Life Lately

Life has been crazy lately. Just like it has been for everybody else.

The Husband and I are always saying we would like our lives to slow down just a little bit, but as he said, we didn't mean for it to come to a screeching halt! LOL!

This virus is changing the world and changing the way the world is going to look afterwards.

For us, school was shut down on March 13th and I have been home since then, mostly not working. I have had a week full of meetings, but those have almost all been focused on plans for next year. Currently, our district is awaiting more information from the CDE before it decides how it wants to move forward. I'm super blessed because we are still getting paid so I am not losing my paycheck or having to worry about how I will pay my bills.

The Kids are (obviously) home. All of their various activities have been cancelled except dance (I'll get to that in a minute). No school. no FFA meetings or competitions, no baseball, no sleepovers, no hangouts, nothing. The Daughter is taking her dance classes virtually over Zoom. It's not ideal but it is a way that she can still be engaged and they can still provide something for the kids to do.

Another huge blessing is that The Husband is able to work from home. He regularly works from home one day a week but with the virus and the shelter in place directive in California, he is working from home every day. He works in an essential business and as such could go into work if needed, however because he CAN work from home, he gets too. Not all employees at his company are so lucky, many of them have to go into work to do their job.

Being home has allowed me a lot of time to relax and get caught up on life. It has given me the time to do so many things I had been putting off! I have: cleaned and spot treated my mom's vintage linens, done the same to her wedding dress, cleaned my house and stayed on top of laundry, had time to do bible study and scripture memorization every day, worked out or walked/run every day, worked puzzles, and watched movies with my family. The time we have gotten to spend together is priceless!

I'm very lucky, too because I plan my meals a month ahead. The grocery stores where we live have been crazy! We have not had to brave them much. We had all the food we needed for the month of March except perishables. We have produce deliver every other week and have for about 7 years. We have had to go to the grocery store mainly for milk and eggs. It's not been too bad.

I hope you are all staying safe and healthy during these turbulent times!

Debt Update March

As you know, life went topsy-turvy for the whole world during this last month! I’m sorry my debt update is so late, but blogging has taken a backseat during this time. The Covid19 virus has changed the life of so many people! Us included. It has been an interesting 3 weeks with several more to come. Writing for my blog has not been my priority, but I wanted to update you all on my progress, what there was of it.

This debt update is based on our February update. I’m just being real and trying to be transparent. I do these mid-month because our credit card closes on the 15^th. I can’t wait for the day when we are consumer debt free and I can do our financial savings updates at the beginning of each month and I don’t have to take into account when our debt cycle closes! Due to life going sideways, home quarantining, and social distancing, this update is a little late. But, better late than not at all!

Although we are not paying off our debt as fast as I would like, I am happy to say that for the second month in a row our overall debt decreased! It didn’t decrease by leaps and bounds, but we did make progress so I have to take my wins where I can get them.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $17,284.94     Credit Card at 16.74% interest

            $0                   Car Loan at 0% interest    

      

Our total debt stands at: $17,865.60 YIKES! It’s a lot of debt. All we can do is just keep plugging away. We dug our hole one shopping trip at a time and all we can do is pay it back one month at a time. (As an aside, ironically, our overall debt didn’t grow too much from our last update, but it is still above our last total. Our credit card debt increased but with our continued monthly payments for the car loan, they almost cancelled each other out.)

Plus side: we started actively tracking our debt again! Our debt decreased! We paid off $285.66 of credit card debt and $295 of car debt, for a total of $580.66; that only amounted to 3.3% of our total debt. The fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids is still a plus to me. We continue to make progress towards our retirement and to contribute $50 a month to our kids’ bank accounts. We paid off our car!!!!! We are down to “just” one debt. I know it’s a biggie, but it’s exciting to be down to only one debt!

Down side: No matter how much debt we pay off, it’s never enough. We also had a few months of backsliding and not keeping track of where we were that we are still trying to recover from. L Also, we did still charge on our credit card. Of course, I also hate that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal! It’s actually a little depressing to see how long we have been on this roller coaster called debt freedom. We made some poor choices and have been living in a debt cycle for too long!

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $17,000 (☹) and keeping it that way. I’m also looking forward to staying on the debt pay-off and blogging band wagon! I was off of it for too long and it feels good to be making progress again! I am also looking forward to getting our total debt below $17,000. I know I said this earlier, but I’m really excited that we paid our car off!!! We have two, reliable, paid for cars and no car payment! Last time we paid off a car, we had to buy one for The Husband the very next month and didn’t get to enjoy having no car payment for even one month!

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.

I hope your debt freedom journey is smooth, uneventful, and beyond successful!

March 20 for 2020 Goals Check-In Part Two

Welcome back to installment 2 of March’s 20 for 2020 update. In my last post I reviewed the first 10 goals of our 20 for 2020. Here’s how we are doing on the last 10…

     11. Open, and use, a Health Savings Account for The Husband’s braces.

Pass: This is done! The Husband’s company loads all the money at once, even though it is only taken from his paycheck each pay period. The braces are paid for in full (we got a 5% discount for paying all at once) and The Husband loaded a little extra money to pay for doctor’s appointments throughout the year!

12. Increase my 403b contributions by $100 sometime during the year.

No progress here: Still no action on this goal.  Hopefully sometime in the next 10 months.

13. Increase The Husband’s 401k contributions by 3% by the end of the year.

No progress here: Hoping to accomplish this through a raise… The Husband’s review is usually around March so we should know by the end of this month if this will be easily feasible or not. He generally receives a 3+% raise that we designate to retirement.

14. Have one billing period where I don’t charge ANYTHING (except autopays) on my credit card.

Fail: Charged way more than I even wanted to last month and already have several charges on the statement for March.

15. Have a successful “No-Spend” September.

No progress here: It’s not September…

16.  I want to drink the loose-leaf tea I already have and not buy anymore until I am only down to 3 flavors.

Pass: This one is funny, I know; but I have so much loose tea that I feel like I need to focus on drinking what I have before I buy more. I haven’t bought loose-leaf tea in a whole month! For me, that is nearly unheard of! (Mind you, I still have probably 25+ flavors!) I’m also calling it a pass because I have finished 2 more flavors of loose tea since I wrote (and updated) this goal!

       17. Add all our “subscriptions” to our monthly budget.

Pass: All done! Going forward, all our “subscriptions” or monthly recurring charges are an item line on our monthly budget sheet.

18. Don’t spend any money, out of pocket, on supplies for my classroom. (This does not include lessons I might choose to purchase.)

On-track-ish: This one is really difficult. I purchased a video converting program, but still no actual supplies.

19. Keep current (monthly) with what I owe The Kids.

Fail: I still owe them for old hours and haven’t paid them. This is just sheer laziness! I need to do the math and gather the money. Must do better here! I have literally done nothing on this front since my last update! My goal is to be all caught up and current by my next update in April!

      20.  Check in on my financial goals monthly.

Pass: Same as last month: so far so good. It’s so easy to be vigilant at the beginning of the year. The real test will be if we are checking in on our goals next October!

Overall, I’d give myself a B. I am “passing” on 11 of 20 goals, (which is an improvement over last month’s update), on track with 3 more, “failing” with only 3 of our goals, and “on hold” or “not yet started” another 3. I’m feeling pretty good about our start. We still have a long way to go but are making pretty good progress.

Overall my successes are in mostly the same categories and so are my failures… Must do better. Must put in more effort!

I can’t stress enough the fact that if we are successful with these goals, we will definitely be creating a firmer financial foundation!

March 20 for 2020 Goal Check-In Part One

One of my intentions for this year is to check in on my 2020 financial goals monthly! Although I am horrible at finances, one thing I have learned over our last 10 years of debt, is that when I pay better attention to our finances, our finances do better...

I still believe that if these 20 financial goals are met we will drastically improve our financial situation by the end of the year! In all honesty, even if only some of these goals are met, we will be in a better place than we were when this year started. Please wish us luck as we try to do better and be better!

1. Get credit card debt below $10000. This has been a monkey on my back for way too long!

Pass-ish: We are making progress. We had a several unexpected windfalls and put half of each towards debt plus made our regularly scheduled payments. So, again, I would say on-track-ish. I don’t know if we will make it to under $10000 by the end of the year, but we did decrease our debt. It’s going in the right direction.

2. Track our family spending every other month of the year.

Pass: We tracked January and it wasn’t pretty. I’m hopeful for March. We will need to be diligent in tracking our spending. It will be a busy month with dance competitions and the high school baseball season starting. I’m hoping we are too busy to spend too much money!

3. Increase contributions to envelopes and go “cash only”.

Fail-ish: We have actually met 50% of this goal, but because 50% is an F, I’m giving us a failing grade overall. We did increase envelope contributions, but we did not go cash only. We are still not cash only, but we are paying more in cash and charging less. Working on it…

      4. Increase Christmas savings.

Pass: We increased from $200 per month to $300 per month. I still don’t know if it’s enough, but it is an increase of 50%. We have already bought several Christmas presents and I’m happy the money was there to use. So far we are on track but it’s early times yet.

5. Church Tithing. My goal is to donate $300 EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

Pass: So far so good. We donated $300 in January and February. We have already budgeted the money for the rest of the year, but we need to follow through, which is not always our strong suit.

6. Pay off car!

PASS: I’m very pleased to say that we paid our last car payment and now are just awaiting our pink slip! I’m super excited and am very happy to be “car debt” free… (for as long as that lasts).  We haven’t done this yet, but we did make our January payment and have one payment left in February until we own the car outright!

7.  Once The Husband’s car is paid off, put $345 payment into savings each month towards a new car fund.

Pass:  So far, so good. In February, we paid off our car. The final payment was $295. Since we budget $350, I put the remaining $55 into our savings account. March’s “payment” is budgeted for already too!

8.  Save $5000 above and beyond my “normal savings” or any car savings.

On-track: I have deposited the first 14 weeks into savings and budgeted for the next 4 after that. Additionally, we received several unexpected windfalls that we split between debt and savings, so we deposited an unexpected $3433 into our savings. After only 2 months we are 69% of the way towards fully meeting this goal! Feeling confident about this one!

       9. Meal plan 8 months out of the year.

On-track: So far I have planned our meals for every month this year! Including March! I’m feeling on a roll here! As our lives get busier and more hectic with kids sports and activities and the end of the school year nearing, we always do better when we have a plan! It’s nice to have an idea of what we will have for dinner and knowing we have the ingredients on-hand!

       10. Assuming I can meet all of the above goals, my last goal would be to increase my savings rate.

Pass: I would actually give us a pass on this because we are putting our regular amount in savings plus working on completing a $5000 challenge, plus we put half of our unexpected money towards savings. Thinking good thoughts on this one!

As I think these posts are only going to get longer as the year progresses, I have decided to split them up into two posts. I will publish them during the same week but even half of them are a lot to get through!

Savings Update

“Every” month I do a debt update, (or at least I’m supposed to). I’m sick of reporting my debt and then feeling depressed about it. Because of that, I’m going to start doing a savings progress report every month. I’m hoping this will motivate me and help keep me accountable and aware of my goals.

I have a few savings goals for the year 2020: first, I want to continue putting $50 into each of The Kids savings accounts and $100 into ours; second, I want to save $5000 above and beyond our normal savings; third, once our car is paid off, I want to put the “car payment” into savings; and lastly, I want any tax refund we get to go towards our summer vacation. (This is assuming we get about the same amount of money back in taxes that we did last year. Hoping!)

So let’s see how we did in February!

1. $50 and $100 monthly contributions to The Kids and our own savings: yep! This has been a part of our budget for years and is almost automatic!

2. Save $5000 above and beyond normal savings: So far so good! I found a savings challenge on Pinterest that gave you different amounts to save each week, for 52 weeks, to reach $5000 by the end of the year. I am on track for that but additionally, I have been saving half of any extra money I get unexpectedly. This includes found money and refund checks from our refinance, and going forward, will include any overtime The Husband gets.

3. Once our car is paid off, put extra “car payment” into savings: with our last payment we paid our car off. The normal payment is $350 but we only needed $295 to pay the car off. The remaining $55 went into savings! So far so good.

4.  Use our tax refund for vacation: we haven’t filed out taxes yet so we aren’t quite sure where that will fall. Hopefully by this time next month, I can update about this.

Now, lets see exactly how our progress fell out… Because I didn’t think to start this in January, I am going to post January’s and February’s progress together.

       Ours: deposits made:      January                                                             February

                                        $225 (savings challenge)                              $1350 (refinance and challenge                                           $1300 (refinance refund)                             $228.60 (refinance refund)

                                              $171.74 (escrow account refund)              $100 (normal savings)

                                             $100 (normal savings)                                  $8 (found money)

                                                                                                                $150.40 (overtime)

$55 (car payment savings)

                                            $1796.74 (January)                                        $1892.00 (February)

               The Boy: deposit made: $50                                                                    $50

               The Girl: deposit made: $50                                                                     $50 

In large part due to our refinance, we have already saved $3433.74 of our $5000 “extra” goal. We’ve also saved our normal $100 per month for us and $50 per month per kid and set $55 aside from our car payment. In total this year, we have saved $3888.74! I would call that a win

Only 2 full months into the year and we are already at 69% of our goal to add an additional $5000 to our savings! That is awesome! I know a lot of that money came from the refinance but alternatively, we didn’t just throw it away. We used it to meet our goals and gave each dollar a specific purpose.

I realize we still have a lot of debt to get rid of and this money would go a long way towards helping us to get out of debt, but it also goes a long way in giving me peace of mind! And that is just as important as getting out of debt.

Our savings account still isn’t where I would like it to be, but we are making progress; we are actually making very good progress on the savings front. I know most months won’t be like these two, but I’m thankful for the jump start they gave me and hopeful that our savings will keep moving in the direction we want it to move. After several expenses, our savings account took a big hit. Now it’s just a little below the minimum amount where I feel comfortable; and barring any unforeseen circumstances or expenditures, we should be back up to my comfort level by mid-April.

As always, please wish us luck on our journey to financial freedom!

Another Refinance Check

I actually can’t believe I’m writing this, but we got ANOTHER check from our refinance. I already wrote about our refinance here, here, and here and I actually thought that was the end of it.

The most recent check we received was a refund from our escrow account. This check was really unexpected as I thought they would just role our escrow account over into the new loan. But, apparently, they didn’t do that.

Don’t worry, we still have an escrow account with plenty of money left in it. This is the refund we got when they rebalanced the account.

Two years ago we put away too much money and got a huge refund of $1800+, last year we had a slight shortfall which upped out monthly payment by about $30 a month, and this year we got another refund. Apparently we got the refund sooner than we would have because we refinanced our loan so they recalibrated the account earlier than they normally would have by about 4 months.

The refund was for $457. Half of the money went towards our credit card debt and the remaining half went into savings.

All these refund checks from our refinance have really helped our bottom line, especially when it comes to our savings account. Just 8 weeks ago we only had about $5800 in our savings account and now we have almost $9000. 

I’m much happier with the bump in our savings and I hope we can continue this upward trend while still making progress on our debt.

Found Money

The Husband thinks I’m a dork, but I keep track of my “found money”. Last year, I found $3.84. I know it’s not much, but it was money I didn’t have before and all I had to do was bend down and pick it up off the ground.

I have continued to keep track of my found money this year. The year definitely started off slow, but I made up for it the other day with my walk!

I’m so excited I need to share: I found $16 when I was walking the other day! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it is $16 more than I had last week! Just as we have been doing with any other “windfalls”, half will go to savings and half will go towards debt. I know $8 isn’t a lot either way, but it is progress!