Security

What is security worth?

What is getting out of debt worth?

Those are the two questions I’m currently weighing against each other.

And right now, getting out of debt is winning.

For several reasons, the most of which is we were stupid with money, our debt barely decreased this month (and after interest is added, there might not be any decrease at all). So in an effort to see some progress, I am bringing our checking account balance down to $2 so we can make an extra $125 payment towards our credit card debt.

I know $125 isn’t much, but that is about the amount we keep in our checking account as a buffer for security.

With each paycheck, it has slowly built up to that amount.

I have accounted for all outstanding checks and bills until our next payday, but I’m still a little nervous. I obviously don’t want to pay an overdraft fee of $40+ dollars in order to make an extra payment towards debt; sound counterproductive, right? But I’m still so sick of not making progress.

When I get home tonight, I’m going to roll all our change and try to make an extra payment of that amount. Our due date for our payments is 4/12 but our closing date isn’t until a few days later. I’m hoping to roll the change tonight and then get it to the bank tomorrow so that I can make one more extra payment before the actual closing date. (Of course I’ve already made all required minimum payments.) I’m hoping to have about $50 in change that I can then send to our credit card. (This is what we call our “house petty cash” jar. We usually keep anywhere from $40 – $80 in cash in the jar in addition to the change. I’m leaning towards leaving the cash in the jar as we are wiping out the buffer in our checking account. (*I am using the cash in the jar too. I rolled our cash and had $44 and $35 in cash, for a total of $79.)

Security vs. debt. That is the question.

I also want to be clear, I do still have an emergency fund. Right now, I have more than the Dave Ramsey suggested $1000; but I also have a lot of responsibilities. I have kids, cars, a home, and obligations that we need to meet, $1000 wouldn’t be enough for us right now at this stage in our life. I also want to be clear, I do not have enough in our emergency fund to cover our debt, if I did, I would be debt free. Really, that’s a conversation for another day, but I wanted to let you know that although we are depleting the buffer in our checking account, it’s not the only security we have.

Again, to be transparent, we still have sinking funds and money in our envelope system that we could draw from. We are trying really hard to fund our envelopes so we will have to depend on credit less and less. We have $1800 in another account that we use for homeowner’s and car insurance annually. Extra monies in this account go towards The Girl’s dance competition fees; but if there is anything left over after all the comp fees are paid, the difference will go towards our credit card debt.

*After rolling our change of $44 and deciding to use the larger bills in the jar too, I started scrounging for money and realized I have some extra money for emergencies that I keep in my car. It wasn’t much, only $45, but I am including that in my next credit card payment too, for a total of $124 extra dollars towards our stupidity!

March Unusual Spending Recap

So, how did we do? Okay, not horribly, but not great, either.

Let’s start at the beginning.

March is always an interesting month for us. Most of our dance payments for The Girl are taken care of, we’ve already paid for The Boy’s baseball, but it’s also The Husband’s birthday month, and this year he turns 40! In addition, we have a foreign exchange student coming to live with us for a week and with that we are hosting a potluck at our house welcoming all the kids from Japan. We will be holding family birthday parties at our house this month. Lastly we have two car registrations due for the month of March.

I did buy my husband the tool he wanted. It ended up costing about $200. I had an Amazon gift card for about half the amount and I charged the remainder. (Our debt total did not go up, but I didn’t have enough money to pay for it outright. I should have planned better.) I still haven’t worked on the second present as time is a major issue. I’m hoping to set aside a little money each month to help pay for that one.

We did host The Husband’s birthday party for family at our house and we did pay for the food out of our normal grocery budget. I wish I had remembered the party and padded my grocery budget applicably. (Note to self, add $100 per paycheck to grocery budget for May birthdays!) Overall, we are actually running a $20 shortage on groceries, in part due to March birthdays and in part due to our exchange student. Overall, I’m not unhappy with how the food and food budget went for the month.

Our time with our exchange student has come and gone and ended up not being nearly as expensive as I expected. We did buy her lobster and beef (which accounts for the overages in our grocery budget) but other than that our expenses for her were minimal.  While in America, she became homesick and didn’t want to do much. We scrapped plans for our fancy dinner as she ate like a bird and was exhausted. We did take her to the zoo but we had a free pass which included parking and admission for two kids and two adults. When we went to go pay for our exchange student, the cashier told us she had some free entrance tickets that people hadn’t used all of so she got in free too. That night for dinner, she chose KFC… cheap and easy. The potluck went really well and we didn’t need to buy much, only paper plates and lemonade mix, so it was pretty inexpensive too. We actually had a new bag of cups, napkins, and plenty of silverware.

We did pay both of our car registrations in the ways I expected to: from our annual expenses account and with our checking account buffer. Somehow, that buffer has built back up a little bit again (not on purpose) so we are going to use it for some unusual expenses in April.

I have already written a rough draft of our unusual spending for April and I am making plans to actually figure out how to fund the needed expenses. As always, wish me luck.