Unusual Spending for February

Hello and welcome back to my “unusual spending” series…

No excuses, life got busy and budgeting and careful spending went by the wayside; but I am trying to get back on track. To that end, I want to start looking at our unusual spending each month so that I can plan better for it.

In February, The Girl has a dance dress rehearsal and a competition in Las Vegas. The Boy will be starting baseball. We bought The Kids tickets to a Warriors game for Christmas and so that happens in February too. Other than that, our month will be pretty normal: haircuts, family birthdays, and life.

The Girl has a dress rehearsal for her dance season that is beginning. We will need to figure out dinner for that night for her and me. I might throw something in the crock-pot that day and then The Husband can bring it down to us (the rehearsal is just across town) and we wouldn’t have to buy dinner that night. That’s a good idea, but it takes planning ahead! Maybe now that I’ve thought about it, I’ll be able to execute it!

We paid for the first day of our Vegas stay but will still have to pay for the remaining two nights. I have not talked to The Husband about this yet, but I want to bring a lot of food with us to Vegas. I want to bring our breakfasts, lunches and snacks; that way, we will only have to buy dinner. That will not only decrease our costs, but it will be more convenient too because we don’t know The Girl’s schedule yet and sometimes at competitions we don’t have enough time to go and get something to eat. Better still; any food we bring will come out of our grocery budget so we will have the cash for that on hand. I’m hoping to keep costs for this trip down to a minimum.

For Christmas, we bought The Kids (and us too) tickets to a Warriors game. They are uber excited, and mama is too! With their ticket, each kid got a shirt to wear to the game. I don’t plan to buy them a souvenir there, but we will need to get dinner on that night. I’m hoping we can grab something quick and inexpensive to take with us.

Our extra spending for the month will make it difficult to meet our goal of paying off a minimum of $605 in principal towards our debt. Most of what we will pay for the month will actually go towards those charges, but I’m not going to stop trying!

$27

It’s found money… that went straight to my debt. I know it’s not much, in fact, it’s only .002% of my total debt, but IT IS .002% of my total debt that is gone.

Long story short, we have a history of “finder’s keepers, losers weepers” in our family. I drove my mom’s car the other day, as she is still staying with us from her hip replacement, and I found $27. (Another long story short, we know the money was my dad’s.) I did ask my mom first and she did allow for the “finder’s keepers” rule to be played!

The day after I found the money, I was going to the bank to deposit some money and withdrawal our bi-weekly budget allotments, and that money was deposited and then immediately sent to our credit card.

We are still in massive debt, but that is one small step closer to our goal of getting out of debt.

I don’t know that we will make our goal of under $16500 or not, it’s too soon to tell. It’s also too soon to tell if we will make our goal of paying off a minimum of $605. (We will pay that much (and then some) towards debt, but we have also charged things this month.)

I need to stop charging… or at least really work on decreasing the amount of things I charge!

Still using the credit card is certainly not helping us to get out of debt!!!

$27 doesn’t sound like much, but I am happy with the decision I made to send it straight to debt!

I have some more money coming in from a couple places (hopefully in the next few weeks) and all that money, about $300, will go straight to our debt!

Debt right now

Well, what a mighty hole we’ve dug ourselves.

Now, it’s time to grab shovels (or rolled pennies) and start digging our way out.

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed $1500 from each child and have paid back $650 to each of them. 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.

Our credit card is a whole ‘nother story! We charged and we charged and we charged and now we have to face the music.

For 2018, my only resolution, or goal, is to have our credit card balance below $10000 by the end of the year. That gives me 12 months.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $17248.36         Credit Card at 15.74%

            $850                 The Boy

            $850                 The Girl

            $8925.00           Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our total debt stands at: $27,873.36. YIKES!

There’s really not much I can say. I have no excuse. I just need to stop buying on credit card and start digging out of debt!

I just redeemed a statement credit on our credit card to the tune of $280. That should at least cover the interest for the month. I also have $500 in payments scheduled to go towards our credit card debt. Any extra money will be funneled that way as well. I’m hoping my next statement will have a balance of $16,500 or lower. It’s going to be really close, and obviously dependent upon whether or not we charge anything this month. (*We did pay cash for our groceries last night, small win!)

In order to meet my goal of under $10000 for the year, we need to pay back a minimum of $604.03 per month, not including interest. It is a doable amount if we are diligent with our money. And in all honesty, we usually aren’t. Including interest, we need to pay back closer to $800 per month and I am a little nervous about reaching that amount. I will shoot for $604 per month first, and then go from there.

I would love to say “debt-free” by the end of the year, but I think that has been my biggest problem in the past: I haven’t been realistic about what we can do. $600 ($800 with interest) towards credit card debt is realistic.

I will try to keep track of my progress each month and find out if I am meeting my goal of paying off over $600 of debt per month and therefore on track to meet my goal of credit card debt below $10000.

I know I say this every time, but, wish us luck.

Meal Planning

In an effort to support my “decrease debt” goal, I am working very hard to manage our grocery budget. Just like most everyone else, our good budget has a tendency to get out of control. And just like everyone else, I realize that the more diligent I am with meal planning, meal preparing, and creating grocery lists, the more likely I am to stay within budget.

Going forward, I want to try to stay within our $500 (plus $70 for a produce box delivered to our house every other week) grocery budget.

This past weekend we traveled to Mariposa for a relaxing weekend with friends. I brought along about 5-7 cookbooks, a calendar, and some paper. I got down to work and meal planned for the rest of January and February.  When I got home, I went grocery shopping for all that we needed for the rest of January (minus our weekly perishables) and a lot of the meat needed for February’s meal planning.

When I meal plan, my life is so much easier. Every day, dinner time rolls around, and every day, I wonder we are going to have. When I meal plan, that isn’t the case. I just have to look at my calendar and see what to take out of the freezer or what to prepare: easy-peasy.

Our grocery trips, since meal planning, have stayed within budget, so far.

                Winco: $100.87

                Costco: $105.45

                Safeway: $14.48 (specifically for my mom)

                Savemart: $10.97 (specifically for my mom)

Our total so far is $231.77.

We received a produce box this week so we shouldn’t need too much more before our next budgeting period.

I’m hoping to meal plan for every month this year in an effort to keep our grocery budget, and my stress level, down.

Locked Out

Hi there.

This time it wasn't my fault! I've been locked out of my account since my last post.

I've even wrote updates that I couldn't upload because I was locked out.

Maybe God had a plan of new year, new me, because I was finally able to get back in today, the first day of the new year!

A lot has gone on in our crazy life. We have been on Christmas break for the last two weeks and we go back to school tomorrow. At least we are supposed to be going back tomorrow. The kids are going back tomorrow. I'm going to be home for one more week taking care of my mother. She is having a hip replacement done tomorrow and she is going to be staying at our house for the forseeable future.

Hopefully this means minimal money spending as we don't have any extra money to spend!

Debt pay off is a priority for 2018... our biggest priority. My goal is to finish the year under $10000 in debt and to never increase our debt total for the entire calendar year.

That's really the only financial goal, or resolution of any kind, that I am making!

Wish us luck!

Happy new year! I plan to post twice a week for the WHOLE year, but I won't beat myself up if life happens!

More Debt

Debt, debt, and more debt.

We have spent considerable more money than we have brought in the last few months. So much so, that our credit card debt has increased by almost $3000. Sadly, we are back into 5 figures for our credit card debt. We had gotten it down to about $8900, but now we are back up over $11000.

I’m nearly done with Christmas shopping, so I’m hoping I won’t need to charge too much more on that front.

This past weekend, we spent $700 at Kohl’s. The Girl got 6 pairs of pants, 2 sets of pajamas and 2 pairs of shoes (though one of those was for dance), The Boy got new underwear, 2 pairs of sweatpants and a new pair of running-style shoes, and The Husband got new socks and underwear a pair of sweats. Currently, we only had $200 in the clothing budget and that got wiped out. $55 will come from the kids’ activities envelope to pay for The Girl’s dance shoes. We also got a new toaster, several Christmas presents for different nieces and nephews, and decorative Christmas towels to decorate all my new bathrooms. We will probably carry a small balance on this card. I have half of the money we charged at the ready and the other half will be extended over a couple of months.

Sadly, this month we can’t even say our overall debt decreased because it didn’t, it went up. It went up considerably. 

Truthfully, my only goal for my December credit card statement is for it to be under $11000. That should be doable depending on what my credit card closes at this month.

We continue to make slow progress on all of our other bills. We are still paying the kids back at $50 a month and still making our regularly scheduled car payments. We have paid off just over half of our car loan. We’ve made 31 payments and have 29 remaining.

Our new normal is killing us. Our mortgage and bills have all nearly tripled, and while we can afford to pay those, we have not adjusted our lifestyle to our new normal. We still charge over $3000 per month, but now we can only afford to pay about $600. We need to find a balance and we need to stop charging.

I’m really thinking of going to a cash only budget, like for reals… Once the envelope is empty, the money is literally gone. For a long time, our system worked for us, now, it’s not.

Debt sucks and I am not helping my situation by continuing to use credit. 

Guess Who?

Hi there. Remember me? Brunette Getting Out of Debt?

Yeah, I know it's been awhile... a long while! No excuses for dropping off the face of the earth. Life got crazy. Work got even crazier. Debt got of control and I didn't feel like blogging.

But I'm back. Hopefully, I'm back on track. And I'm ready to get back to paying off debt and being accountable for my finances.

The next time I do numbers won't be pretty, but it'll be real!

Debt sucks and the race out of it is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. I've only done one marathon in my whole life so I need to train! I'll get there... someday!