Final No Spend Update

Hi... Sorry I fell off the face of the Earth for a couple of weeks, but life got crazy!

Alright, I'll start with the bad news.

We did not stay within our No Spend month grocery budget.  We were doing so well and then the last week of September hit us like a ton of bricks. I went to Costco and spent $130, which was the remainder of our money. I got milk, fruit, and a ton of snacks for lunches: granola bars (X2), granola cookie things, peanutes, almonds, trail mix, Pirates Booty (X2),  pringles snack packs, and cornnut snack packs. I was doing well. Then a couple days later, The Husband went to Safeway and bought some groceries, to the tune of $40, then we ran out of stuff at home, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, we stayed in our normal $500, but blew our $400 budget out of the water.

It was not a proud momemt.

There were some bonuses of our No Spend month. We did put a considerable dent in our debt and that was fully due to the fact of the money we saved because of our No Spend month. We were also very mindful of our spending and, because we spend so much time at home, it gave us a lof of time to work on our current home improvement project.

I'm not happy about our grocery budget, though. And I am going to do everything in my power next year, to see that we meet our goals... all of them!

Unusual Spending for October

We are going to have a fair amount of unusual expenses this month.

First of all, we are going to the Renaissance Faire. Secondly, The Girl has costume fees due for her dance teams. Let’s see, our toaster broke at the beginning of September and we still need to replace it. And, oh yeah, our dog needs shots in October. October is looking to be a little pricy.

Many of things can be funded from our sinking funds, but not all of it. We did not plan (or save) for the Renaissance Faire, but luckily, The Husband has some overtime coming up that should be more than enough to cover the day! The Husband makes just over $50 an hour and for overtime he makes time and a half, so a little over $75. On his next paycheck, he should have about 8 hours of overtime, or $600 before taxes and roughly $425 after taxes. The Faire will probably cost us about $200 all told.

The Girl dances competitively, and let me tell you, it’s EXPENSIVE! Her costume fees are due in October, to the tune of about $800. Luckily we set aside money every month for dance in our “yearly expenses” account. There is enough money sitting in the account to pay for all her fees already, extra money in the account will go towards competition fees.

Our toaster broke the first week of September, so we have gone without. Once October hits, we will be buying a new one. We do have some money in our “essentials” envelope. That will buy the toaster as well as some other items we haven’t replaced yet due to No Spend September.

Our dog is up for shots in October. I don’t know what else he needs, but I know he needs his rabies shot. The Husband’s overtime check will also pay for this. Going forward, we are going to start allotting money towards a new envelope: “dog”. We should have been doing this all along, but we haven’t. Our goal is to add $25-$50 a month to the envelope so in the future, we will have the money to cover shots and vet bills. . (Anything left over will go towards debt. Ideally, we could throw the whole amount towards debt but these are things we want to do with the family and making memories is worth it to us to stay in debt a little longer. I’m just so happy he has the extra money coming so we can afford these things! I’m not expecting much left over, but I will take what I can get. We may not have any extra to throw at debt, but we also aren’t falling further into debt!)

Goals

Goals

I don’t usually make concrete goals each month. I tend to make vague goals at the end of each of my debt updates. I want to try making more specific goals each month and then updating whether or not I met them and what steps I took to reach them.

• ·        Pay $1000 towards debt
• ·         Bring our car loan down to under $10000
• ·         Bring total consumer debt total to under $20000

I have a very specific goal I want to meet by the time of my next debt progress report: I want to have paid $1000 towards debt, not including stupid tax, er, interest.

I want $1000 to leave my bank account and go towards debt.

And I’m not sure how I’m going to do it.

We have only budgeted $775 to go towards debt and I don’t know how I’m going to come up with $225 extra dollars. I’m hoping that our paychecks are a little more than estimated and that maybe we over-budgeted in some categories and that that money can help us make up the deficit.

Another goal is to bring the amount we owe on our car down below $10000. Now, disclaimer, this should happen with our regular payments barring any catastrophic happenings.

Lastly, I want our total consumer debt to fall under $20000. It was a MAJOR stretch goal last month, and still a stretch this month, but it’s more doable. In order to make this goal, we will need to come up with an extra $400, above and beyond the extra $225 we are already searching for, during the month so I’m not sure how we are going to make this goal, but we are going to try.

It’s so tempting to use our sinking funds to throw towards debt, but I need to remember, that money is there for a reason and serves a very real purpose. It is those sinking funds that keep us from falling deeper into debt.

September Debt Totals

*I started writing this before all my statements came in so I could get a jumpstart on my progress report, but right now, I am DYING waiting to figure out if I met my goal of getting under $9000 after stupid tax interest!!!! (9/13/17)

Debt progress is still slow, but better than last month.

During the month of September, any extra money from No Spend September has been able to go toward debt, but it’s never enough.

For me, the biggest “pro” of this month was that all of our debts decreased, including our credit card! Some of our debts decreased more than others, but they all went down! YEAH! And we have continued the trend of decreasing out debt every month! I am so done with any increases in our debt total!

Our new normal is killing our debt snowball! So much of the snowball money we used to have is now being funneled towards paying higher bills.

As of my last update in August, we owed a total of $23,118.63. We came nowhere close to coming under $20000 in total debt, but we did make decent progress.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $8968.78        Credit Card at 15.74% - current minimum payment is $231

            $1100             The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1050             The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $10305.25      Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $21424.03

Debt payoff wasn’t as much as I would have liked (but when is it ever?), but it was much better than my last update! We paid off $1694.60 of debt. That is almost $1700 of debt we will never have again! Percentage wise, we paid off just over 7% of our total debt. And I reached my goal, under $9000 in credit card debt! That's a number we'll never see again!!!!

Looking at the numbers, I’m hoping to keep decreasing. Ideally, we’d be able to get under $20000 in total debt owed by my next progress update. but that is still a stretch. There really isn’t anywhere we can find an extra $500 from right now. I will continue to be hopeful, though, and hope that we can throw extra money towards debt as we get into October.

Some things that helped us reach our goal of credit card debt under $9000 was No Spend September, redeeming points on our credit card for a statement credit, and some overtime The Husband earned during the month. I’m hoping we can find some extra money throughout October to help us make more progress.

We are continuing to make slow progress every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, towards savings and paying our children back. We put $50, per paycheck, into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly. Our emergency fund currently stands at a little over $2000 with slow growth each month. It’s not much, but it gives us some peace of mind. That $2000 is above and beyond what we have left over from the sale of the house. That money is still earmarked towards home improvements in the new house and things we still need to furnish it.

No Spend September Updates

9/13

I went to the grocery store last night and I spent more money… totally unexpected and totally unnecessary!

I went to Safeway and I bought “fancy” cheese to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It happened in a funny way. Grilled cheese was our planned meal, but I couldn’t find the cheese The Husband said we had in the freezer. I made an offhand comment that I would just go buy some fancy cheese for fun. Then I opened the fridge to check something else and there was the cheese. The Husband had put it in the fridge to help me out. The Boy heard and asked if I would buy fancy cheese anyway.  What can I say, I’m a sucker!

I went to the store for some nicer cheese (and bananas) and left $16.09 poorer.

We had $39.71 remaining in our grocery budget for the first half of the month. We now have $23.62. I still don’t see us having much we need to buy in the next couple of days. The cheese was a frivolous purchase, but we did use our No Spend September budget to buy it. Of our $400 grocery total, we have $223.62 and we are nearly half way through the month.

My goal for the rest of the month is to NOT buy any more splurges like ribs and cheese and see where our budget takes us. I want to try to only buy our normal purchases.

9/18

Shocking, but we spent more money… I went to the Farmer’s Market and bought pluots, peaches, and grapes to the tune of $8.80. That brings our running total to $15.02 for the first half of the month, or $214.82 total.

Then, yesterday, The Husband decided to make tomato dumplings, a family favorite, but the recipe called for short ribs so he had to go buy those and he bought a few other items at the store. He spent $15.79. We now have just under half of our food budget for the month of September to spend. We have $199.03 left, but we are over half of the way through the month. We shouldn’t need to buy too much more this week but next week we will need to stock up on “week 4” groceries, fruit, and milk.

I know it’s a little early, but I am optimistic we will succeed in staying within our $400 budget!

Wish us luck!

Bank Balaces

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post like this… if ever.

We have accounts at three different banks, though we only really use two of them, and we have multiple accounts at each bank.

BANK 1: $26,940.02

                Checking: 127.57

                Savings: $26,061.61

                The Boy’s: $350.67

                The Girl’s: $400.17

BANK 2: $735.26

                Checking: $108.97

                Savings: $626.15

BANK 3: $26.27

                Checking: $1.27

                Savings: $25.00

Looking at those balances, our situation doesn’t look too dire; however, when you factor in debts like our credit card, car loan, and house payment, I see a wholly different picture!

I do think it’s a good idea to get a picture of where all our money is and how much we have. Our debt progress is always better when we are on top of our finances, both coming in and going out.

We also have several retirement accounts. I have a pension and a 403(b) account and The Husband has a 401(k). We contribute monthly to all of these. As of this year, The Husband will be maxed out on his contributions and we will start increasing my contributions until they, too, are maxed out.

We are not looking at our net worth, but at our available funds.

It’s good to know how much we have and where it is!

Just like I do posts on where our envelope money is and where our debt is, I want to (occasionally) do posts on the money we actually have!

How about you? Do you know where your money is?

Emergency Fund vs. Savings

I have been doing some math this morning. I have “a lot” of money in my savings account. The vast, vast majority of it is from the proceeds of the sale of our last house. The proceeds were not enough to put 20% down on our new home, so we put 10% down and kept the remaining money to make improvements and to buy needed items for the house.

(When you go from 1100 to 2500+ square feet, 2 bedrooms to 5, and 1 bathroom to 3, you definitely need “stuff”; things like hand soap, shower rugs, towels, beds, etc. Those things added up for sure. 2 months later and we are still buying things we needed to make this house a home. And we are so grateful that we have that money available to us and that we don’t have to fall further and further into debt to furnish our home!)

However, even before we sold our old house and bought our new house, we had an emergency fund. It was definitely a baby emergency for sure! I didn’t have peace of mind with only $1000 in the bank. Due to that, I found a “savings challenge” created by the blogger at Medium Sized Family. It’s a non-threatening way to save an additional $1000 in a year, just one week at a time. Additionally, we add a small pittance of $50 a month to our savings. It’s not much, but it does at up to $600 a year.

On to the actual numbers:

                Savings account total: $26,061.61*

                Emergency Fund: $2,230.34

                Proceeds from the House: $ 23,831.27

* This number does not include The Kids’ savings accounts. We owe them money and are slowly working to pay them back as well, but their balances are not included in our totals. It also does not include our account where we set aside money for our yearly expenses. $600 per month is deposited into that account but the balance fluctuates widely so I don’t count that money as savings.

We are continuing to try to slowly grow our emergency fund. Ideally, at least until we are out of debt, I would like to have $5000 as an emergency fund. As of right now, we aren’t even 50% of the way there. But we are a whole lot closer than we were at this time last year! We are 44% of the way to our goal of a $5000 emergency fund. I know Dave Ramsey suggests a baby emergency fund of $1000, but when you are a home owner and you have to commute to work, and you have 2 kids who participate in extra-curricular activities $1000 will only go so far if Murphy decides to visit our family or something like “bad things always happen in 3s” were to happen. The peace of mind is worth the slightly longer amount of time in debt.

Currently, we have about $2300 in our envelopes, plus the $2200 in our emergency fund and it’s very tempting to take that money and throw it all towards our debt. That would actually wipe out literally half of our credit card debt. But then we would be without an emergency fund and without sinking funds for the things we need to pay for every month and we would still be in credit card debt. (Not gonna lie, maybe when that amount is equal to ALL of our credit card debt, we might just do that!)

Of the $23,000+ left over from the sale of the house, a lot of that money is earmarked towards different projects in the new house. We have roof repairs that need to be made to the tune of $3000. 

We still need furniture for several rooms, and the master bathroom needs to be remodeled. (Yes, needs! There is carpet in the bathroom… enough said!) We also want to get new kitchen countertops and new flooring, but those are wants. We are hoping that the $23000 will be enough money to pay for those things when we are ready to do them and maybe have some money left over.

Going forward, I’m definitely going to keep a running total of our actual emergency fund versus the amount in our savings. Slow growth is better than no growth and I need to make sure I don’t dip into our emergency fund savings to pay for house stuff. Hopefully, it will be a while before those numbers are even close. We are currently operating at a deficit each month due to our “new normal” and what we are still buying to furnish the house. We are hoping to stop bleeding money soon!