50% of the way there. But we are a whole lot closer than we were at this time last year! We are 44% of the way to our goal of a $5000 emergency fund. I know Dave Ramsey suggests a baby emergency fund of $1000, but when you are a home owner and you have to commute to work, and you have 2 kids who participate in extra-curricular activities $1000 will only go so far if Murphy decides to visit our family or something like “bad things always happen in 3s” were to happen. The peace of mind is worth the slightly longer amount of time in debt.

Currently, we have about $2300 in our envelopes, plus the $2200 in our emergency fund and it’s very tempting to take that money and throw it all towards our debt. That would actually wipe out literally half of our credit card debt. But then we would be without an emergency fund and without sinking funds for the things we need to pay for every month and we would still be in credit card debt. (Not gonna lie, maybe when that amount is equal to ALL of our credit card debt, we might just do that!)

Of the $23,000+ left over from the sale of the house, a lot of that money is earmarked towards different projects in the new house. We have roof repairs that need to be made to the tune of $3000. 

We still need furniture for several rooms, and the master bathroom needs to be remodeled. (Yes, needs! There is carpet in the bathroom… enough said!) We also want to get new kitchen countertops and new flooring, but those are wants. We are hoping that the $23000 will be enough money to pay for those things when we are ready to do them and maybe have some money left over.

Going forward, I’m definitely going to keep a running total of our actual emergency fund versus the amount in our savings. Slow growth is better than no growth and I need to make sure I don’t dip into our emergency fund savings to pay for house stuff. Hopefully, it will be a while before those numbers are even close. We are currently operating at a deficit each month due to our “new normal” and what we are still buying to furnish the house. We are hoping to stop bleeding money soon!

No Spend September Update

Another weekend, another shopping trip!

Yesterday, I headed to Costco and spent the majority of our remaining money for the first half of September. I’m not too concerned because we are almost half way through the month and I shouldn’t need to go grocery shopping before next weekend.

I stocked up on a lot of staples during my shopping trip like oatmeal, eggs, and yogurt; and I also bought weekly perishables like bread, milk, and fruit. A couple of the items I bought were for our monthly/weekly meal plan: sandwich rolls and tortillas. The last thing I bought was a splurge for dinner last night: ribs! I paid $30.00 for 10 pounds, or 3 racks, of ribs. We will get 2 full meals for our family out of this, and 2 lunches. This was paid for out of our normal No Spend September grocery budget.

On to the actual numbers. Before this trip, we had $148.39 remaining from our first half of the month budget, or $348.39. Our total at Costco was $108.68. That leaves us with $39.71 for the first half of the month’s budget, or $239.71 total left in our grocery budget for the month of No Spend September. I’m feeling pretty good about where we are right now.

We will only need to buy perishables and a few things based on our meal plan for the rest of the month. We are good on meat and I don’t foresee us needing to buy many more staples this month. I’m really hoping we can stay on track with our grocery budget this month and continue throwing all our extra money towards debt repayment!

No Spend September Update

The Husband and I went grocery shopping last night, and I feel like it was a huge success!

We planned our meals for the month of September last week and we tried to use as much food out of our freezer and pantry as possible while we were planning. The only meat we needed to buy was chicken and pancetta. The chicken I actually bought last week at Costco and we did buy the pancetta last night during our shopping trip.

As we shopped, we did buy some items that weren’t on our list because we realized we were low on them or they were a good price. These included things like barbecue sauce, fruit, olives, and mushrooms, among other things.

Of our $400 grocery budget for the month, we spent…. $51.61. We still have $348.39. We will probably need milk, bread, and eggs before too long; and we need fruit every week, but I am feeling optimistic about our chances of staying within our budgetary constraints.

In our freezer we had a roast, shrimp, breakfast sausages, pork loins and pork chops, several pounds of ground turkey, and chopped pork. I did buy chicken but we tried to plan our meals around what we had instead of buying stuff. We also had the makings for a frittata, some left over steaks that we are going to use for Philly cheese steaks, and various other odds and ends that we were able to tie together to make some meals. Our pantry was pretty well stocked as well so we didn’t need to buy a ton.

As far as our dinners go, we only need to buy the perishable items we need each week now, and we are set on breakfasts for the month. (Actually, we have cereal coming out our ears! Last time I went shopping I bought 3 Costco boxes, so 6 really, of cereal; and when I got home, I found 5 boxes… preparation FAIL!) We also have plenty of cheese and lunch meat for lunches for the month and tons of snacks so we should be good there, too.

We are almost one week into our No Spend month and I am hopeful we will make good progress towards paying off our debt this month!

September Goals

We had to travel to Oregon over the long weekend to my nephew’s wedding. On the way home, we also stopped and visited my aunt, uncle, and cousin in Southern Oregon. Out of the three nights, we had to book a hotel for two of them.

The best part is that we didn’t have to pay for our hotels. We had one free night through the hotels.com website and 28000 points through our Choice hotels reward program. The one free night was easy to redeem and, actually, so were the points. We used 12000 to get a free night’s stay in a room with 3 beds.

We did have to pay for gas and food for the trip. Most, but not all, of our gas was paid for in cash. We charged one fill up to the tune of $24.00 We might have enough money left over at the end of the week to put that towards our credit card, but it really depends on if we have any gas money left over on Friday. As of right now, The Husband is filling up my gas tank and I have $21 left in my gas envelope. (He has $60 to fill it up.) He will also need gas this week, however, and I don’t think he has any money left because we also used his weekly gas money for the trip.

We charged all our food for the trip. In total, it was about $200. We had breakfast each morning at the hotel and then had to buy lunch and dinner. The night of the wedding, dinner was at the wedding. It was more than I would have liked, but we have to eat.

Our goal to get the credit card bill under $9000 seems to be getting further and further away. I just don’t see how we are going to make it. The $200 for food this weekend certainly didn’t help! The Husband doesn’t have any overtime on this check and we are already sending as much to the credit card with this pay period as we can afford. It’s not looking good.

Tonight after dinner, The Husband and I are going to go grocery shopping. Our meals are planned for the month of September, but we haven’t had a chance to shop yet. We tried to use as many ingredients from our pantry and freezer as possible, therefore, we shouldn’t have to spend too much.

For the month, we budgeted $400 and I am really hoping we will be able to stick to that. I’ll keep you posted once we do our shopping!

Using Things Up

I am in no way a minimalist, but as I look around my house, I see so much abundance! We have more than we need of almost everything: clothes, shoes, food, cleaning products, towels, rags, etc. I in no way want to become a minimalist, but I do want to try to start using things up, especially bath and beauty products.

Even though we just moved and cleaned out all our cupboards in the process, underneath our sinks in the new house, it’s teeming with lotions, facial cleansers, soaps, and various cleaning products. Why? Well, an honest answer would tell you many reasons, really. 

·         I buy too much

·         I subscribe to Ipsy (a makeup/beauty product sample subscription site)

·         I have a fear of running out

·         I’m gifted a lot of these kinds of products

One of my current goals is to start using what I have instead of buying more. Having said that, if I run out of something that I use daily, I will buy it. For example, if I use up the last lotion in my house, I’m not going to do without, but, on the flipside, if I have six more lotions in a drawer, and I run out of one particular one, I don’t want to buy more until those six are gone.

Let’s look at the reasons of why we have too much.

I buy too much. Plain and simple. Why do I buy too much? Now that’s a little more complicated. I love lotions and soaps and bath products. But I don’t use them at the speed at which I buy them. Also, when I buy something if I don’t really like, I still keep it; and then it just sits under the sink basically collecting dust. I buy too much. Interestingly enough, I don’t use a lot of these types of products, but I sure like to buy them.

I do have a monthly subscription to Ipsy. Ipsy is a makeup sample subscription site that sends you a makeup bag filled with 5 samples every month for the low price of $10.99. (Did you notice how I rationalized that?) But in all honesty, I enjoy it. It sends me tons of stuff I never use, (because I don’t wear a lot of makeup) but I still enjoy getting it every month. In truth, it actually probably saves me money because I buy less stuff at Target and Walmart that I don’t use.  Because of my subscription I have several little bottles of face cleanser floating around, I have several bottles of sample size lotion, and I have several jars/tubes of face moisturizers and serums. And I need to use them up!

I have an irrational fear of running out of something. Last week when I went to Walmart to buy toilet paper, I didn’t get one 36-pack of toilet paper, I got three. I also always have to have spare laundry detergent on hand as well as a spare dish washing detergent, because heaven forbid we should ever run out! The Kids’ have about 6 extra bottles of shampoo and conditioner under their sink and I literally have a drawer full of soaps under my sink just waiting to be used.  But they aren’t getting used because I replace them way faster than we could ever use them!

I am also constantly gifted different of these kinds of items. I love soap, so people buy it for me. I probably have 12 – 15, mostly gifts. I have a huge bottle of Philosophy body wash that I haven’t so much as smelled, waiting to be used. Also a gift. Every year for Christmas, my in-laws give me a big bag full of Victoria’s Secret bath stuff. (My favorite scent of all time is from there.) But because I don’t use it on the regular, it is just compounding under the sink. Every year I use maybe two bottles and add 5 I received for Christmas. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m very appreciative of these gifts, I’m just trying to point out one of the ways “my collection” has grown.

Because of all these things, I am really trying to use things up. I will still have an extra laundry or dish detergent under the sink, but I’m trying to only have one extra, not three. I will still have one extra bottle of shampoo and conditioner, not six. And I will try to resist the temptation to buy any more bath or beauty products until they are needed. I want to use what I have, because I have a lot!

No Spend September

… has officially started. With today being the first day of September, our family has begun our annual spending fast for the month. We all participate: no buying Starbucks, no buying lunch, no new clothes, no new nothing that isn’t an absolute necessity!

Being that September actually started on a Friday, we saw the first real impact of No Spend September today: no Starbucks. Usually a girlfriend and I meet at Starbucks with our kids every Friday before work; this week we bowed out.

Normally, we would also buy the kids school pictures, but in a neat twist of fate, their pictures were today so I actually paid for them yesterday because I paid on-line.

Our goal for the remainder of the month is to spend as minimally as possible and to send all the extra towards our credit card debt. I am really trying to bring our balance down to under $9000 by our next statement, but that’s going to be a stretch.

Over the course of the month, we will try to decrease our food bill by about $100. Instead of budgeting $500 for food, we only budget $400. It’s going to be tight, but I think we can do it.

Our meals are planned for the entire month and we based most of those meals off of what we already had in our pantry and freezer. There was a lot of meat and frozen meals already in our freezer so we were really able to work with it!

Wish us luck and debt payoff progress as we embark on another no spend month!

Unusual Spending for September

We do have some unusual spending coming up for the month of September, but for the most part, because of No Spend September, our month should be relatively inexpensive.

The kids have school pictures coming up in September; and even though it’s our no spend month, we still purchase school pictures because… life.  We have a wedding to attend in Oregon on Labor Day weekend, the first weekend in September. We also have a play (possibly 2) in September, and we will have dinner out on that (those) nights. Because of No Spend September, our spending should be really low for the month.

Although many people think school pictures are a waste of money in this day and age “because we take so many pictures and we can just print them ourselves”, I still buy school pictures. Yes, we take pictures and CAN print them out ourselves, but how many of us actually do? I am definitely guilty of this, and for that reason, we always buy school pictures. We like the “record” it keeps of our kids’ changes. To us, school pictures are money well spent. To cover this cost, we should have enough money in our “school” envelope. We try to fund this envelope all year long because school is expensive!

My nephew is getting married next month. They live in Oregon, a 9-hour drive away, and we are going to the wedding. We are driving 6.5 hours on Friday and the remaining 3 hours to the ceremony on Saturday. We will stay where the wedding is Saturday night, then Sunday we will drive to my uncle’s house in yet another city in Oregon, visit and spend the night there and then drive home on Monday. Normally we would need to pay for hotels for Friday and Saturday nights, but not this time. One night we are staying at hotel free because of Hotel.com's reward program of stay 10 nights, get one night free. The other night will also be free because we had over 25,000 point accumulated with another hotel chain from our summer vacation. We redeemed 10,000 of those points for another free hotel room. I’m super happy about those savings! We will need to pay for gas and food for the trip though. A lot of the trip should be covered with our normal gas money, but not all of it. And obviously food… We will bring snacks, but will eat most, if not all, of our meals out. We have already bought the wedding gift, so we shouldn’t have any other expenses related to the wedding.

Lastly, we do have some plays to attend in September. It is important to us, as a couple, to continue to date. To that end, we have purchased season tickets to the theater for the last several years. The one downside of this is that we don’t get to choose the dates; they mail them to us and we go when they say. This year, they say 2 in September. We hold season tickets with another couple and we go out to dinner with them beforehand. I wish they weren’t in September because of No Spend September, but it is what it is and we truly enjoy going!

This should be about it for September and I’m hoping nothing else unexpected pops up!

How do you plan and pay for unusual spending?

Recap on August's Unusual Spending

We did alright estimating August’s unusual spending.

We had to pay $515 for dance fees and registration and that was a killer!!! That paid for tuition for August and September (minus The Girl’s solo fees) and registration for the year. We paid for that out of our yearly expenses account. I’m not super happy the money had to come out of there, but I am super happy that it didn’t have to be put on a credit card. One thing I did not factor in to paying for August was pointe shoes for ballet. Holy cow, those were expensive!!! The Girl is going on pointe for the first time this year and thus needed the shoes. After paying for all the pieces: shoes, ribbons, elastics, and toe protectors (I don’t know the official term) we walked out of the store about $150 poorer. On the plus side, though the expense was not planned for, there was enough money in the “Kids’ Activities” envelope to cover the extra cost.

My dad’s party was a rousing success! I spent a little more than I would have liked out of my own pocket. All the food was paid for by other family members, but I paid for all the decorations and plates and cups. It was a Halloween themed party and we had a lot of decorations already and borrowed a couple of boxes from my dad, but it still wasn’t enough.  I spent $50 at the Dollar Tree on decorations and plates, napkins and silverware. In truth, I probably bought more than I needed, but I wanted to make it special for my dad. He only turns 75 once! Luckily, my house was pretty clean and I had plenty of time to decorate and figure out what kind of decorations we still needed.

It wasn’t too bad of a month, but I’m hoping September is even better!

Still Embarassed

I’m still embarrassed about our debt.

And the more debt I’m in, the more embarrassed I am.  It’s another vicious cycle of debt. And the shame and embarrassment felt from debt you are in is just as crippling as the actual debt itself.

I truly think The Husband and I have a great marriage: we still date, we enjoy doing things together, like grocery shopping and cleaning the house, we enjoy just getting to talk with one another, but I still “hide” our total debt from him.

He knows we have a car payment… but that’s probably about it. He doesn’t know we have over $10000 in credit card debt (though he could easily find out). He doesn’t know we still owe each of our children over $1000. And I want it to stay that way.

I feel like our debt, is my problem. I feel like I got us into this mess, so I can get us out. (That’s not the truth of the matter. We incurred the debt we have together, mostly on home renovations, but some of it was on general overspending.) The problem with all of this is though, that I’m not getting us out. As I mentioned in my last debt progress report, our debt is nearly stagnant.  We are just spending right at, or worse, beyond our means.

Ideally, we would be in this boat together. But the reality is I am in this leaking canoe by myself and trying to plug all the holes with no help from anybody else. I know I should tell my husband where we are at financially and then he would help me to get out of debt. He would 100% be on board with helping me to cut back our spending and stop buying things we don’t need. But if I tell him, I have to admit that I screwed up and that I can’t handle it myself.

I think that, right there, is the reason I’m not more honest with The Husband about our debt. It’s not embarrassment so much as having to admit that I made a mistake, that I did something wrong. I hate that feeling. I want to think that I can do it all and by admitting to The Husband that we fell into debt again, it’s clear that I can’t do it all.

I hate the feelings of shame and inadequacy that debt brings with it. I’m embarrassed by our debt and I hide it from people because I don’t want anyone else to know. But on the flip side, talking about it, or in my case, blogging about it, takes a little of the pressure off. Although no one reads my little blog, just having the chance to get these feelings off of my chest help me to breathe a little easier. Making personal financial goals, and then checking in on them, makes the burden a little lighter.

Until our debt is paid off, I will continue to be embarrassed. I will continue to feel ashamed about the fact that we fell back into debt. And sadly, I will continue to hide our debt from The Husband. That is a horrible, but honest, admission. Knowing what an understanding and wonderful and kind man my husband is, I know he would only encourage me as I tried to get us out of debt, but I can’t bring myself to talk to him about our debt. We talk about everything else, including our finances in general; but I never talk about the fact that we have credit card debt.

I’m hoping this post will help to spur my debt payoff progress. I’m hoping for a lot of progress by the time I post my next debt update. But mostly, I’m hoping to meet the two financial goals I set for myself in my last debt progress report: bringing our credit card down under $9000 after stupid tax and bringing our entire debt total under $20000. Both of these are huge stretch goals, but with No Spend September on the horizon, I’m going to reach for them!

Depressing Debt Totals

Let’s just start with this: our summer was EXPENSIVE! Between buying a new house (and all that entails) and going on vacation, we spent a lot of money. In fact, our debt technically rose in July, but that was only because we were on vacation and I was unable to estimate what our bill would be. (I had the money in the bank to pay for it, I was just waiting to see how much it would be.)

Since we got back from vacation, we are adjusting to our new normal. The mortgage is more expensive, the utility bills are higher, and we need a whole lot for this new house! Unfortunately, it’s our debt payoff that has taken the biggest hit. We just don’t have as much to throw at our snowball as we have in the past.

Our debt pay has been pretty stagnant over the last two months.

As of my last update in June, we owed a total of $23,246.17. 

Here are our current debt totals:

            $10218.38       Credit Card at 15.74% - current minimum payment is $256

            $1150             The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1100             The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $10650.25       Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $23118.63

Debt payoff over two months was ABYSMAL!!! The only plus side here is that there was a decrease. It wasn’t much, it was actually less than 1% if you can believe it. This was definitely an expensive summer. In fact, our credit card balance went up… UGH! It’s a losing battle. I know we need to stop using credit, but we don’t do make that commitment. And what’s even worse about all of this, is that our credit card keeps sneaking up our interest rate a little at a time. We have got to get this card paid off!

Looking at the numbers, I’m hoping to keep decreasing. Ideally, we’d be able to get under $20000 in total debt owed by my next progress update. but I know that is a huge stretch. There really isn’t anywhere we can find an extra $3000 from right now. I will continue to be hopeful, though, and hope that we can throw extra money towards debt when we get into September because we are leaning towards not funding our envelopes because we aren’t going to be spending any (much) money so that money can be funneled towards our debt.

My main goal for next month’s debt progress report is that our credit card is below $9000 after stupid tax. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but we are struggling and that means we would have at least have a new first number. And, in truth, I’m not sure we will be able to find the extra cash laying around to get us there. It’s actually a stretch goal, but a goal nonetheless! Credit card debt is killing us right now!

With all our new bills, there isn’t a lot of money left over for debt pay off, so any progress is progress. Next month, we will have exceeded our point balance to get the maximum reward on our credit card, so I will redeem our points for a credit on our card. That should be a little over $300. That will help us to put a dent in our credit card.

Overall, our debt decreased. That is a trend we hope to continue. But most importantly, I want our credit card debt specifically to decrease! I am sick of the increases! I’m counting on No Spend September to help us out here!

We are continuing to make slow progress every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, towards savings and paying our children back. We put $50, per paycheck, into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly. Our emergency fund currently stands at a little over $2000 with slow growth each month. It’s not much, but it gives us some peace of mind. That $2000 is above and beyond what we have left over from the sale of the house. That money is still earmarked towards home improvements in the new house and things we still need to furnish it.

Gearing Up for No Spend September

Every September for the last 5 or 6 years, our family has done a spending fast. We call it No Spend September.

We do this for multiple reasons: to get a hold on our out-of-control spending, to be mindful of our spending, to save money (or to have more money for home renovations), and to slow life down in general.

We are planning on doing it again this year. Lots of people/families do no spend days, weeks, and months and for each family the rules are different. Here are ours.

First of all, we pay all normally scheduled bills, obviously. We also still buy groceries and gas.

Our normal grocery budget for the month is $500. For September, we try to bring it down to $400. We don't "stock up" on things we might need and we don't buy extras. If we go out to eat during the month, which we rarely do, the money comes out of grocery budget. The most important thing we can do for our food budget during the month is plan, plan, plan! I plan our meals for the month and grocery shop accordingly. Because meat is expensive, we try to shop our freezer first to see what we could get from there before we do any shopping. We also look for any meals we might have frozen in the freezer. Both of these small tips help keep our grocery bill down. Just of the top of my head, I already know we have 3 or 4 packages of pork in the freezer (that don't already have a purpose) and 2 or 3 packages of ground turkey. We also have chicken, pancetta (we use this for a specific family favorite), and a couple breakfast sausages. Besides meat, I know we have the fixings for at least one breakfast fritata and probably another meal or two frozen in the freezer. Without going to the grocery store, we have the fixings for probably close to 15, or a half a months worth, of meals. Not only does No Spend September make us conscious of our spending, but it helps us to be less wasteful with our food.

As far as gas goes, The Husband commutes for work. He has to get there. Period. I live and work in the same town and because we highly curtail our spending during the month, my gas does last longer in September, but I still fill up as needed. In a normal month, we budget $600 for gas; Septermber is no different. However, we tend to have more excess gas money at the end of each pay period. That money will continue to fund our car repair envelope.

No Spend September really gives us a reset when it comes to our spending. It causes us to think about what we are buying and why we are buying it. It also forces us to take a hard look at our spending and see where we have let it get out of control.  And for us, No Spend September is a family venture. We are all, all in! That means no Starucks, no eating out, no new clothes or shoes, no buying lunch at school, no haircuts, no... I think you get the picture.

There are exceptions to the rule. If money is required for something at school, we send it in. If The Boy's football cleats broke in half in the middle of practice, we would replace them. But both of those things are the exceptiong, not the rule!

Any money "saved" over the course of No Spend September will be added to our debt pay-off. As you'll see in a future post, I'm making a stretch goal to get our credit card debt below $8000 by September's debt progress report so every little bit helps!

Have you ever attempted a spending fast?

Where our envelopes are sitting

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the way we budget. That was in May, 3 months later and we are still budgeting the same way. Our debt snowball has definitely shrunk as our mortgage and utility bills have ballooned. However, even with that, we are continuing to fund our envelopes. We need those envelopes so that we don’t charge more than we can afford on our credit card.

I love having a surplus in our envelopes each month that we can carry over to the next month or until it’s needed. Here are the numbers we were thinking about “maxing” each envelope out to:

Car Repair: $2500

Essentials: $300

Hair: $300

Clothes: $500 (still toying around with this number… clothes and shoes can get expensive!)

School: $300 - $400

Kid’s Activities: $500 (I waiver a lot on this category, too, because our kids’ activities can get really expensive.)

After much consideration, I still think these are great goals to shoot for except for the school envelope. I’m going to raise the goal for that to be $500. Over the summer, some of our envelopes actually hit these targets, but then money was spent from them so they aren’t that high anymore. (But isn’t that what the envelopes are for? To spend?) It was definitely nice having the money when we needed it; especially when it came to our clothes and school envelopes. The back-to-school grind is no joke!

So where do the envelopes actually stand? Let’s take a look.

            Car Repair: $955

            Essentials: -$126

            Hair: $230

            Clothes: $160

            School: $83

            Kid’s Activities: $388

Now let’s break all the numbers down and see what they really mean for our budget, shall we?

Car repair… Our car repair envelope really took a beating over the summer. We got oil changes for two cars and on my car we got my tires rotated and some (super expensive for what it was) sensor replaced. We also took from this envelope to pay our kids (plus 2 more) for some work they did when we were moving in. It wasn’t the smartest move we ever made, but the extra help moving was well worth it in our opinion.  We have been slowly contributing to this envelope to try to grow it. Also, now that our summer vacation road trip is over, all leftover gas money at the end of a pay period will be going into our car repair fund until we reach $2500. Yesterday, I was able to add $95 from leftover gas money and we are hoping we can add even more going forward. $2500 here we come!

Essentials… Clearly we need to budget more money towards this every month since we are in the negatives! Generally, we put $100 a month into this envelope, I’m thinking we need to up it to $200 at least. The only plus side of this is we shouldn’t need to buy much out of this category for a while. I recently bought toilet paper, dish washing detergent, laundry detergent, razors, body wash, and shampoo and conditioner for the kids. I’m sure there will be stuff we need, but I’m hoping it won’t be anything too expensive or that’s needed too urgently.

Hair… Our hair care envelope it doing okay. It’s currently sitting at $230 but that is after paying the remainder of the cost for The Girl’s highlights (she had a giftc ard from her birthday) and having The Boy’s hair cut for back to school. We only need $70 to top that envelope off, but we didn’t budget any money for it in August so it will be a goal for September. (Maybe October if we decide not to fund envelopes in September because of No Spend September… more on that later.)

Clothes… The fact that envelope still has $160 in it even after back to school shopping makes me so happy. We spent $250 on shoes alone, plus even more money on first day of school outfits and The Boy is playing football for the first time so he needed some workout specific clothes… and we still have $160 in there! However, cold weather is on its way so we will be needing to buy pants and long sleeves for the kids before too long. We will continue to fund this envelope, shooting for that $500 target.

School… Wow did this envelope save my bacon when it came to back-to-school shopping! I had to buy school supplies for 2 kids plus my own classroom and… drumroll please… there was enough money!!! However, we had over our “max” in the envelope. The envelope had $530 in it, so I guess, like I said earlier, I will max it out at $500. Even after shopping, we had some money left in the envelope so that when the kids actually started school we still had money left over for all the necessary first week of school things: donations for Science class, cost of the agenda, etc. (And we still have a little bit of money in there if needed until we can get it built back up!)

Kid’s Activities… We didn’t have to spend too much from this envelope over summer, but now that their activities have started back up, this envelope is going to get used. The Boy’s football is paid for, but The Girl’s dance has a lot of upcoming expenses: costumes, comp fees, shoes, and the like. We will be using this envelope, in conjunction with a separate account, to pay for these things as they come, but it certainly makes it difficult to grow too much of a cushion.

Our New Normal

We haven't yet had one "normal" month with our new mortgage and budget, but we are starting to see what some of our bills are going to look like.

Our mortgage, while huge, is not quite as big as we were anticipating. It’s about $175 less than we were anticipating it being. For the first month, we decided to pay the amount that we expected our HELOC to be. We also paid extra on our first mortgage. I don’t know that we will do that going forward.

Our PG&E bill, for only 23 days, of which we were on vacation for half of them, was “only” $278. I say “only” because we were told by people we know who have a pool, to expect utility bills upwards of $800. Our next bill will be our first accurate bill for our utilities so we still aren’t exactly sure where we sit with that. (Our first normal bill came. It was for 32 days, of which we were home for most of them and was to the tune of $308. That’s not as bad as we were expecting and are so glad our house is well insulated.)

I have paid our DirecTV bill TWICE when apparently I didn’t need to. I hadn’t been receiving bills so I just paid what I expected them to be. What I didn’t realize was that our DirecTV bill is now combined with our phone and internet bill (because AT&T bought out DirecTV). Now I need to call DirecTV to get a refund check issued. That’s a pain in the butt, but on the plus side, that means our bills are $65 less than I have been paying the last couple of months.

Overall, many of our bills have actually decreased. Because we moved, many of the companies considered us “new” customers so we were eligible for new customer deals. Our internet bill went down. Our landline phone bill went down. Our DirecTV bill went down. It’s a great trend and I love to see a decrease in bills because that’s not usually the case. Many of these decreases are promotional discounts that will only last 6 or 12 months for example, but we can call customer service when the promotional discounts expire and see what else we might be eligible for.

Unfortunately, as great as the move and new house have been, there is one major drawback: the one thing that really will suffer because of the move is our debt repayment. In order to keep funding our envelopes (sinking funds), we won’t have as much to throw towards debt. In addition, with our increased mortgage, we don’t have a lot of extra money floating around.

We really need to be diligent with our purchases and spending going forward, both to adjust to our new normal and to maximize our debt repayment.

This really is our new normal and we need to get used to it.  There definitely is a price to pay for a new, big, beautiful home. However, our old house was just no longer practical for us and we needed more space. Now we have it and need to deal with the repercussions of that choice.

Unusual Spending for August

We aren't anticipating too much unusual spending for August.

We will be starting back to school shortly and we have already paid for all of our back-to-school expenses like backpacks, first day of school outfits, and school supplies.

In August, we will have to pay registration, summer, and first month dance fees for The Girl. My dad's 75th birthday is this month and we are having a party for him at our house. (We will have help paying for this, though!) That's really all I can think of. We still have a lot of house stuff we need to buy, but nothing that I see specifically has to be bought in August.

The Girl's dance fees will be expensive! I need to pay a $25 yearly registration fee, fees for the month of August, and our first regular month's tuition for September. Let me tell you, dance fees add up! Dance is definitely a sport that is prohibitively expensive!

My dad's party will also be expensive. The food will be the biggest killer. I will assign different family members to bring things, but because it's at my house, I will probably do the bulk of the heavy lifting.  Although the party itself is not a surprise, the theme will be. My dad loves Halloween so we are having a haunted house costume party. I have a lot of decortions already, will sneak some of my dad's out of his house, and then probably need to buy a few small things.

I think that's about all as far as our unusual spending goes.  Because we finished all of our back-to-school shopping and did meal planning, August is shaping up to not be too expensive of a month. But, as always we'll really see how we did in the end of August!

Meal Planning

When I'm on top of my life, I meal plan. I sit down with a calendar for the upcoming month and plan our entire month's dinners, weeknights only. As any personal finance blogger will tell you, one of a family's biggest budget lines is food; mine is no exception. We budget $500 a month for food, but probably spend closer to $800 - $900 with eating out, food delivery, and quick trips to the grocery store.  We need to get better about this!

When we meal plan we save money, our life is easier, we have a plan for dinner for all the busy nights, and we have all the ingredients needed for said meal.

We are no different from any other family. Every night, 5:00 rolls around and The Kids start saying they are hungry and asking what's for dinner, and I wander over to stare blankly in the freezer. When I meal plan, we don't have those problems. We just check the schedule the night before and pull out whatever needs to come out of the freezer, and boom, dinner is so much easier!

We also save a ton of money by meal planning and planning ahead! I sit down with a blank calendar page for the upcoming month, 5 or so cookbooks, and several pieces of binder paper. Then I just start picking out recipes. I try to mix it up. I'm not a big meat eater (not against it, it's just not my favorite) but my family is. Each week I try to include one beef recipe, one pork recipe, one vegetarian dinner, and then I usually fill in with chicken.

As I plan, I pay attention to what is going on in our life each day. For example, The Girl had dance on Mondays and The Boy has football on Tuesdays, etc. We plan meals accordingly. Maybe on those days, we do slow cooker meals to make life easier.

As I plan, I make our shopping list at the same time. I try to list ingredients with like ingredients: meat with meat, dairy with dairy, and canned goods with canned goods. This helps me transverse the store without having to crisscross is 100 times... hopefully. I also keep a separate list that is broken down by the perishables we need each week, and I'm not talking about our staple perishables like milk and bread, but about what vegetables we need for each meal each week or if a recipe calls for sour cream. I will only buy the sour cream on the week starting when we need it. For example, if sour cream isn't needed until the end of August, then I will wait until the last week of August to buy it as opposed to buying it when I do my main shopping trip at the beginning of the month. (I have no idea if this makes sense, but at least I know what I'm trying to say, right?!?)

We don't prep any of the food, we just plan it and grocery shop, but it makes our life so much easier! And it is so much cheaper! Between two days ago and today, I did all of our grocery shopping for the month of August, minus any perishables we will need each week, and I only spend $307. In addition to the food for dinners, I bought 5 dozen eggs, 8 gallons of milk, 4 loaves of break, fruit for this week and snacks for lunches for the coming school year. I look at that number: $327 and I wonder why I don't meal plan every month!

We are lucky enough to have a Winco where we live. It is so cheap. I shop there and at Costco when I meal plan. I usually do all the shopping in one fell swoop just to get it over with. Then all we have to do is check our calendar each night, or in the morning before school, and we are good to go.

Meal planning is time consuming for sure! It takes about 3 hours to plan all the meals, make my lists, and check our pantry and freezer. Then there is another 2 - 3 hours grocery shopping and putting groceries away, but the time it saves in the long run is so worth it!

The cost savings is the number one benefit of meal planning. We paid just over $325 for nearly a months worth of food, and that includes meat. We eat a lot of meat. Included in that $325, I bought a 10 pound bag of chicken, another 5 pound package of "picnic" chicken (thighs and drumsticks),  a 10 pound pork loin, 2 pounds of shrimp, a 3.5 pound beef roast, 2 pounds of beef stewing meat, 4 pounds of breakfast sausage, 4 pounds of turkey burger, a pound of pancetta, and a one pound package of beef sirloin steak. I only point this out because so often, in order to create a cost savings, many people cut down on meat in their diets and we didn't do that, but we still only spent $325... for a months worth of dinners! I can't believe it!

Besides the cost savings, the next biggest benefit of meal planning for us is the convenience. Now, for a month, we won't need to worry about what's for dinner. We just need to check the calendar the night before or in the morning before school and pull out whatever meat we need, and then we are good to go. Peace of mind is worth a million bucks!

Recap on July's Unusual Spending

Unusual spending? How'd we do?

Overall, we estimated pretty well!

Besides vacation, our most expensive unusual spending for July was school supplies. We needed school supplies for the kids and for my classroom. We went to Target and got everything we needed. It was $327... EEEEKKK! We ordered the kids backpacks from Amazon and that was another $90. Although I charged everything to get the points, we had enough cash in our "school" envelope to pay for everything. We even have $115 left over in that envelope for unexpected school expenses at the beginning of the year. We will continue to fund this envelope throughout the school year to pay for any needed expenses: dances, field trips, yearbooks, etc.

We also bought first day of school outfits at Target. The Boy did indeed just pick out a tee-shirt and is choosing to wear a pair of shorts he already owns. His total: $9. The Girl did pick out a new dress (it's so cute!). It was only $19. We still need to go shopping for new shoes for the fist day of school, but we should be able to pay for them out of our "clothing" envelope. And then we will continue to fund it throughout the year.

We did pay our car insurance in full. (For the first time ever, we charged our premiums to get the points.) There was never any transferring of money to cover the difference. We had a cushion in our checking account and instead used that. Now, we have no cushion, but we do have car insurance! In the new house, we have an impounds account that we didn't have with our old mortgage. The account we used to use to pay our homeowners insurance and property taxes will now become our new cushion. (It will also still be used to pay our car insurance and kids' activities.

As far as vacation went, we had enough gas money set aside to fund our whole trip. We slightly "overspent" on vacation, but it wasn't too bad.

Overall, we estimated and funded our unusual spending for July very well. Now we need to get used to our "new normal" and continue to figure out our budgeting and debt repayment.

*Right as I was about to hit "publish", I realized I did forget one unusual expense. We bought tickets to go with The Kids to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill this coming weekend. The tickets are already paid for but we will have to pay for parking and dinner. It shouldn't be too expensive. We will grab something quick and cheap for dinner and then pay whatever parking costs. I'm really looking forward to it. I love Tim McGraw and have seen him in concert 17 times; this will be number 18 and I'm so looking forward to it!

Debt Payoff Progress

This month's debt payoff will be low and late, that's if I post it at all. (Clearly I decided to post, sort of.)

We were on vacation and didn't get back until after I would normally post our debt progress.

I did not have computer access to do all my banking and to check all our bank accounts. (Yes, I had my phone, but as I've said before, I'm not very tech savvy and I didn't do any blogging or banking on my phone.)

I'm not putting any numbers on this post because the numbers are scary. In all honesty, our credit card balance went up, but it's not a real representation of where we are with our debt because we left on vacation before our billing cycle was up and I had the money to pay for our vacation in my bank account but was waiting to see how much we spent. (Holy run on sentence, Batman!)

We finally received our first mortgage bill and know how much our payment is going to be each month. We also received our first PG&E (utilities) bill and have an estimate of where that's going to fall, too. When we moved, our new mortgage has a first mortgage and a HELOC. The minimum payment on the HELOC is $220 less than our lenders estimated it would be. That is both a blessing and a curse. I'm going to try to pay the amount I expected it to be every month to accelerate payment. (*I also added an extra $300 to the first payment of our first mortgage to speed up payment.) The curse part is: I don't know how long I can keep that up, especially with the holidays right around the corner.

Our new house has a pool and everyone we know with a pool told us to expect utility bills upwards of $800. I was terrified to open our first bill. The bill we received is only for 23 days and we were on vacation for part of that, but we ran the pool pump every day for 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening. Our bill was $278. Hopefully, that is close to what it will be monthly, because while that is still is expensive, it's NOT $800!

Our credit card payments are going to decrease as our mortgage has so greatly increased, so I'm afraid progress is going to slow down with our debt repayment, but that was the trade-off of moving.

Progress on our car has been chugging along. It is still 0% interest and thus our lowest priority to pay back.

We have continued to pay our kids back to the tune of $50 a month. Progress there has been very slow, but at least there is progress. Once our credit card debt is finally paid off, the next priority will be our kids.

We do have some money in the bank left over from the sale of the house. We also have our emergency fund. I'm going to start keeping track of our emergency fund on here. As of 7/24/17, we have $2015 in our emergency fund. I want that number to keep gradually rising. It truly is a safety net and it a security blanket on a screen.

Anyway, that's where our debt stands, sort of and I'll post a real debt progress update next month!