June's Unusual Spending: A Recap

June... how did we do? Eh....

We didn't do horribly, but we didn't do great, either. As I predicted, June was crazy expensive!

We bought a lot for the new house. We bought mattresses and box springs for all of us, a new bed for The Girl and new bedding for both kids and the spare room. We paid for all of that out of some of the profits from the last house. We bought garbage cans and soap dispensers for The Kids' bathroom only. I  We haven't found soap dispensers or towel racks or fixtures that we like for the master bathroom yet, so we are still on the lookout. As far as furniture goes, I finally ordered bar stools for our island counter. They came to $1000 for 5. My mom is paying for two of them as a housewarming gift so we only had to pay $600. That also came out of profits from the old house. Things for the house are coming along and they are expensive, but eventually we will have bought everything we need and not need to buy anything else... eventually. I'm looking forward to "eventually".

Camping was great. It's not my favorite thing, but it is a cheap vacation. We bought the food for camping right out of our food budget and same with the gas. For The Husband's father's day gift, we gave him some different Starbucks items from the grocery store and a gift card to the movies to go see Cars 3 as a family. It wasn't too expensive and any time we can make something"family time" and make memories, we enjoy.

The Lodge was pretty inexpensive, mostly just gas and food which we paid for out of our normal budgeted envelopes. The same with The Girl's dance recital and pictures. We had more than enough money in the "kid's activities" envelope to pay for everything we needed to buy. (I love that we have been funding our envelopes pretty well and I love having the money for something that we need to pay for!)

Since I wrote this, I have only seen my niece who graduated high school. I gave her a card and did put some money in there from the "house petty cash" jar. I will be seeing my nephew on the 4th of July, and I will give him the same amount of money from the same jar. (Note to self: really must include “gifts” in budget again!)

It was a costly month, for sure. We did pretty well, overall. Of course we spent more on "house stuff" than I even imagined! Hopefully, we can plan well for July!

Where Did You Go?

I know that blog writing is personal, but as a reader, you get attached; and when bloggers just stop writing without any warning, I miss them. I wonder where they went. I still check their blogs regularly and hope there will be a new post.

I know it's a false sense of friendship, but as your read someone's blog, someone's story, you feel like you know them and cultivate a friendship with them. And then, when they just disappear, you feel like you've lost a close friend.

Like most of the personal finance community, I love reading PF blogs! And I get sad when they just disappear. I understand we all write for different reasons; and I understand we all have real lives outside of our blogs. But, I wish bloggers would say goodbye.

I know life happens and most bloggers don't consciously decide to stop writing. However, when you realize that's what happens, as a reader, I wish you would give us a heads up and let us know that you won't be blogging anymore. That would save my time, energy, and heartache sadness.

When and if I decide to stop writing, I will say goodbye. And nobody even reads this blog. I will say goodbye for me.

100th Post

I did not realize I had published 100 posts until after I hit publish; and then I thought it was very funny ironic, that my 100th post was whining about paying off debt. That is pretty apropos for a brunette struggling to get out of debt.

Wow - 100 posts. That's crazy. I know no one reads my blog. It is truly just my little piece of the internet and blogosphere, but it's mine.

I don't promote my blog, I don't link up to other blogs, I've never commented on another blog using my blog; but I write, I journal, I am transparent with my debt journey. And I do it all for me!

For the past year, I have recorded my ups and downs as they pertain to getting out of debt. I have shared triumphs and misteps. I have shared about the way we save and how we budget. I have been very honest about our finances. I have tried to post, on average, 8 times a month. But importantly, I have done this all for me.

I love going back and looking at old posts and seeing what I wrote. I'm not trying to gain followers or readers, I'm keeping a journal of my financial life and progress: for me.

I don't write "how to" posts. I don't use "buzz words" to get traffic directed to my site. I don't pay for hosting. I don't know anything about blogging. But I can write and share my progress. I can be honest and open. I can do my best to become consumer debt free and document the process.

If you ever find yourself stumbling on my little ol' blog and thinking "it's not a very informational blog", I'd say you were write. It's just an online journal where I jot down my thoughts and feelings.

And I love it.

100 posts about where our debt has been, where it is, and where it's going. If you want to read about that, you've come to the right place.

Monotony

Monotony... does anyone else feel that way about their debt?

I know our debt is moving in the right direction. I know we are making progress towards becoming consumer debt free. I know we are (a little) better at managing our money. But, it is becoming monotonous.

I love payday. I love logging into our bank accounts and seeing the balance. I love paying our bills and knowing that I am wiping out debt. But then, I have two more weeks until I get that euphoric feeling again. And the time in between becomes monotonous, boring, same old - same old.

It's hard to be excited about paying off debt when it becomes boring. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited that we are working towards becoming debt free. But our pursuit of that freedom has become routine: plan a budget, get paycheck, pay bills, rinse and repeat. I don't know what I expect or how to make paying our bills more "exciting", but right now, I'm finding paying our bills boring.

I was the same way with savings for a long time. Every paycheck, I transferred $50 in some savings account, (either ours or one of the kids). And it was boring. Then I found the One Year - $1000 savings challenge. Now, I still make $50 transfers with every paycheck, but every Monday I cross another square out on my blackout BINGO card and transfer that amount of money towards savings... It's just a little boost to a monotonous task. Now, how can I do the same thing for my debt?

I wish there was a challenge of some sort... I joined a $1000 debt payoff challenge last year that was hosted by Less Debt, More Wine and it was great. It gave me that extra push of motivation that I was lacking. I need something like that... I'm very competitive and I guess the "challenge" nature of the support group really appealed to me.

I don't know, I really just needed to get this off my chest. Paying off debt is boring. But I am going to continue to work towards debt freedom, I just wanted to complain and find out if there is anyone else out there who feels the way I do.

Tidbits

From last month to this month we "dropped a decade" with our credit card debt! We went from over $11000 in credit card debt to under $10000! I'm so excited! Our credit card debt stands at about $9400; a downward trend that I want to continue!

We currently have about $27000 in our savings account right now, (not including our baby emergency fund), I'm so tempted to pay off our credit card with that money. But, being in a new house, with new bills, is scary and I want to be prepared for anything that comes along. Not to mention, that we do have repairs that have to be made. We have to repair the roof, do some drywall work in the garage, and make some other minor repairs to the tune of about $6000 total. We also have things we want to do, like remodel 2 of the 3 bathrooms, new counters in the kitchen, and a new mantle, to name just a few. And all those things take money. For now, we are going to sit tight on the money in our savings account and continue to pay off as much debt as we can each month, but it's oh-so-tempting to pay it off now.

One goal I wanted to hit in my debt pay-off, was to "have more available on my credit card than I owed", in other words, I wanted my credit card debt balance to be less than half of my available credit. This month, I met that goal. Two months ago, unsolicited, our credit card company increased our limit by $2000, but I was basing our goal off of our original limit. This month, we met that goal too. We owe less than half of our available limit. It's a small milestone, but another step in our debt payoff!

The new house has a pool, so with that came added expenses. The most expensive one is going to be that we hired a "pool guy". He will come once a week and do the chemicals and brush and skim the pool. It's going to cost us $80 per month. I hate the added expense, but I think it will be money well spent since we have no idea what we are doing.

Lastly, we have some small snowflakes to throw at our debt. We received a small check from one of our old mortgage companies for over-payment when we sold our house. We also received a small check from our pediatrician because they charged us for a co-pay when we are double covered and we shouldn't have been charged. I also rolled our change and ended up with $22.50. Altogether, these things added up to a $100 snowflake; not too shabby. Any extra money is money going towards our debt.

Debt Update - June 2017

This was a decent month for debt payoff, not great, but acceptable. We spent tons of money on house purchases, but they were all paid off right away. (We did charge them in order to earn points, but paid them off as soon as we got home.) We definitely ate out too much, but that had to do with moving and not being able to find things and having to feed all the families that came over to help us.

We did not have a mortgage payment in the month of June so that helped accelerate our debt payoff. (We also will not have one in July, but that will pay for our summer vacation.) The move was very expensive, but we were still able to knock out some debt and bring out credit card debt under the $10000 mark, which was our goal. We aren't far under $10000, but we made it. We dropped a digit on our debt payoff and that is awesome!

As of my last update in May, we owed a total of $25749.58. 

Here are our current debt totals:

            $9380.92        Credit Card at 15.49% - current minimum payment is $279

            $1250             The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1250             The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $11365.25       Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $23246.17

We paid off $2503.41, or 9.7% (so close to 10%, but just a little short) of our debt total; that’s even including stupid tax, aka, interest. I wish we had made 10%, but I'm really happy with our progress this month. I have to take the wins where I can find them.

Overall, our debt decreased. That is a trend we hope to continue. Next month's debt repayment will not be as impressive as this month. We have vacation coming up and we are planning to pay for that in cash. The money that would normally go towards debt repayment, is being funneled towards paying for vacation without going farther into debt. I would love to be able to continue with this traction and keep knocking some debt out!

My main financial goal is to bring our car payment down to under $11000. I will need to add just $20.25 to our payment. That should be more than doable.

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 around $1650 with slow growth each month.

When planning our July budget, I continued trying to fund our different budget categories, which has been the problem in the past. I didn’t fund those categories, but the kids still need clothes, hair needs to be cut, and toilet paper needs to be bought. Although by funding these we pay off debt more slowly, it also keeps us from accruing more debt because we have, at least some of, the money we need to buy essentials. For the month of June, we have tentatively allocated $1100 to different budget categories, not including food or gas. In all honesty, it’s probably not enough, but at least it’s a start. As we pay off more and more debt, we will be able to fully fund all our envelopes.  Many of those envelopes are starting to have a balance carry over from month to month, which will really help as we need to start spending money from those categories.

Life is...

This is more of a life update post than a financial or debt post...

Things are finally starting to settle down a little.  We are fully moved into the new house and out of the old house, but we are so far from unpacked. I have a goal to unpack about 10 boxes a day. Yesterday, I unpacked 14 so it was a good day. We'll see how today goes. My goal is to unpack and set up our computer desk. (The new house has a built-in computer desk in the kitchen.)

Besides unpacking yesterday, I spent 2 hours running errands; grocery shopping, buying things for the house, returning things that didn't work for the house, etc. It was a long day. We also had a pool guy come. We are going to pay $80 a month to a company to come once a week to treat and clean the pool. Money well worth it in my opinion, but we will need to factor the added expense into the budget.

When we signed loan documents, we were told our first mortgage payment wouldn't be due until August 1. That means most of my June 30 paycheck can go towards debt and paying for our vacation.

June is also a 3 paycheck month for The Husband. I haven't yet budgeted that money anywhere... Other than our bi-weekly budget items (food and gas) I think the rest of the money can go towards debt.  It's never enough, but every little bit helps!

I don't have firm numbers yet, but I think last month was a good month for debt payoff! I'm pretty sure we made it under the $10000 mark on the credit card, including interest. I can't wait to do a debt update and see where we stand.

We have spent a ton of money on the new house. We bought new bed frames and mattresses for all of us: $1500, new toilets and toilet seat lids: $1000, new bathroom mats and rugs and soap dispensers:  $300. We've also had to buy lots of odds and ends that don't fit into a specific category. I have tried to pay all house related expenses off when we made them so we don't increase our debt.  Currently we have $29000 in our savings account, of which, $1658 is our emergency fund. I continue to add $50 a month to our e-fund and to participate in a $1000 savings challenge. (For the challenge, I add some money to savings every week. The amount varies. It's like a BINGO board that you have to play blackout on. Here's the link to it.) It's nice to have extra money to use to buy/repair things for the house and because we don't know how our bills are going to fall out yet. We are hoping we won't have to tap into the extra money each month, but we are relieved it's there.

The Kids are adjusting well to the new house. They love having their own room and their own space. The dog is enjoying it too. There is a lot more of this house to explore. We are all settling in.

Summer is finally under way. The Kids have enjoyed splashing in the pool and we are starting to make day trips and soak up as much fun as we can.

Hope all is well with you!

Moving

Moving sucks!

Prior to this move, I'd only ever moved from my parent's house to my first house. At the time, we didn't have much stuff and virtually no furniture. This time was a whole different ball game.

I have essentially been packing for 4 months. Before we put our house on the market, we packed a lot up so we could declutter and stage our house. Then our house sold so we kept packing a little at a time. By the time moving day came, all we really had to pack up was out bathroom, a little stuff in the kitchen, and our big furniture.

Luckily, we were able to get the keys to the new house about 5 days earlier than expected. That gave us a chance to move some stuff over, get some cleaning done, and a little more time to move. Even with that, it was all an exhausting blur.

I don't know how we accumulated so much stuff in the last 13 years. I also have no idea how we fit it all in our tiny house. Everything from our 1100 square foot house is now in our 2500 square foot house and our new house still feels full! Because we had to be out in such a rush and we moved at the end of the school year when I was trying to pack up my classroom, we didn't purge the way I would have wanted to when we packed. So as we unpack, we plan to really look at things and decide if we still want/need them or if we can let them go.

We are moved, but we are so far from unpacked! For the most part, we tried to put boxes in the room they belong in, but that's about as far as we got. Our first night in the house, we couldn't find toothbrushes and toothpaste so we searched through boxes until we could brush our teeth. It was a pain. Yesterday, we worked on putting essential boxes away: clothes, bills, and the kitchen. Today, I'm going to work on bathroom boxes and more clothes. Unpacking is definitely going to take a while!

We were very blessed to have a lot of help moving: one of my sisters and her husband and kids, my best friend and her husband and kids, two adult nieces and nephews, and my in-laws. I don't know what we would have done without them! Now that we are all moved in, we can unpack a little at time.

We will miss our old house terribly, but we are very excited to make new memories in this house and to make it our home!

Unusual Spending for June

I can’t find a post about “unusual spending for May” so I might have forgotten to do one… If I didn’t write one, I can’t give an update on it, so…

I know this is technically a little late, but onto my unusual spending for June.

June is going to be CRAZY and crazy expensive! First of all, we are moving. We aren’t going far, only about 3 miles, but we still have to move our entire life! We also have a camping trip Father’s Day weekend, a trip to the Lodge, The Girl’s dance recital and dance pictures, and a few niece’s and nephew’s graduations.

In truth, I’m not sure how we are going to cash flow all of this, but we are going to try.

Our move is going to be quite costly! It’s not actually the move itself, but everything that goes along with it, the things we want for the new house. We already ordered 3 new toilets and a hot water dispenser; to the tune of $1200. We also bought 2 new TVs, that was another $800. We still need to buy new beds, mattresses, and sheets/bedspreads for The Kids’ rooms. We are also getting a new mattress and box spring for ourselves and putting our current mattress in a spare room. We need to buy new bathroom fixtures for at least 2 of the 3 bathrooms and possible the third as well. In addition to fixtures, we need new bathroom “stuff”: soap dispensers, garbage cans, etc. Eventually, we will need new furniture and probably a million other things, so, needless to say, June’s going to get expensive! We aren’t moving far, just a few miles down the road, but we are moving from an 1100 square foot house to a 2500+ square foot house. We are going to need more of basically everything!

For the last 7 years or so, we have gone camping on Father’s Day weekend with our whole family. The campsites have already been paid for, but we do need to factor in increased costs for gas and food. Other than that, this is a pretty inexpensive weekend. (Of course we need a father’s day present, too. With the move, it has been hard to plan. Hopefully next week I will be able to take The Kids to pick out their presents for their dad.)

The week after camping we have both a trip to the Lodge and The Girl’s dance recital. For the Lodge, the only thing we might need is increased gas and food money. We go with other families and we share cooking/food responsibilities. The Girl’s recital and pictures, on the other hand, comes with a whole host of needed extras. We need to buy tickets for the recital. They are $15 each and we need 4. We bought them yesterday and we should be reimbursed for 2. We were able to pay for them with money already in our “kids activities” envelope.  We will also be able to pay for dance pictures from this envelope. However, we will need to continue to fund said envelope going forward as it will be mostly depleted by the end of this month.

I have one niece and one nephew each who will be graduating from high school this month. We will give each a small cash gift as congratulations. This will probably come from our “house petty cash” as it was unplanned for. (Note to self: really must include “gifts” in budget again!)

It’s going to be a costly month, for sure. We are hoping to not go into further debt in order to finance it and in fact, to decrease our consumer debt by at least a little.

Last month was busy as we were buying a new house and packing our old one, hence the low volume of posts. In all likelihood, June will be the same. I’m going to try to not fall of the face of the earth this month and keep you posted on our financial doings and our debt slaying progress!