This and That

Warning: this post is going to be all over the place.

I’m feeling thwarted in my debt pay-off progress. And I know I have no one to blame but myself! I don’t think it is anybody else’s fault. I am just feeling like we aren’t making much progress and are living in a two steps forward, one step back universe right now.

Unexpectedly, we received about $2800 back from our refinance. I wrote about it here.We decided what to do with it. Some of it, about $100 covered a shortfall in our budget for that budgeting period, which was nice so we didn’t have to transfer money over from our savings. Another almost $100 covered a dinner out with my mom that I wasn’t planning on or expecting. (Since my dad died, I’m trying to go out to see my mom once a week. This week we ran errands and then grabbed dinner.) The remaining $2600 was split between savings and debt. We put $1300 into our savings, which was great because it topped us back up over $7000 (slowly trying to make our way back to $10,000 in our emergency fund). The other $1300 was sent towards the credit card.

We also have an “extra” $3000 on February 1^st because we get to “skip” a payment due to the refinance.  We also split that money, though not 50/50. We are putting $1300 in savings, which, along with our regular savings will put us at about $8500 in that account. Though we won’t yet be at our goal, we will be much closer than we were when we started the year. The remaining $1700 will all go towards our credit card.

The two “extra” credit card payments, coupled with our regularly scheduled payments, should make about a $4000 dent in our credit card debt.

As part of a frugal challenge that I participated in, I tracked all of our January expenses… and it wasn’t pretty. We spent a ton of money. A lot of which went on our credit card. WAH…WAH…WAHHHH…. Because of this, for the month of February, I am going to take my credit card out of my wallet and see if that makes any sort of difference in our spending. Some of the things we charged, I even had cash for in my wallet, but “charging” has become such a habit. A bad habit!

I am really trying to fill my envelopes with the amount of money that we actually need. It has been difficult. I am increasing the amount of money that goes into our envelopes, but that decreases the amount of money that can go towards debt. But, I guess if we don’t need to charge more because we have the cash to pay for things, then the overall decrease would be more, right?

Kids are expensive. I can’t fill our “school”, “kids’ activities”, or “clothes” envelopes fast enough. Or with enough money. I have increased both the school and kids’ activities envelope from $100 to $200. I’m still not sure that’s enough. I increased the clothes envelope from $200 to $400, however, to be fair, that starts in February and The Husband and I both use money from that envelope, it’s not just The Kids. Ugh!

With my 20 for 2020 goals, I’m hoping to see some real financial progress by this time next year! But in truth, I’m hoping to see some financial progress even before that! I want to see meal planning paying off in fewer trips to the grocery store and lowered food spending.