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!

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!