No-spend September Final Update

This was by far our biggest No-spend September fail!

The kitchen remodel we are in the middle of threw a wrench in our plans that we were not prepared enough to tackle as far as our no-spend month went.

Our goal is to spend less than $400 on groceries and we far exceeded that. Probably by more than we have ever before in any of our no-spend months.  I was so depressed I stopped actually keeping track. And the worst part of it all, is that it all happened in the last week of our challenge. I think we spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $430 - $445. I'm sad.

In addition to overspending on out grocery budget. we spent money in other areas too.  We ran out of slow-cooker liners about 10 days ago and the store was out of them when we went to buy them. (Because we have no kitchen, we are very dependent upon our slow-cooker, but because we also have no kitchen sink (and therefor no garbage disposal) we are using the liners.) We were unable to make dinner at home a for a few nights and we ran out of frozen meals, so we went out to eat.

If nothing else, I'm going to remember that we did our best. We didn't buy Starbucks (without a gift card) this month. We didn't buy any new clothes or shoes. I didn't get a manicure or pedicure (even though I so badly wanted to). Neither The Husband nor I got a massage this month; and the vast majority of our purchases were either for or because of the kitchen. (I'm not trying to offer an excuse, but rather an explanation.)

This year's no-spend challenge was such an epic fail that it definitely gives us a goal to shoot for next year.

There were some positives that came from the challenge.  Our total debt load during this time decreased and we did increase the number in our savings account.  My goal next year, will continue to be keeping our grocery budget in check, to grow our savings account, and to stay under budget and NOT spend over $1000 at Home Depot during our no-spend challenge.

I'm still proud of us for trying to meet the challenge amid the chaos that is our home and life right now. Isn't there some saying that failure builds character?

Although this post was painful to write, I also wanted to be honest.  There's no point in publishing a blog if I'm not going to tell the truth.

How We Budget (Part 1)

Many years ago The Husband and I took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, FPU, through our church. It was life changing, although for us it didn't stick right away.  Remember, we got out of debt just to get back into debt.  We are doing much better now: still in debt, but working a plan to get out of it; and NOT adding to our debt each month.  I'm not always able to attack our debt with as much vigor as I'd like, because we aren't gazelles, but our debt load decreases (at least a little) every month.

Now that we are back on the payoff-debt-wagon, we have gone back to Dave Ramsey's envelope system; in fact, I actually use the Dave Ramsey FPU wallet. (PS I love it! It has 6 envelopes, a coin pouch, and several extra tracking sheets for when the envelopes run out of room.) It's actually this one! And I love it! It works great for my purposes and is small and light enough to fit in my small purse, but plenty big enough to hold everything I need. (PPS This is not an affiliate link. I just really like the wallet!)

As a public school teacher, I get paid once a month on the last working day of the month. The Husband gets paid every other Friday.  My paycheck pays our mortgage, usually our cable bill (yes, I'm into personal finance and we still have cable,) my daughter's dance tuition, and anything left over usually goes towards the credit card that we pay off monthly.

The Husband's paychecks cover everything else: internet service, utilities, cell phones, (at least) the minimum due on our credit card that still has a balance, and it funds all of our budget categories.

Our budget categories are: food/groceries, gas, car repair, essentials/miscellaneous, clothes, hair care, school, and kid's activities.  For many people, that's too many, but for us it works.  Some of these are sinking funds where the money continues to add up and others start over every pay period. (I'll write a later post about what we do with that money. Also, you might have noticed, there is nothing there about home repair, home owner's insurance, or car insurance, we handle these a little differently too. Again, another post for another time.)

We only have a couple of budget categories that start over every pay period, those are food and gas. We budget $250 for food every two weeks and $300 for gas for the same amount of time.  Sometimes we use it all, sometimes we go way over and charge the difference, and sometimes we have "left over money". The rest of our budget categories are sinking funds. Their balances continue to grow. None of these envelopes ever get too full because, in all honesty, I don't fund all of the categories with enough money they need over the course of the year, but usually it's enough to get us through.

Many people think we have "too many" budget categories, but they work for us.  Each category we have, except maybe with the exception of food and gas, was created because when I looked at what was really busting our budget every month I realized it was something we were always having to pay for.  The most recently added categories are school and kids activities.  One way or another we were always having to pay money towards those things. Now that we have them in our budget, we are more prepared each month to pay for the things we need.

As I was writing this post, it became more and more long winded so I decided to break it up into two posts.  This being part 1 where I explain a little bit about how we budget. In my next post, I will explain exactly what we pay for out of each envelope.

Debt Payment

September 23, 2016

Today I am going to the bank to pay my credit card.  The minimum payment on the card this month is $172. I am going to pay $435 on a balance of $5706.  I am paying about 7.5% of the balance today.  Originally, I had hoped to pay more, $585 or just over 10% of the total balance, but because the credit card we pay off monthly was so high this month (stupid kitchen) I had to allocate some of the money there. (Actually, it wasn’t all the kitchen. We bought tickets to some shows for ourselves and 4 other couples and they owe us the money for those to the tune of over $600! YIKES!)

Although the minimum payment on the card keeps decreasing, going forward I’m hoping to pay a minimum of $300, but hopefully more each month.  According to the chart on my statement, if I pay only the minimum payment, I will be paying this card off for the next TEN YEARS!!!! That’s crazy, folks!!!! Ten years to pay off purchases I made 1, 2, 3, or 4 years ago! I don’t want to still be paying off my Hawaii trip from the summer of 2012 in ten years. It was a great trip, but no trip could be that great! In fact, I don’t want to still be paying my Hawaii trip off now!

I will be very excited to get the balance of that card under $5000. Right now, I’m just trying to keep my head up and remember that with every payment I make, more and more of it is going to the principle balance and less and less of it is going to pay interest. I can’t wait until I have more space left on the card than I owe. That’s a milestone I haven’t crossed in over four years. I’m hoping that will give me a little boost to keep our debt payoff momentum going.

My original goal was to have this credit card paid off by the end of the year, but now it’s really looking like a stretch goal.  We only have 3 months left in the year and I have over $5000 left to pay.  As far as debt payoff goes, the kitchen has really put a cramp in my style.  Instead of sending any extra money each month towards debt, I’m socking it away to help pay for things in the kitchen. Most importantly, the balance keeps going down. And I haven’t charged on the card since December of last year.  With Christmas coming up, I definitely want to continue that trend.

I am a little discouraged by the credit card bill of the card we pay off monthly because only 8 days into our new billing cycle and our balance is already at $1000, and that’s in the middle of No-spend September. We have about $200 cash towards that, but that’s still a much larger balance than I want.  The kitchen is killing us. It’s very expensive and we haven’t even gotten to the finishes yet. 

Generally, any money we have left over in our food or gas envelope at the end of a budget period, goes towards paying off extra debt, but lately, we haven’t been able to do that. All extra money is going to pay off our credit card that we pay off monthly. I guess the bonus here is that we can still afford to pay it off monthly; but the negative is we aren’t able to throw any extra money at debt.

I know I’m not a gazelle, but I can’t wait to be credit card debt free! 

No-spend September Updates 4 and 5

September 19, 2016

This was another spendy weekend for No-spend September.

Tracy had an antique fair which I attended with my mom.  I only bought one thing. It was $32.  Because it was an antique fair, and generally not available, I felt it was okay to attend. I bought a vintage credit register. I’m going to use it in my kitchen to hold pictures and recipes. 

The next day, I attended the Harvest Festival with my mom and sister.  I only bought one non-food item. It was an old Gone with the Wind movie cell. It’s for my mom for Christmas. It cost $90, and my dad is actually going to pay for it.  Both The Husband and I agree that gift buying is an exception to our No-spend rules. Other than that, I only bought food items. I bought 5 different loaves of breakfast breads. (The Kids are sick of only having cereal, toast, and fruit for breakfast, so I wanted to get them something different.) The breads were $4 each, leaving me $178.04. I also bought 11 different crock-pot spice mixes which will be great since our kitchen is still under major construction. Those were $4 each and well worth the money. (They are delicious! I bought them last year and loved them!) 11 times $4 equals $44, so for the rest of the month, we are down to $134.04.

There are only 10 days left in the month so that’s not too bad.  We do need another Costco trip. We need bread, milk, sliced cheese, and some fruits and vegetables.  I also need to buy meat.  We have chicken but I need to buy a pork loin (and have The Husband butcher it), a couple roasts, and a brisket. I will get the meat at both Costco and Winco. Also at Winco I need to buy instant mashed potatoes. By the time I’m done with all of this, I will probably be very close to our $400 budget.  We’ll have to wait and see.

In some ways, I’m ready for September to be over! I want a pedicure so badly… my poor feet are awful. I have lost 3 toe nails since the first weekend in August and now that they are starting to grow back I’m ready to have someone make my feet look pretty! On the flip side, I haven’t missed Starbucks this month.  I won a $5 gift card through The Husband’s insurance last month to Starbucks and I saved it for September. I also had a free drink from using my Starbucks gold card that I saved to use until September.  My best friend also bought me a drink one day because she knows about my No-spend months, so I haven’t had a chance to really miss Starbucks.

As I read personal finance blogs, many of them “bash” No-spend months.  They talk about that because you are paying for things: bills, gas, food, it’s not really a No-spend month or because you buy things, in October, that you ran out of in September, it’s not really a No-spend month. I disagree.  Though I may buy things in October, that I ran out of in September, having a No-spend month forces me to make do. This month, we have run out of liquid hand soap (except we found some later, but it forced me to figure something out) so I used a bar of soap I had.  I also ran out of a hair product I use. I had planned to buy some product in August, but I never got to the store so for the month of September, I have been using some product I have.  It’s not my favorite product, but I have it and it has been sitting under my bathroom sink for over a year.  Now, I’m using it up. I also ran out of soap this week. Instead of going out to buy my favorite shower gel, I opened up another soap we had in the cupboard. I also ran out of lotion this month. I went to the bathroom cabinet to see what I could find. I found a pot of lotion and started using it… and I love it! It was buried in the back of a drawer and I don’t even know where it came from, but I pulled it out and started to use it and it’s one of the best lotions I have used in a long time! If it weren’t for a No-spend month I wouldn’t have used products I already had, I would have made a list and gone to Target to buy what was on it (and probably $100 more worth of stuff). So although it’s not technically a No-spend month, it’s forcing me to use what I have on hand; and that is worthwhile!

September 22, 2016

I went shopping last night at Save Mart (I never shop there, it was very expensive so I only bought what I needed) and spent $26.37, that leaves me $107.67 for the rest of the month.  On my way to pick up The Girl from her dance class, I stopped at Save Mart and bought what I would need for tonight’s dinner (which is already in the crock-pot) and some things we needed and weren’t sure when we would be able to get them.

I picked up some pasta sauce, instant mashed potatoes, sliced cheese, biscuits, and bananas just because we needed them.  For tonight’s dinner, I picked up some shredded cheese, a head of lettuce, and some salsa. For dinner tonight, I am making Tex-Mex Chicken. It’s one of the slow cooker meals I purchased over the weekend.

Tonight, I will go to Costco to buy milk, bread, more sliced cheese, lunch meat, and meat (pork loin and 2 roasts). The whole trip will probably run me right around $100, which means I will be right at my goal for the month of September. It will be interesting to see if I can refrain from buying anything else for the rest of the month.

Remodeling the kitchen has made this a very interesting No-spend September.  We have had to be very planned with our food, and for the most part, have done a really good job, but it’s been hard and expensive. For the remaining 8 days of the month, we only $107 to spend to spend on food. Wish us luck!

No Side Hustle For Me

In the personal finance world, "side hustle" is a major buzz word... and I don't have one.

I've mentioned many times before that both The Husband and I are college graduates and have good paying jobs. I've also talked about the fact that we are in debt. Our debt is solely the cause of living beyond our means. Our debt has nothing to do with job loss, financial hardship, difficult circumstances, student loans, or medical bills... just plain stupidity. Most people in the PF community or who are debt bloggers talk all the time about their side hustle or what they are doing to make extra money, and honestly, I'm doing exactly nothing.

I choose not to have a side hustle. Although it would enable us to get out of debt so much faster, I'm not willing to give up the time with my family. In fact, I don't have the time.  For many years, 12 to be exact, I worked at a shoe store. It was a job I loved.  When I began teaching, I even kept my retail job for the first couple of years. I would only work at the shoe store one night a week and a weekend day here or there. Once the kids got older I had to quit my second job to become a full time chauffeur to my kids. This is also a way we are keeping ourselves in debt longer: we allow are kids to play sports and do extracurricular activities.

Having a side hustle, while definitely financially worthwhile, isn't worth the time away from my family or the strain it would put on my family. And while many hustles get to the point of where they are passive, they usually take massive work to reach that point, work I'm just not willing to put in.

I read all these blogs where the author has quit their day job to become a full-time freelancer, but for a long time they were working 40 hours a week at their day job and another 25+ hours per week developing their brand or padding their portfolio. I just don't have time for that.

I could get a second job but with soccer two nights a week and dance three nights a week, plus comps and games on the weekend, my free time is very limited and I don't want to give up my free time to a side hustle. As much as I want to get out of debt, I don't want it badly enough; that's why we are still in debt.

I admire people who give up everything to get out of debt. I admire people who have a garage sale every other month, who scour thrift stores for clothes, who work two jobs, who turn down invitations because they can't afford something, who clip coupons. But mostly, I admire people who have created a side hustle that works for them and works for their lifestyle. I'm just not that person.

Side hustles are by far the best tool to help you get out of debt faster. As long as you are able to meet all your financial obligations on your day job salary, any extra money you make can be thrown 100% at debt. That works out to be an awesome return on your investment. But do I want to invest my time just to gain financial freedom a couple months earlier? To me it's not worth it so for now I have no hustle.

Debt Totals

Okay, here goes… I’m going to let the world (even though nobody reads this) in on my debt totals.

Each month, I’m going to do a debt update, obviously starting with September. I will have to decide if I will do 
this at the beginning of the month, the end of the month, the middle of the month, or just when I feel like it 
each month, but it’s going to happen!

I have been hemming and hawing on putting my actual debt on the blog, but only because I’m ashamed 
and embarrassed. Putting it out here, on the world wide web, makes it real. (I know it’s real, but now I can’t 
take it back. It will always be here.) I am embarrassed that we have debt! No one really knows we have credit 
card debt and one of my biggest fears is that someone I know will find out. I really don’t want that to happen!

At least for right now, I’m only going to include my credit card debt and my car loan. I’m not at the point where 
I’mre ady to put my mortgage on my debt totals. Baby steps. I’m also not going to include the credit card we
pay off monthly. Because it’s paid off monthly, we haven’t carried a balance over on that credit card in going 
on 5 years so we don’t consider it “debt”.

Here are the numbers:

Credit Card 1:     $5709.92 at 9.24% interest ~ the current minimum payment is $177

Car Loan 1:          $14470.25 at 0% interest ~ payment = $345

                                _______________________

                                $20180.17 Total

That’s depressing.  :(

Knowing I have debt is one thing. Actually seeing the numbers in black and white is quite another. Seeing the
number, $20000+ is very daunting.  I’ve known I had debt, but I never sat down and actually added those two
numbers up, but they hurt!

Right now, because of the kitchen remodel, paying down our debt at any significant rate is hard, so I just keep
plodding along.  On our credit card, we are paying more than the minimum, but not by much. A few months 
ago, we were paying between $600-700 a month; that number has dropped to only about $300 a month now. 
Currently, any extra money we have is going towards paying off the credit card we pay off monthly or towards 
paying for something for the kitchen remodel… needless to say, progress has been S.L.O.W.

But I guess the takeaway here is that there has been progress. I’m already looking ahead to my next month’s
debt update because I know I will be under the $20000 mark – so there’s my first psychological boost!

The worst thing about our debt, particularly our credit card debt, is that if we would curb our spending for just a
short period of time, we could be credit card debt free. But we don’t. The balance on Credit Card 1 is very close
to the balance I pay off monthly on our other credit card, yet we still have a balance.  For just one month, if we 
could truly have a no-spend month, we could be credit card debt free, but we aren’t.  I guess that’s because 
we aren’t gazelles.  I say we want to be debt free, but I don’t pursue that freedom with intensity.  We still buy 
stuff and go places so we are still in debt.

I’m trying to keep my head up and remember that our total debt load decreases every month, if only by a little. 
I try to remember that we haven’t added to our debt total in 9 months and that we are better off now than when
we started 2016. I try to remember that we choose to not let debt dictate our life or to punish our kids for our 
poor financial habits/choices.  That’s it in a nutshell, I’m trying.

Someday, I might start doing net worth updates, too.  We do have a home, in which we have some equity. We 
do have 3 fully paid for cars. We do have retirement savings. We do have some (not much) cash money in the 
bank. It’s not all bad.

No-spend September Update 3

September 15, 2016

Yesterday I went to Costco and spent about $45, but that was including cups, plates, and spoons; because of the kitchen remodel, I’m not counting them in my no-spend September budget. Of that $45, however, I also bought grapes and strawberries to the tune of $13 leaving us with right about $200  to spend for the rest of the month.

This No-spend month is killing us! We have spent tons of money at Home Depot so far! And tomorrow night is The Husband’s 20 year high school, which we are attending. First we will attend our high school’s Homecoming game (for which we will have to pay an entrance fee), then we will go to a local bar for the reunion part. I’m anticipating tomorrow night costing us around $100 for everything: entrance, food, and drinks.

Our credit card bill (that we pay off monthly) has been around $5000 every month for the last six months… and it’s killing me! We are able to pay it off monthly, but we are not able to get ahead.  Our current billing cycle ends today and the balance is at $4500. I was hoping we could use No-spend September to get ahead but unless we are able to really curtail our spending for the last half of the month, that’s not going to happen.

Our gas budget is doing well for the month.  I’m hoping to have a few hundred dollars left over at the end of the month to help us pay our monstrous credit card bill that we are currently accruing! We’ll see. Right now, any “extra” money we have is going to pay our credit card (that we pay off monthly) or towards our kitchen and not towards our debt total.  We are still deceasing our debt… some, but not at the pace I want.