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?