Debt Update

Our last debt total wasn’t as good as I had hoped, but we did keep our debt going in the right direction. Last month, we paid off 2.8% of our total debt. I’m hoping we did better this month because at that pace we would be in debt for 35 more months. However, as long as our debt totals continue to go down, I’m counting it as a win. We are going in the right direction and not adding any debt each month.

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back $1200 to each of them, which means we are 80% of the way through paying them back! Although once we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I will be so happy when I can no longer consider them a debt! Our car loan has continued to decrease as well. We have a 0% loan so it’s nice to see the payment actually affect the bottom line; to that end, I don’t really focus on paying extra towards our car payment because it’s at 0% interest. I know that goes against what Dave Ramsey teaches, but I can’t see paying more interest on my credit card balance just to get an interest free loan paid off quicker.

Although we are not paying off our debt as fast as I would like, I am happy to say that for the fourth month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say again that our debt went up!) We are not making giant leaps and bounds in our debt repayment, but slow and steady wins the race.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $18,953.69       Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $300                 The Girl

            $300                 The Boy

            $5130.00          Car Loan at 0% interest

          

Our total debt stands at: $24,683.69. YIKES! I can hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATED seeing a 2 as the first number on our credit card and I’m so happy that our credit card debt is back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt only has a 1 in the front! In the grand scheme of things, the actual amount of debt is not that much less but psychologically there is a huge difference! I’m hoping for a much bigger decrease next month!

Plus side: our debt decreased! We paid off over $1300 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to about 5% of our total debt. We continue to make progress on both our car loan and the loan to The Kids and the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids is a plus. A bonus is that our total debt fell into the 24K-something range. Any little win is a win!

Down side: we didn’t pay off as much as I would have liked because Christmas is expensive. We had an entire extra paycheck during this budget period which did help our totals, but if it wasn’t for Christmas, it would have been more. Of course I also hate that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $18000 and hitting my goal of under $18000 by 12/31/18. Making continued progress on our car loan and decreasing our overall debt from 24K-something to 23K-something. I’m also looking ahead to after Christmas when I really get back to a cash only budget! I’m also happy that with my next debt update, our car loan will have fallen by another thousands place from the 5Ks to the 4Ks. This is through no action on our own but just from steadily plugging away. Every little bit helps and any forward progress is good progress.

Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been thrown out the window. This is the last month of the year and I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, I can’t change the past, all I can do is improve my future. Since our credit card debt is still so high, my goal for the end of 2018 is to be under $18000 in credit card debt. My other debts will continue to decrease at their slow and steady pace, but I am going to payoff $2000 more in credit card debt by the end of the year.

Clearly, I’m not in an ideal situation. But if I have to get out of debt one baby step at a time, I can do that.

WOW! My debt update posts are consistently my longest posts. This was another one.  If you stayed around until the end, thank you! If you got bored and moved on, I totally understand.

Look out goal #1: below $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/18… I’m coming for you!

Once we conquer this goal, I will really share our goals for 2019 and how or why I plan to focus on them.

Right now, I am dying to get our overall debt down below $20,000.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Just like for everyone else, this is the busiest time of year for us. We are cleaning, cooking, baking, and toing and froing with the best of them! But we don’t want to lose sight of our goals.

Our goal is still to be under $18000 in credit card debt by the end of the year. It looks like we should make it. Just barely…

As for everyone, Christmas is an expensive time of year! We buy gifts, extra food, host parties, and spend money on experiences we have together. And all of that makes paying down debt hard. We are going in the right direction by decreasing our debt, but not at the pace we would like. I just try to remember that as long as our debt is going down, we are making progress.

Looking at our credit card statement, after interest, we should have paid off about $1000 this month. With paying for Christmas, that’s actually pretty good. We also have paid back $100 to our kids, and $345 towards our car payment. We will be close to $1500 in actual debt paid off, but I’ll have more exact numbers when I do our debt update.

As always, I’m sad it wasn’t more, but Christmas is an expensive time of year that I did not properly plan for. Next year should be different. I have already included a “Christmas” line item in my budget. I have allotted $200 per month, so come Christmas time we should be all set.

This past weekend, we hosted a Christmas party open house. The Husband just said to me we could save a lot of money by not having our Christmas party, and he’s right. But I so look forward to getting to see friends and family that we don’t see often enough that it is money well spent. And hopefully, next year we will be nearly out of debt and will cash flow the whole thing!

As our to-do-list grows in the coming month, I will probably neglect the blog. I’m sure I will do a debt update, but I can’t guarantee I will do much else in the next 4 – 5 weeks. So, if I don’t “see” you again, have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. And though your season is undoubtedly busy, take time to slow down and enjoy the people around you and remember the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Christmas is Expensive!

Just like it is for everyone else, December is a very expensive month for us. Entertainment, charity, gifts, traditions, and parties are expensive.

We like to have fun; and there’s no better time like the holidays to enjoy yourself! This year, we took the kids to see a local production of “A Christmas Carol”. Although it was a local production, it was very well done!

Although we are in debt, we try very hard to give to charity, especially during the holidays. We don’t tithe as regularly as we should, so we try to give a lot during the Christmas season. We focus on giving to local charities. We take The Kids to our mall where they pull ornaments from the giving tree and they pick out and buy gifts. We also did the same thing at church this past week. We all picked a “need” off the angel tree and then we will shop for it. Our church packed boxes for Samaritan’s Purse and we all packed and delivered a box for that. Lastly, we are adopting a family this year through another small local charity. We are taking a child shopping and he gets to spend $20 per member of his family on Christmas gifts for them. This is the first time we have done this and though we are in debt we know we are better off than so many people and feel that it’s worth it so donate to this charity. It will slow our debt progress by a little but more importantly it will help someone and show our children how important it is to help and support charities when you can.

I went way over my gift budget. Quite honestly I don’t even know how much I went over because I just spent and didn’t keep track. That is one of my goals for next year: to keep track of my spending and see how much I actually spend and where. That goes right along with my goal of budgeting for Christmas next year. I have a huge family and we buy for every member of our family. Most people don’t understand, but that’s how we do it. I also have a few friends that I buy for and of course stocking stuffers and small gifts for people at work.

Another big expense we have at Christmastime is the Christmas party we host every year. We supply all the food and I give out a small favor. The food probably runs us between $600 – 700. Again, I’ve never really kept track. But next year I plan to log how much everything costs so that I can make a realistic budget and savings goal for the following year. I also always provide a small favor, usually something that is semi-hand made. I’ve given out homemade potpourri, bath salts, bottles of wine, cheese spreaders, soaps with handmade cards, and many things like that. After all is said and done, I usually only spend about $2 – 3 per favor, but the cost does vary. This year, I bought candles at the Dollar Tree and “painted” Christmas trees on them with brush-tip Sharpie markers. I also ordered small match boxes and tied them to each candle with a festive ribbon. I also give the same small gift to my co-workers. This year, after costs, the favor averaged $1.70 each and that includes having to buy the pens. (My friend was getting rid of a ton of ribbon and I told her I would take it. She had lots of holiday/Christmas ribbon so I didn’t even have to buy the ribbon to tie the matches on!) I’m very pleased with how this year’s favor turned out and how inexpensive they ended up being and I have the pens to use on future crafts!

Family traditions are very important to me. And we have a lot of them, many of which revolve around Christmas. We go the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair, we spend one day in San Francisco, we build gingerbread houses, and so many more that I can’t even think of right now. All of these things cost money. And in my opinion it is money well spent. Anything that lets us spend time together as a family and make memories is priceless!

The list of things that cost money during the holidays could go on and on so I’m going to stop right here. This was just a rambling post of why it is so hard to make progress towards our debt in December. I don’t want to sound too much like a Debbie Downer because we have made progress towards our debt, but as always not as much as I would have liked. Coming up in a week or so I will do a full debt update and I’ll be able to see exactly where we are: how much debt we have and how much debt we paid off. But until then, wish us progress!

Opt Out Option

I got the official okay that I can opt out of my healthcare for the remainder of the healthcare year. For my union, our healthcare year runs from October 1 to September 30.

Starting in January and with my January 30 paycheck, I will not have to pay for health insurance for the rest of the year. Until I actually receive that paycheck, I have no idea what that will do to my monthly take-home pay. I’m hoping that it will increase it by a good chunk!

I am still paying for my dental, vision, and life insurance to the tune of $229 a month, but I am no longer paying for health insurance. We are insured through The Husband’s work for our health benefits.

As everyone knows, health insurance is so confusing. If I’m reading everything correctly, I think I will only save about $100 a month, which doesn’t seem right, but that’s how the numbers look. Just like with my retro check, it’s a waiting game to see what my check will really look like. No matter what the outcome is, the extra difference will be sent towards our credit card debt. Our goal is to be out of credit card debt by the end of next year, so December 2019, and this is one more step to help us get there.

Our union has never been able to opt out of healthcare before which I have always hated. Between The Husband and me, we are double covered and his is way cheaper for the same coverage. I’m super excited that I get to opt out; even if only for a year. I will have to reapply next September and hope that I am one of the lucky 20% that is able to opt out of coverage.

Because we are covered by The Husband’s employer, I have always felt like having to pay for healthcare through my district is extortion! At least I have a small reprieve in having to pay for it! And hopefully the difference in my paycheck will be noticeable and help speed up our debt free date!!!

Outstanding Monies

Well, it is that time of year again. The time when we have outstanding money because of Christmas.

My dad owes us money for my mom’s stocking. (Years ago I took over buying my mom’s stocking and my dad pays for it. I but stuff all year and then add it up in December and he gives me cash.) I am not yet done with her stocking, nor have I totaled up how much I’ve spent, but usually I spend in the neighborhood of $300 - $400.

My brother-in-law owes us money for my sister’s stocking. (Last year her stocking was a little sparse and after years of joking with me to help him with her stocking, he actually asked me to this year.) I don’t know how much money he owes me, but I think it is approaching $100 and counting. I will continue to buy stuff as I find things that are perfect for my sister and will fit in her stocking. At this point, smaller is better as I have a few “bigger” items that will fit in her stocking.

My sister owes us almost $100 for tickets we bought for her for the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair which takes place in San Francisco every year. She was unable to print the tickets so I did it for her.

Lastly, my mom owes me almost $200 for different things I have purchased for her. I spend a lot of time with my mom so sometimes I owe her money and sometimes she owes me money. The closer it gets to Christmas, the more often she owes me money.

Currently we have about $700 worth of money outstanding to us. Most of it will be paid in a timely manner. (My mom usually doesn’t pay us back until several months after Christmas.) As I receive the money, I will send most of it towards our credit card debt. The money my sister gives us for the tickets, however, will be what we use to pay for the rest of our day there. It will pay for our food and any spending we do there (not including gifts). As I receive the money, I will send it as extra payments to our credit card.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I pray that you are healthy and happy and spending time exactly where you want to be this Thanksgiving.

Today I am thankful for so much: my wonderful husband, my beautiful kiddles, my extended family, a roof over my head, jobs we enjoy, and a roof over our head. I am abundantly blessed and I hope you are too!

Finally

Today is the day I get my retro check! I finally get to find out how much it is going to be for!

I've known about this check for a couple of months and I knew the percentage of my paycheck that it was going to be, but that didn't translate well into dollars in my head.

The plan for this money was to pay for Christmas. (About half of which I already bought, so I "owe" myself some money.) I was hoping the amount into my account would be about $750. And the closer it got, to "payday" the more anxious I have been getting.

I logged-in to my bank account online this morning and was so excited to see a deposit from my district in the amount of $1383.80!!! Woohoo! That's nearly double what I was expecting!

It actually will be enough to pay for everything we were hoping it would cover: Christmas gifts, food for our Christmas party, and our day at the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair. Depending on how much we spend on gifts, it might even be enough to cover, or at least contribute to, tickets to a family Christmas play!

I'm so excited! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would receive almost $1400! Truth be told, I was afraid that my guess of $750 was high and that I wouldn't even get that much! This money really feels like a blessing as we head deeper into the holiday season. I'm so excited to have a way to pay for all our upcoming expenses and traditions. If we are being completely honest here, I wish the money had come weeks ago, but I am certainly not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!

I'm so excited! In a lot of ways, and for a lot of the people on my list, I have felt like I was at a stand still; now I can really start to make a dent in my Christmas shopping and start to cross things and people off of my list!

Opt Out

For the first time this year, my district is offering the possibility of opting-out for our insurance plan.

Currently, I buy the lowest insurance through my district (as we use The Husband’s insurance, but have no option to opt-out) and I pay a little over $500 per month. This insurance cost includes vision and dental. We do use my vision and dental plan as we opted to not buy that through The Husband’s work.

Only 20% of our union is going to be allowed to opt-out. If more than 20% apply, we will hold a lottery to determine eligibility.

I’m going to apply to be able to opt-out. If I am able to do so I will use all the extra money to accelerate our debt pay-off.

I would still buy our vision and dental plan through my district. Those run about $200. That would allow me an additional $300 a month to send to our credit card. By increasing our debt payment by $300 per month, we would be able to get out of credit card debt 6 weeks earlier.

In the grand scheme of things 6 weeks doesn’t sound like much, but 6 weeks is 6 weeks. It’s 6 weeks less of debt payment. It’s 6 weeks less of interest paid on debt. It’s 6 weeks less of worry. It’s 6 weeks!

Hopefully I get selected in the lottery and I can opt out!

Wish us luck!

Debt Update

Our last debt update wasn’t too bad. We paid off 3.1% of our debt total. Sadly, I don’t think we did as well this month. With Christmas coming, debt reduction has been difficult. However, I’m still considering it a win as long as we don’t increase our debt!

Okay, on to our debt update!

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back $1150 to each of them, which means we are well over two-thirds of the way through paying them back! Although once we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I will be so happy when I can no longer consider them a debt! Our car loan has continued to decrease as well. We have a 0% loan so it’s nice to see the payment actually affect the bottom line; to that end, I don’t really focus on paying extra towards our car payment because it’s at 0% interest. I know that goes against what Dave Ramsey teaches, but I can’t see paying more interest on my credit card balance just to get an interest free loan paid off quicker.

I was doing really well using a cash-only diet for a couple months. I fell off-the-wagon so to speak. My credit card found its way back into my wallet and I have used if for small, frivolous purchases. I need to take it out of my wallet again and focus on using only the cash I have on hand.  I still need to do this, but with Christmas looming it’s been hard. I think I will focus on taking the credit card out of my wallet after Christmas, which I know sounds like a cop out, but as long as my debt is still decreasing I have to consider it a win. As long as our debt continues to go down and I am still paying off more than I am adding we are going in the right direction. I am happy to say that for the third month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say again that our debt went up!)

Here are our current debt totals:

            $19,814.17        Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $350                 The Girl

            $350                 The Boy

            $5475.00           Car Loan at 0% interest

          

Our total debt stands at: $25,989.17. YIKES! I can hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATED seeing a 2 as the first number on our credit card and I’m so happy that our credit card debt is back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt only has a 1 in the front! In the grand scheme of things, the actual amount of debt is not that much less but psychologically there is a huge difference! I’m hoping for a much bigger decrease next month!

Plus side: our debt decreased! We paid off over $750 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to about 2.8% of our total debt. We continue to make progress on both our car loan and the loan to The Kids, and the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids. An unexpected bonus is that our total debt fell into the 25K-something range… barely, but it did. I didn’t expect that to happen until next month and I’m so happy it happened this month! Any little win is a win!

Down side: we didn’t pay off a total of $1000 which is what I’m still hoping for, and of course that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $18000 and hitting my goal of under $18000 by 12/31/18 (which with our new debt plan should not be a problem). Making continued progress on our car loan and decreasing our overall debt from 25K-something to (possibly…. Maybe… hopefully) 23K-something.

Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been thrown out the window. There are only 2 months of the year left and I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, I can’t change the past, all I can do is improve my future. Since our credit card debt is still so high, my goal for the end of 2018 is to be under $18000 in credit card debt. My other debts will continue to decrease at their slow and steady pace, but I am going to payoff $2000 more in credit card debt by the end of the year.

Clearly, I’m not in an ideal situation. But if I have to get out of debt one baby step at a time, I can do that.

WOW! This was another long post! If you stayed around until the end, thank you! If you got bored and moved on, I totally understand.

Look out goal #1: below $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/18… I’m coming for you!

Christmas is Killing Me!

I am doing everything in my power to not increase my credit card debt this month… including transferring some money over from savings. We actually dipped just under $10000 in savings again (by $21), but we are putting money from our next two paychecks into savings so it will only be for a week.

But, again, I feel like I’m having to play catch up!

I know we dug ourselves into this mess and that no one else can get us out, but I’m sick and tired of every month being a battle to not increase our debt. Currently, the battle is because of of Christmas.

I did not plan well for Christmas. I understand that is my short coming, but knowing that I am going to have money to pay for it is not helping me right now.

This goal to get out of debt in one year is really quite ambitious. In fact, right now I’m starting to wonder if we will be able to do it. We are supposed to be paying $1600 a month towards our debt and so far we have only managed to decrease our debt by a couple hundred dollars each month. (There is a silver lining there in that we didn’t increase our debt; but it is not decreasing at nearly the rate I would like!)

This feeling I’m having that “Christmas is killing me” is helping me to plan for next year. I love that it is helping me to plan for next year, but I hate the feeling of Christmas being a burden. Like most people, Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday; but right now, I want to get out of debt and through Christmas without adding to our debt at all. And truth be told it remains to be seen if that's going to be possible.

I will just keep plugging away at our debt and buying Christmas gifts and necessities as frugally as possible.

Regardless of our debt, I do love this time of year; and that is what I need to keep in sight! I need to focus on the time spent with family, traditions, and (as cliche as it might be) remember the reason for the season.  By doing that, I will be able to enjoy the Christmas season and not fall further into debt.

If we can stick to our plan, this time next year, I'll be writing a post about being debt free and how it feels to pay for Christmas with cash!

Wish us luck!

Five Days

Five days… five days! I find out how much my retro check is in five days!

Then I can finish up my Christmas shopping.

Then I can actually buy everything in my Amazon cart.

Then I can see where I am really at for Christmas.

The anticipation is killing me. I am anxious and excited and nervous.

I’m just ready to know. I want to know how much money I’m going to get so then I can determine how I’m going to spend it. I’m sick and tired of the hypothetical and I’m ready for the tangible!

All this is making me determined that I will budget better for Christmas next year. I will create a line item in my budget so that I am not in this same predicament next year!

Anxious

This post is a little funny coming on the heels of this post. But it's how I'm feeling and really a true barometer of the ups and downs of getting out of debt.

 I’m getting very anxious for my retro check. I know being anxious about it doesn’t change when it will get here or how much it will be, but I am anxious nonetheless.

Christmas is expensive and I have already spent so much money on it, with so much more to spend.

I am anxious to see how much money I am going to have and anxious to see if any of that money will be “leftover” to pay towards debt.

I have less than two weeks to find out how much money I will have to spend on the rest of our Christmas gifts.

In many ways, we are very far along. All The Girl’s “big” presents are already purchased. Her stocking is full and I really only need to buy her a few smaller things. We are having a little more difficulty with The Boy. He hasn’t asked for much and we are going to get him everything he asked for: portable charger, charging cord, Bluetooth speaker, and other small things like that. I am waiting until my retro check comes in to buy everything for him. His stocking is ready to go too. I’m also well in hand for shopping for The Husband and my parents. We still need to buy presents for my siblings and several of my nieces and nephews. We also need to finish shopping for The Husband’s family. To most people, that still sounds like a lot, but for my ginormous family we are actually about 50% done.

At this point, I just want to be able to finish up my Christmas shopping and know exactly how much money I have to spend. I can run numbers and make guesses all day, but because I’ve determined how I want to use that money, I want to know exactly how much money we’re talking and put that money to use!

Super Excited!

If you couldn’t tell by the title of this post… I’m super excited!

Since we are redoing debt, I was able to make a $1060 to our credit card. It’s the first real payment for our new plan. And it’s the first time in a long time I really feel like we are making progress.

Of course there have been some charges on the card as I have bought Christmas presents but haven’t gotten the money to pay for them yet. (That is coming in a retro check to me on 11/20.) We also charged The Boy’s birthday “party” expenses, which were about $250. However, we are making progress and have one more small payment that will go towards debt with The Husband’s next paycheck.

But right now, there isn’t much that can take away from my excitement of making some real progress. And going forward, I hope there is only going to be more forward progress!

With my paycheck today, we also paid back $50 more to The Kids and are getting oh-so-close to having them paid back. And once we get our credit card debt under $18000, we are going to knock that debt out completely! Hopefully that will be next week.

I know we still have a really long way to go; but I’m really excited to see some progress in the right direction!

I WON!

So I have some exciting-to-me news… I won a grant!

I guess this isn’t really personal finance related, but it is about finances.

I applied for a mini-grant through our county office of education. I teach a Home-Economics/life skills class for teenagers. It’s a new class at our site this year and I am starting from scratch! I am creating my own (standards-based) curriculum and everything. It’s a ton of work, but also a ton of fun!

Anyway, we have almost nothing for the class. I have been donated some small odds and ends but we really need just about everything.

I applied for $2900 to buy different supplies for the class. And I got it.

I’m super excited! Now I get to buy irons and ironing boards, sewing kits, dishes, pots and pans, food storage, silverware, and utensils for the class. In my proposal I also included $500 that can be used for “groceries”. With that we will buy some actual groceries, but I also intend to buy foil, plastic wrap, zip-lock bags and the like.

I’m super excited to get to purchase this stuff and then going forward, getting to use it!

I can’t wait to teach the kids basic sewing and how to iron.

I know all this seems silly, but these are life-skills many of the kids don’t have. This grant, more than doubled what my classroom budget was going to be so I am really excited to get to put the money to good use and to be able to do so much more than I would have been able to otherwise!

The class has been really fun, but exhausting, to teach! I have never taught Home-Ec before and it’s way out of my expertise. I am having to create my own curriculum which has been crazy. For the first month of school I was literally only one or two days ahead of the kids; now at least I’m planned for a couple of weeks ahead of them. This year is my guinea pig year, but I’m still having a blast!

I can’t wait to buy the stuff with the grant money so we can keep this class going!

Unusual Spending for November

Sorry this post is a little late. I've actually had it written but life has been so crazy it's taken me over a week to post it!

I skipped October’s unusual expenses because, quite frankly, I just got lazy… trying to get back on the wagon for November.

November, like December, tends to be an expensive month for us. Besides the upcoming holidays, we have The Boy’s birthday to prepare for (15! Where does the time go?), our annual ornament making (which we usually do in November), our Christmas party favors, and a large needlework that needs to be framed.

For The Boy’s birthday, he wants to go to play airsoft. We are allowing him to bring 2 friends; at $65 a pop it won’t be cheap, but it’s what he wants to do and his gifts won’t be very expensive. He gets gifts twice from us: once on his birthday and once at our family parties. This year he will be getting a Lego Starwars Advent Calendar, a Lego City Advent Calendar, Fortnite cookies, and a box of books (his choice!) I might also buy him some different tee-shirts as he has been saying he wants some new ones. We have already purchased both of the Advent calendars and the “specialized” cookies, all we have left to get are his books. We have some Amazon gift cards and are hoping to order the books through Amazon so we won’t have to “pay” for them. He wants 13 books total and we will buy all of them for him and half will be for his birthday and half will be for Christmas.

The Kids and I make ornaments every year and have for about 10 years or so. We usually do this in November on Veteran’s Day as it we have no work or school. That is the plan for this year, too. We haven’t yet decided what we are going to make so we haven’t bought the supplies yet. We usually spend about $40 on supplies for all of the ornaments. Although it’s after the fact (November 20), I’m hoping to pay for this with the money we plan to use for Christmas. This will be the retro check I get for the negotiated raise I got this year.

Another thing that has to be paid for is the favors we will give out at our Christmas party. Every year I give out favors. Most years I hand make them. I have given out soaps, bath salts, jams, and the like. I have given out store bought favors on occasion, such as, cheese spreaders or bottles of wine. This year I want to decorate cheap candles from the Dollar Store. This will be half homemade/half store bought. J I usually make about 30 – 40 favors, so in this case about $30 - $40. I will also need to buy the markers which I found on Amazon for $15. I’m looking at another $50 - $60 for party favors next month. Again, I’m planning on paying for this with my Christmas money.

Our last unusual expense is some framing I need to have done. My mom made me a 16X20 counted cross-stitch that I need to have framed. 16X20 is a normal size so I have two possible avenues to follow: I can buy a pre-made frame or I can have it custom framed. I’m not opposed to either way, I just need to find what I like and I will buy it. I want that done by our party so I plan to get a frame sometime in the next month.

That’s all I can think of for now… I’m sure I missed a million things as I feel like I always do, but that’s where we are for now.

Still Making Christmas Plans

So Christmas rolls around the same time every year and yet every year we end up putting in our credit card. That doesn’t make sense!

This year I am attempting to make some plans for Christmas and how to pay for it!

Just this past week I asked The Boy what he wanted for his birthday (in November) and Christmas. I’m going to ask The Girl this week, too. I explained to him, and I will to her too, that we can’t afford to wait until the week before Christmas to hear what they want. I told him we need to plan for stuff so that we can know how much we are going to want to spend. (*Sidenote – he seemed to understand because he already told us what he wants to do for his birthday.)

I have already bought one gift for The Husband and am working on a plan for what else I want to get him. In an older post, I talked about how I won two gift cards to Starbucks at a baby shower, I’m taking one of those to supplement The Husband’s other Christmas present and then I will be done with him.

I have bought a ton for our kids’ stockings and those are probably almost done. The same with The Husband’s, too. And I have some plans for gifts for adults/adult couples. At this point, it’s just a waiting game until I have money to pay for things.

We earn points for exercising from The Husband’s work/insurance. We save those points up and then redeem them for Amazon gift cards. Right now we have $210 waiting to be redeemed. We are going to redeem them in October so we can start shopping for Christmas.

We also have $290 waiting to be redeemed from our credit card. I am going to redeem that as a check instead of a statement credit in order to add to our Christmas budget.

Also, I am still awaiting 2 different retro checks: one at 1.56% for all of last year and one at 3.44% for a couple of months this year from a negotiated raise with our district.  Before taxes and deductions, the total for those two checks should be just over $1500. I’m hoping I will actually receive $800 into my accounts. (Our union president thinks we will be paid separately: one retro check in October and one retro check in November.)

We are looking to have about $1300 to spend on Christmas. I know to most people, this is a ton of money to spend on Christmas, but I have a huge family and buy for a ton of people! I shop for about 55-60 people altogether. We also have a Christmas party open house that we host every year and some family traditions that we do every year that cost money, too.

Our Christmas party is so fun and an opportunity to get to see some friends and family that we only see once a year. But it’s also very expensive. We buy pre-made foods that we would never normally buy and the costs definitely add up. In another effort to plan for Christmas, we will start buying food for the party in October and hopefully be able to fold a lot of it into our monthly grocery budget so it won’t be such a shock to our system come December.

We have probably already bought about 15 gifts. It’s actually not a bad start, but we still have much to do. But again, I can’t do anything until we actually have the money in hand.

If, by some small miracle, we don’t need to spend all the money on Christmas, anything left over will be sent towards debt. But I’m considering the fact that we are making a plan for Christmas, a win.

Again, this is all theoretical until we have the money in hand. And how much money I’m going to receive from my retro checks is just speculation until it hits my bank account. Regardless, I will put whatever the amount is towards paying for Christmas and I do know we have a guaranteed $500 as that money is already sitting and waiting for us to redeem it.

Whether this works out how I want it to or not, at least I am making a plan.

Making Progress

I am making progress.

I haven’t transferred money from my savings account to my checking account since May. For many months, I was taking money out of savings EVERY single month. I’m very happy that we haven’t taken from our savings in 5 months; and not only that, but we’ve actually added to our balance over the last several months.

Even with all the debt we have, I like to have a $10000 emergency fund. We are not quite there, but we are within a few hundred dollars (this should be topped off when we receive our credit from our Japan trip). For several months our savings account was steadily decreasing. I’m happy to see we didn’t take any money from our savings account. I know many people think $10000 is excessive when we are still in debt, but we have so many liabilities that I want to make sure we are covered in the case of a true emergency. We own a house. Roofs spring leaks, pipes burst, washers and dryers break. $10000 ensures that we could cover all of these things, even if they happened at the same time. We also have kids. Our kids are active in sports and $10000 ensures that we would be able to get them any medical care necessary in the event of an accident. We have cars. As everyone knows, cars are expensive. We have to be able to get to work and to get kids to school; $10000 makes sure that if something were to happen to one of our cars, we could still get where we need to be.

More than just adding to our own savings, we also haven’t borrowed any more money from our kids since before we moved over a year and a half ago. Granted, we haven’t even finished paying them back, but we still haven’t used any more of their money. Of the nearly $1500 we borrowed from each kid, we have paid back $1050. We still owe each kid $450, but we are getting there. In fact, after we get our credit card balance below $18000 (with the goal of this being done by 12/31/18) our next goal will be to pay the kids back. I decided I don’t want this bill hanging around our necks for the next 9 months ($450 remaining/$50 per month).

I am making progress. It’s not monumental. It’s not earth-shattering, but it is progress in the right direction. Slow and steady wins the race. I often need to remind myself of this. We didn’t get into debt overnight so we certainly aren’t going to get out of debt overnight.

Our credit card debt is going down. Our savings balance is going up. Our envelopes are being filled. Progress!!!

Why I'm ANGRY

In my last post, I told you I was ANGRY, but I didn’t go into a lot of details as to why, other than the fact that I don’t think it is right.

When I say “right”, I mean literally moral.

I have a story where I could have been justified in walking away from our debt, or at least refinancing it to a lower amount. In fact, many people told us we should just walk away, rent a house for a few years, and then buy a house when it falls off of our credit.

You see, we bought our first house, a two bedroom, one bathroom house in 2004 for $320,000. Our plan was to live in it for a couple or few years and then sell it and use the equity to buy a bigger house. At the time of our purchase, we had a son and were pregnant with our second child. (We didn’t know at the time if we were having a boy or a girl. It was a girl.)

But a funny thing happened to our plan, with the recession that hit in 2007, it fell apart… miserably!

The house that we still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars on was suddenly only worth $90,000. We had no equity to use to purchase a bigger house. People were walking away from their homes left and right or refinancing for less than they owed, or shortselling their homes because “it wasn’t fair”.

Regardless of the market, when people bought their homes, they made a commitment to pay for it; not to only pay for it when they were happy and the market was good.

I was an ideal candidate to walk away from my mortgage. I was living with a son and a daughter in a 2 bedroom home, but we made a commitment and neither The Husband nor I could morally walk away from our home because we felt we had an obligation to pay our debts.

Instead of walking away like millions of people did, we made the best of a tough situation. We remodeled the house we were living in to make it more what we wanted. (We were unable to add on, but we remodeled every room in the house including the kitchen and bathroom, replaced all the windows, re-wired and re-plumbed the house, and made tons of smaller updates.)

By the time the market turned around, we were able to sell our home for a small profit (only $25000 more than we paid for it) and purchase a perfect-for-us-forever home with the proceeds. But we lived in that 2 bedroom house for 12.5 years because we made a moral obligation and commitment to pay for it, no matter how much it sucked or how unfair we thought it was.

That is why I am angry when people settle their debts for pennies on the dollar. They used the money, spent the money, enjoyed the nice things and nice trips and then don’t “think it’s fair” to have to pay it back. I have been on both sides of the equation and I feel like honoring your financial obligations is the right thing to do: even if it takes years, even if it’s hard, even if you don’t want to. I feel the same way about people griping about student loans. There are ways to make college cheaper, but if you choose to take out $80,000 for your private school education, then you don’t get to complain about having to pay it back!

I get angry when I hear people whining or complaining about paying back debt that they willingly took on. I get angry when they settle their debts for pennies on the dollar and then talk about “how much debt they paid off”. I get angry when people take the easy way out because getting out of debt is hard work. I’m not saying getting out of debt is easy, because it’s not. But if you got yourself into a mess, it’s your responsibility to then get yourself out of said mess!

*I also want to include I am not talking about people who lost their jobs and could not financially afford their homes/debts anymore. I’m frustrated with people who made a conscious choice to walk away because “it wasn’t fair”.

Debt Update

Our last debt update wasn’t too bad. We paid off 2.7% of our debt total. I’m hoping to do even better this month!

Going forward, however, things are going to look a little different because we are redoing debt. By different, I’m hoping that our debt is going to start dropping faster! We are hoping to be out of debt in 13 months, so, by November 2019. The new plan hasn’t really kicked into overdrive yet as The Husband’s 401k contribution hasn’t affected his paycheck yet and my change will not go into effect until my October 31^st paycheck. But change, it is a coming!

Okay, on to our debt update!

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back $1100 to each of them, which means we are over two-thirds of the way through paying them back! Although once we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I will be so happy when I can no longer consider them a debt! Our car loan has continued to decrease as well. We have a 0% loan so it’s nice to see the payment actually affect the bottom line; to that end, I don’t really focus on paying extra towards our car payment because it’s at 0% interest. I know that goes against what Dave Ramsey teaches, but I can’t see paying more interest on my credit card balance just to get an interest free loan paid off quicker.

I was doing really well using a cash-only diet for a couple months. I fell off-the-wagon so to speak. My credit card found its way back into my wallet and I have used if for small, frivolous purchases. I need to take it out of my wallet again and focus on using only the cash I have on hand.  But I am happy to say that for the second month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say again that our debt went up!)

Here are our current debt totals:

            $20,124.54       Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $400                 The Girl

            $400                 The Boy

            $5820.00          Car Loan at 0% interest

          

Our total debt stands at: $26,744.54. YIKES! (This stinks… many of these charges will be paid off, but they were added at the very end of our billing cycle before I could process the payment through my bank. And a couple hundred dollars of our new balance are charges I made for my mom, who will pay me back; but again, after the billing cycle closes. Oh well, I will just hope that the progress really shows in our next debt update!) I can hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATE seeing a 2 as the first number on our credit card and I can’t wait until my next update when I’m sure it will be back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt will only have a 1 in the front! In the grand scheme of things, the actual amount of debt is not that much less but psychologically there is a huge difference! I’m hoping for a much bigger decrease next month!

Plus side: our debt dropped from 27K-something to 26K-something. We paid off almost $900 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to almost 3.1% of our total debt, which is more than last month. We continue to make progress on both our car loan and the loan to The Kids, and the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids and haven’t transferred money over from our savings account in over 5 months!

Down side: we didn’t pay off a total of $1000 which was what I was hoping for, and of course that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $20,000 and working towards my goal of under $18000 by 12/31/18 (which with our new debt plan should not be a problem). Making continued progress on our car loan and decreasing our overall debt from 26K-something to 25K-something.

Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been thrown out the window. There are only 3 months of the year left and I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, I can’t change the past, all I can do is improve my future. Since our credit card debt is still over $20000, my goal for the end of 2018 is to be under $18000 in credit card debt. My other debts will continue to decrease at their slow and steady pace, but I am going to payoff $3000 in credit card debt by the end of the year.

We didn’t pay off as much debt as I would have liked in total dollars, but that’s always the case. Due to some unexpected expenses, we did not pay off as much debt as I wanted, but we did still manage to decrease our debt by nearly $900 so I’ll count that as a win.

Obviously, I’m not in an ideal situation. But if I have to get out of debt one baby step at a time, I can do that.

Also over the next month I will get back on the no-credit card-bandwagon and stick to our budget! This all combined with my only real financial goal right now, getting our credit card debt below $18000 by New Year’s Eve!

WOW! This was another long post! If you stayed around until the end, thank you! If you got bored and moved on, I totally understand.

Look out goal #1: below $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/18… I’m coming for you!

Redoing Debt

Whelp, The Husband came to me the other day with a plan to help us get out of debt. He had a whole spread sheet ready to go and approached me with, “don’t say no before I tell you my ideas”.

He said since we have such a ginormous credit card balance, why don’t we drop our retirement deductions, just until we are credit card debt free, to get us out of debt faster. In many ways, this bums me out, but seeing the numbers laid out in his spread sheet was pretty cool.

At the rate we are going right, we are paying roughly $625 a month towards our credit card debt. At that pace, we wouldn’t get out of debt for 4 years, when our son would be starting his senior year… YIKES! With the numbers he laid out, we could decrease our retirement contributions by half and be out of debt in a year. WHOA! WHAT?

Although, there will be a hit to our retirement, it’s nice to have a light at the end of a very long tunnel!

The Husband was maxed out in his retirement deductions and we cut that in half. I was planning on upping my deductions to $1200 a month, but instead am dropping it to $600. It hurts, to be sure; but I do think it will be the best thing for our family.

Our minimum payments will go from $625 a month to over $1600 per month. Based on the spreadsheet he made (he’s totally a smart computer/excel nerd), we would be out of debt in 13 months from now. I’m hoping we can throw the odd extra cash towards our credit card throughout the year too and hoping we can get it down to 12 months to payoff.

I’m just so sick of not making progress and so thankful that he’s been crunching numbers and came up with a workable solution.

The plan is to halve our retirement contributions, pay off our credit card debt in a year, and then re-up our retirement contributions. The Husband will max out again and I will up my deduction to $1200 per month. Our retirements will take a hit. In that regard, we are definitely slowing progress but we are literally paying hundreds of dollars a month in credit card interest and we will be able to knock out our debt so much faster this way. And we will still be the ones paying it off. No easy way out. No hand-outs from anyone. No settling of debts. We will pay back every penny we borrowed and get ourselves out of debt!

This wasn’t the original plan, but plans change and we are going to get out of debt!

To Get Out of Debt Faster, Make More Money

People say this like it’s so easy, but it’s not. Especially in my profession. And especially if you value family time. And even more so again when you work in town and also play chauffeur to two busy teenagers.

As a teacher, opportunities to earn extra money are very hard to come by. I work a full time job and also spend extra hours at home planning and preparing lessons. The few (in my district, 3) extra possible pay days are spaced out throughout the year and I try to take advantage of them, but sometimes I can’t. This year, I was unable to take advantage of the first one because I was too far behind in preparing my classroom. (Being behind was not all my fault, my janitor never put my room back together. I went to school 3 different days and was unable to work in my room.)

It's also difficult to make extra money when you enjoy spending time with your family. I don’t want to give up time with my in order to earn more money. I understand that getting out of debt takes sacrifice; but as long as my kids want to spend time with The Husband and me, we want to be there. They are only “ours” for so long and we want to be with them as much as possible.

The last reason we can’t just “make more money” is I already have a second job… as an unpaid chauffeur. Both The Kids are teenagers and they live very busy lives. I am constantly dropping off and picking up at school, football, and dance. That doesn’t take into account in social activities that The Kids do (when they aren’t otherwise occupied with their extra-curricular activities).

I’ve said this before, but I feel it’s worth repeating. We got ourselves into this debt mess and it’s up to us to get ourselves out of it, without asking our kids to sacrifice. We want them to be kids and to have experiences that kids have, and they do. Having said that, they don’t get to do everything they want or buy everything they want. We’ve told them we have debt. We’ve told them if they want something badly enough, they can work to buy it themselves; but me picking up a second job would limit my time with them and their opportunities to do anything outside of school hours.

Just “making more money” isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s not that we aren’t committed to getting out of debt, because we are. But we are also committed to spending time with The Kids and giving them the best life that we can.

Life is a balancing act and we haven’t been very good at balancing the scales, but we are trying. I’m setting small goals to help us dig out of this very deep hole that we dug for ourselves. I just wish getting out of debt was as easy as “making more money”.

Small Goal #1: Less than $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/2018… I’m coming for you so look out!

Small Wins

We’ve had a few small wins lately…

First of all with the exception of one small mistake (mine) we haven’t charged anything on the credit card; and the one charge I made (stupid) I paid off immediately!  We still have some monthly charges that are associated with our credit card and those will continue to go on the card, but other than that, we have not been charging on it.

Another win is that we started our Christmas budget. I received a check for $290 and I deposited it at the bank and immediately headed over to the ATM and took out $300. That money is now sitting in an envelope in a drawer at home waiting to be used for its intended purpose. As I receive my retro checks, we will continue to add to the envelope.

The Boy hasn’t played soccer in a couple of years but wants to try-out for his high school soccer team. Which meant we were going to have to buy him cleats. I was dreading this because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on cleats in case he didn’t make the team; but at the same time, I didn’t just want to buy him super cheap-o cleats that would hurt his feet. Enter my brother who found a BRAND NEW pair of Adidas cleats in the middle of the street when he was driving on his mail route. They were size 11.5. He tried them on but they were too big for him (as he wears a size 9.5 – 10). Then he offered them to my son. They are his size! I was super excited. He got a nice pair of cleats and I didn’t have to pay for them! That solved one dilemma!

My last small win for this post has to do with a nail in my tire. The Husband went outside to get something the other day and he came back in the house and told me we had to switch cars the following week because I got something in my tire and he would take it to get fixed. The small win is that because we bought my tires from America’s Tire Company, they will repair tires for free. They pulled out the nail and plugged it… and we didn’t have to pay anything!

Sometimes, when you are getting out of debt, it’s the little things that help you get through it. I’m glad I have any sort of wins to celebrate, be it small or otherwise!

I’m still trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel and recognizing small victories is one way to help me do it!

ANGRY

I (thought I) just found a new blog to read… Then, about 5-7 posts in, starting from the beginning, I found out I was wrong.

The blogger goes on to say that one of their credit cards was charged off and she settled the bill for 45% of the total. To me, that is not getting out of debt. To me, that’s taking the easy way out.

I get that they were deep in debt. I get that it was a lot of money. I get that they have dreams and goals. Believe me. I. Get. It.

As I too am in their situation. The difference though, is I plan to actually work hard to pay my debt off. I have set a mini-goal, with a due date, that I am trying to achieve and once I achieve that, I’ll set another mini goal and then another until I’m debt free.

The Husband and I dug this hole ourselves, one purchase at a time; now we are filling it back in one shovelful, or sometimes spoonful, at a time. I think it’s unfair to not pay back the full amount if you are able. And truthfully, this blogger’s fiancé did have some medical issues; but she also went on to say that the debt was from her previous relationship that ENDED OVER 6 YEARS AGO. 

Annoyingly, she also goes on to blog about how much money they are SAVING by doing this. I wouldn’t call it a savings. Truthfully, it feels like it’s theft. I’m going to use your money to buy stuff I don’t need and can’t afford and then not pay you back for it and say how much I saved on it! It’s crazy!

I don’t think it’s right to call yourself a debt blog if you aren’t making the responsible choice and actually paying off your debt. It’s much easier to get someone (a company) to charge off your debt and settle for pennies on the dollar.

Not to mention, I don’t think anyone who does that will “learn their lesson” and stay out of debt!

Although we have found ourselves back in debt, it’s due more too changed circumstances than anything else. Our new normal was very tough to get adjusted to. Buying our new house was expensive; but we are paying back every penny we borrowed; and slowly learning to live within our means. We are paying our debt back.

How easy would it be to call the credit card, ask them to close the account, and to settle for 40 – 50%? In fact, we actually have enough money in the bank to do that right now. But it’s not the right thing. It’s certainly the easy thing, but I would need to live with myself and my conscience afterwards!

Sorry. Thank you for indulging me. Rant over.

Final No-Spend Update

I think I might have exceeded my No-Spend food budget between last weekend and yesterday. And we were doing so well, too.

We had $289.70 remaining in our budget. I went to a local shop in town and bought scones and clotted cream. The total there was $27.98, leaving us with $261.72. Then we went to Target over the weekend to buy some appetizers to bring to a small dinner party and we spent another $13.49, bringing our running total down to $248.23.

It’s this next trip that really got us. We went to Costco yesterday and spent a fortune. We needed a lot and bought even more.  We were getting low on snacks (things for lunches at school) and, truthfully, could have waited until October, but we just bought what we needed because we had the money. (Although our goal is $500 for No-Spend month, we had money left over in the envelope from August that carried over. That is how we literally had the cash on hand.) At Costco, we bought 10 gallons of milk, yogurt, sliced cheese, 4 loaves of bread, 2 packs of baby bel cheese, granola bars, granola biscuits, cereal bars, almonds, trail mix, cheese-its, grab bag chips, salami, butter, wheat thins, 2 boxes of cereal, and several kinds of fruit. We also bought a few things we will save for our Christmas party, but we wanted to start buying them now, so we could spread the cost out over several months. At Costco, we spent a total of $262.35, so we did exceed out No-Spend goal. However, if you subtract what we bought for the Christmas party, which totaled $21.37, we were a little closer to our budget. Taking those out of the equation actually would have left us with about $7.25. (But actually, we then had a small Target trip where we spent another $13.55 so we still would have been over budget.)

We didn’t buy anything at Costco that wasn’t food and that is another win in my book.

Oh well, another No-Spend September, another month going over our grocery budget. I will continue to work on our grocery budget and continue to carry over any money from month-to-month. I would like to have just one No-Spend September where I actually stay within budget. J

Hopefully I won’t need to buy any more food for the month of September.

Overall, our No-Spend month was still a success because we sent more money towards debt than we normally do. We spent less money on groceries than we normally do. And we were able to pay for some unexpected expenses in cash rather than reaching for the credit card.

We bought very little that wasn’t food during No-Spend September. We did not get any massages or haircuts. We didn’t go clothes/shoes shopping. We didn’t buy and dish or laundry detergent. We didn’t buy toilet paper or paper towels. We actually did really well this month.

We bought some things that were needed, however. The Girl needed new pointe shoes for ballet and we bought those. She also needed a shirt for Leadership, and obviously we bought that. There might have been another odd thing here or there, but overall, we really didn’t buy much during our No-Spend month. It was really just that blasted Costco trip that messed us up! HAH! J

Regardless, the biggest win here is that we got farther out of debt because of our no-spend month. It might not have been by much, but it was definitely more than it would have been if we hadn’t have had a no-spend month!