An Unexpected, and Complicated, Windfall

We received out “Escrow Analysis” in the mail the other day… and actually didn’t think anything of it. We assumed it was either a report of our escrow account over the last year, or, quite honestly, junk mail.

We were right on one of those counts, sort of.

When I opened the envelope, there was a report of our escrow activity and balance for the previous year. There was also an unexpected refund check. Apparently, we overpaid into our escrow account. This is not something we have ever had experience with. In our old house, we did not have an impound account. We paid our property taxes and home owner’s insurance annually on our own. The check was a very pleasant surprise!

We got a refund check to the tune of $1860! Due to this, our mortgage is going down next year, by about $85 a month. I. Am. So. Happy.

It was definitely unexpected money.

Now for the complicated part.

We are buying solar (read: adding to our debt*). And it ain’t cheap!

In order to cut down on the size of our system, we are upgrading our pool pump. Apparently we have a single speed pump and we will save a ton of money, over the long-term, by upgrading to a variable speed pump. In all honesty, it’s all Greek to me, but I like the idea of saving money.

Electricity-wise, we spend the most money on our pool so upgrading our pump will significantly lower our electrical use and allow us to purchase a smaller system. The quotes we’ve received on upgrading our pump have varied anywhere from $900 to $2700. We are going with one right in the middle of the road, about $1900. Our original plan was just to take the money out of savings as it is so worth it to upgrade and will pay for itself in just a couple of years**.

If you were paying attention above, you’ll see that the amount of our refund check is almost the exact same as what we needed to come up with to upgrade our pool pump!

I’m so glad, and appreciative, that we won’t need to take money from our savings to pay for the upgrade. That will keep us above the $10000 mark in savings for at least a little bit longer. (Full disclosure: we have $10000 in our savings, another $1700 in the kids’ accounts, and another $2000 of planned spending money in the bank.)

I was literally stunned when I opened the envelope and found the refund check. The Husband said he wasn’t sure if the look on my face meant really good or really bad; but he knew it was one or the other, ha! I don’t know if that will ever happen again, but the refund was so unexpected and came at such a perfect time!

*I will write a whole post, or several posts, about the ins and outs of buying solar and why it was the best option for us.

**Odd logic, I know. I’ll explain in my future posts about our experiences with solar.

Christmas Plans and Ideas

I know it seems early to start thinking about Christmas, but it’s already mid-April and if I don’t start thinking about it now, it will be here before I know it and we’ll end up in a pickle!

For the couples and (most) adult grandchildren, I’m thinking about doing a “date night/pasta dinner basket”.

I was thinking I could include a fancy-ish pasta, a nice (or homemade) marinara sauce, pesto, a bottle of olive oil, a bottle of wine, and (homemade) canned green beans… kind of a “dinner in a basket”.

Depending on how much I spend I could include something else to complete the basket: a game, a dishtowel, potholder, something for dessert, etc. I think it has the potential to be cute and not too expensive because it would be a gift for two (for most people) and I can spread out the cost of it over the course of several months.

For my family alone, it would be used for 21 (that count is off the top-of-my-head) gifts. I would also be able to give it as one of the gifts I give to some friends. (I have several friends who I give more than one gift, it would be one of the gifts they receive.) I would give the gift as a “couples” gift to those who are coupled which is really where the cost savings comes in.

April Debt Update

Here’s our debt update for April… a little late, but not too bad. As always, we didn’t make the progress I wish we had, but we made progress and our overall number decreased, albeit very little.

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed $1500 from each child and have paid back $800 to each of them, which means we are over half way through paying them back! 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.

For 2018, my only resolution, or goal, is to have our credit card balance below $10000 by the end of the year. I obviously started with 12 months, now I’m down to 8 months to go.

Here are our current debt totals:

            $16,077.33        Credit Card at 15.74% interest

            $700                 The Girl

            $700                 The Boy

            $7890               Car Loan at 0% interest

Our total debt stands at: $25,367.33 YIKES! That is still a huge number! The only thing that makes me happy about that number is that it is smaller than the last time I did a debt update! I hope it keeps going down! We paid off $747 of debt last month. We managed to decrease out total debt by almost 3%. As always, I wish it were more, but I’m pretty happy with these numbers.

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 on our credit card alone. We did not make that this month. We only paid of $302. I will shoot for $604 next month and then worry about playing catch up.

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 credit card debt per month and therefore on track to meet my goal of credit card debt below $10000.

I am happy to see progress and, for reasons not quite known, April has shaped up to be a very expensive month; due to this, I’m just hoping to get our next statement under $16.000 after interest. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a goal, but it would be continued downward progress and it means I “lived within” my means for the month. And, truth be told, I’m not even sure that’s going to happen. L

Celebrating Small Wins

…and I mean small!

Last week I made several impulse buys: new clothes (for me), books (for me), face wash, hair treatments, etc. It was all stuff I didn’t need and wasn’t on our lists. They were just purchases I made without thinking and, duh, on impulse.

Because they were impulses, once I got home I suffered from “buyer’s remorse” and was able to return them. In the course of two days I returned over $200 of impulse buys. Things I didn’t need and didn’t even really want. (I don’t know why they even ended up in my basket!)

Unfortunately, I think a lot of our debt was due to this: mindless shopping!

I would love to adjust my spending habits to have more mindful spending.

Another small win this week was when we took my mom out to dinner for her birthday. She turned 77 this past week and when we went to dinner, only her meal came out correctly. (I guess if only one was going to be right, I’m glad it was hers!) My meal, called the triple dipper, came out without any dipping sauces. The Husband’s came out without any avocado, and The Daughter’s took forever to come out at all; and all she ordered was soup and salad. I complained to the manager and “for our trouble” we received 50% off all of our meals and a free dessert. Complaining to the manager, in a civil manner, saved us $40.

The Boy is promoting from 8^th grade to high school at the end of this year and as a surprise, his school had him take pictures in a cap and gown. The printed pictures then get sent home with an opportunity to purchase or you can send the whole package back and get nothing. That is, of course, how they get you. I was proud of myself for two reasons though: one, I only bought one sheet (instead of 5) of pictures and we had the money to pay for it out of our “school” envelope. That was nice to have some money set aside to pay for something we were going to need.

I don’t know if this is financial win, exactly, but I’m putting it in the win column. As the temperatures have been heating up, The Kids have spent more and more time in the pool. One night, we also heated the spa and the “bubbles”, or jets, on the spa weren’t working right. They have two speeds, low and high; well, high stopped working. We have a home warranty on the house, purchased for us by our realtor, which covers the pool and spa. We filed a claim and only had to pay our $75 fee. The end result is “it needs a new blower”, which is covered under the warranty…YEAH! I don’t know how much a blower is but I’m assuming it’s more than $75. (It’s only sort of a win because who wants to have to use their warranty?) I’m not happy the blower went out, but I am happy it went out before our home warranty was up and that it is a covered issue! A quick search on Amazon came back with an average of $150 for parts, plus we would have needed to pay for labor if we had to pay for this ourselves, so $75 is a deal.

(*In our first house, which was much older than our current house, we only made one claim on our home warranty policy, for an electrical issue. In our current house, we’ve made three claims: a pipe/shower issue, a problem with our oven, and now with the spa. I’m very glad we had the warranty this year and feel the $225 we’ve paid out total (in consultation fees) has been money well spent and I’m very thankful to our realtor for the gift of the warranty!)

None of these things are “big” deals, except maybe the spa blower, and still none of them make a huge impact on our finances, but they are wins. Wins should be celebrated, no matter how small, so that you recognize them when you see them!

Happy and Sad

I don’t have a whole debt update yet, but I am both happy and sad.

Happy because our credit card debt went down. But, sad because it didn’t go down as much as I would have liked.

Happy because after our next statement (in a month) our debt should be down in the $15,000. But, sad because our credit card debt is in the $15,000.

Happy because there was progress. But, sad because there wasn’t enough.

Happy because we are moving in the right direction. But, sad because we aren’t moving very quickly.

Happy because our whole actually go smaller. But, sad because it wasn’t by much.

I’m sure by now you get the point.

Progress is being made, albeit slowly.

Progress is slow and painful; and it would probably be less so if I was more open with The Husband. I don’t exactly hide our debt, but I definitely don’t discuss it with him. In all honesty, if he knew how deep our hole was, he would probably be shocked.

We will get there. And I will keep plugging away.

Hopefully we will be able to get some real traction in the next few months.

Security

What is security worth?

What is getting out of debt worth?

Those are the two questions I’m currently weighing against each other.

And right now, getting out of debt is winning.

For several reasons, the most of which is we were stupid with money, our debt barely decreased this month (and after interest is added, there might not be any decrease at all). So in an effort to see some progress, I am bringing our checking account balance down to $2 so we can make an extra $125 payment towards our credit card debt.

I know $125 isn’t much, but that is about the amount we keep in our checking account as a buffer for security.

With each paycheck, it has slowly built up to that amount.

I have accounted for all outstanding checks and bills until our next payday, but I’m still a little nervous. I obviously don’t want to pay an overdraft fee of $40+ dollars in order to make an extra payment towards debt; sound counterproductive, right? But I’m still so sick of not making progress.

When I get home tonight, I’m going to roll all our change and try to make an extra payment of that amount. Our due date for our payments is 4/12 but our closing date isn’t until a few days later. I’m hoping to roll the change tonight and then get it to the bank tomorrow so that I can make one more extra payment before the actual closing date. (Of course I’ve already made all required minimum payments.) I’m hoping to have about $50 in change that I can then send to our credit card. (This is what we call our “house petty cash” jar. We usually keep anywhere from $40 – $80 in cash in the jar in addition to the change. I’m leaning towards leaving the cash in the jar as we are wiping out the buffer in our checking account. (*I am using the cash in the jar too. I rolled our cash and had $44 and $35 in cash, for a total of $79.)

Security vs. debt. That is the question.

I also want to be clear, I do still have an emergency fund. Right now, I have more than the Dave Ramsey suggested $1000; but I also have a lot of responsibilities. I have kids, cars, a home, and obligations that we need to meet, $1000 wouldn’t be enough for us right now at this stage in our life. I also want to be clear, I do not have enough in our emergency fund to cover our debt, if I did, I would be debt free. Really, that’s a conversation for another day, but I wanted to let you know that although we are depleting the buffer in our checking account, it’s not the only security we have.

Again, to be transparent, we still have sinking funds and money in our envelope system that we could draw from. We are trying really hard to fund our envelopes so we will have to depend on credit less and less. We have $1800 in another account that we use for homeowner’s and car insurance annually. Extra monies in this account go towards The Girl’s dance competition fees; but if there is anything left over after all the comp fees are paid, the difference will go towards our credit card debt.

*After rolling our change of $44 and deciding to use the larger bills in the jar too, I started scrounging for money and realized I have some extra money for emergencies that I keep in my car. It wasn’t much, only $45, but I am including that in my next credit card payment too, for a total of $124 extra dollars towards our stupidity!

March Unusual Spending Recap

So, how did we do? Okay, not horribly, but not great, either.

Let’s start at the beginning.

March is always an interesting month for us. Most of our dance payments for The Girl are taken care of, we’ve already paid for The Boy’s baseball, but it’s also The Husband’s birthday month, and this year he turns 40! In addition, we have a foreign exchange student coming to live with us for a week and with that we are hosting a potluck at our house welcoming all the kids from Japan. We will be holding family birthday parties at our house this month. Lastly we have two car registrations due for the month of March.

I did buy my husband the tool he wanted. It ended up costing about $200. I had an Amazon gift card for about half the amount and I charged the remainder. (Our debt total did not go up, but I didn’t have enough money to pay for it outright. I should have planned better.) I still haven’t worked on the second present as time is a major issue. I’m hoping to set aside a little money each month to help pay for that one.

We did host The Husband’s birthday party for family at our house and we did pay for the food out of our normal grocery budget. I wish I had remembered the party and padded my grocery budget applicably. (Note to self, add $100 per paycheck to grocery budget for May birthdays!) Overall, we are actually running a $20 shortage on groceries, in part due to March birthdays and in part due to our exchange student. Overall, I’m not unhappy with how the food and food budget went for the month.

Our time with our exchange student has come and gone and ended up not being nearly as expensive as I expected. We did buy her lobster and beef (which accounts for the overages in our grocery budget) but other than that our expenses for her were minimal.  While in America, she became homesick and didn’t want to do much. We scrapped plans for our fancy dinner as she ate like a bird and was exhausted. We did take her to the zoo but we had a free pass which included parking and admission for two kids and two adults. When we went to go pay for our exchange student, the cashier told us she had some free entrance tickets that people hadn’t used all of so she got in free too. That night for dinner, she chose KFC… cheap and easy. The potluck went really well and we didn’t need to buy much, only paper plates and lemonade mix, so it was pretty inexpensive too. We actually had a new bag of cups, napkins, and plenty of silverware.

We did pay both of our car registrations in the ways I expected to: from our annual expenses account and with our checking account buffer. Somehow, that buffer has built back up a little bit again (not on purpose) so we are going to use it for some unusual expenses in April.

I have already written a rough draft of our unusual spending for April and I am making plans to actually figure out how to fund the needed expenses. As always, wish me luck.