Opt Out Option

I got the official okay that I can opt out of my healthcare for the remainder of the healthcare year. For my union, our healthcare year runs from October 1 to September 30.

Starting in January and with my January 30 paycheck, I will not have to pay for health insurance for the rest of the year. Until I actually receive that paycheck, I have no idea what that will do to my monthly take-home pay. I’m hoping that it will increase it by a good chunk!

I am still paying for my dental, vision, and life insurance to the tune of $229 a month, but I am no longer paying for health insurance. We are insured through The Husband’s work for our health benefits.

As everyone knows, health insurance is so confusing. If I’m reading everything correctly, I think I will only save about $100 a month, which doesn’t seem right, but that’s how the numbers look. Just like with my retro check, it’s a waiting game to see what my check will really look like. No matter what the outcome is, the extra difference will be sent towards our credit card debt. Our goal is to be out of credit card debt by the end of next year, so December 2019, and this is one more step to help us get there.

Our union has never been able to opt out of healthcare before which I have always hated. Between The Husband and me, we are double covered and his is way cheaper for the same coverage. I’m super excited that I get to opt out; even if only for a year. I will have to reapply next September and hope that I am one of the lucky 20% that is able to opt out of coverage.

Because we are covered by The Husband’s employer, I have always felt like having to pay for healthcare through my district is extortion! At least I have a small reprieve in having to pay for it! And hopefully the difference in my paycheck will be noticeable and help speed up our debt free date!!!

Outstanding Monies

Well, it is that time of year again. The time when we have outstanding money because of Christmas.

My dad owes us money for my mom’s stocking. (Years ago I took over buying my mom’s stocking and my dad pays for it. I but stuff all year and then add it up in December and he gives me cash.) I am not yet done with her stocking, nor have I totaled up how much I’ve spent, but usually I spend in the neighborhood of $300 - $400.

My brother-in-law owes us money for my sister’s stocking. (Last year her stocking was a little sparse and after years of joking with me to help him with her stocking, he actually asked me to this year.) I don’t know how much money he owes me, but I think it is approaching $100 and counting. I will continue to buy stuff as I find things that are perfect for my sister and will fit in her stocking. At this point, smaller is better as I have a few “bigger” items that will fit in her stocking.

My sister owes us almost $100 for tickets we bought for her for the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair which takes place in San Francisco every year. She was unable to print the tickets so I did it for her.

Lastly, my mom owes me almost $200 for different things I have purchased for her. I spend a lot of time with my mom so sometimes I owe her money and sometimes she owes me money. The closer it gets to Christmas, the more often she owes me money.

Currently we have about $700 worth of money outstanding to us. Most of it will be paid in a timely manner. (My mom usually doesn’t pay us back until several months after Christmas.) As I receive the money, I will send most of it towards our credit card debt. The money my sister gives us for the tickets, however, will be what we use to pay for the rest of our day there. It will pay for our food and any spending we do there (not including gifts). As I receive the money, I will send it as extra payments to our credit card.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I pray that you are healthy and happy and spending time exactly where you want to be this Thanksgiving.

Today I am thankful for so much: my wonderful husband, my beautiful kiddles, my extended family, a roof over my head, jobs we enjoy, and a roof over our head. I am abundantly blessed and I hope you are too!

Finally

Today is the day I get my retro check! I finally get to find out how much it is going to be for!

I've known about this check for a couple of months and I knew the percentage of my paycheck that it was going to be, but that didn't translate well into dollars in my head.

The plan for this money was to pay for Christmas. (About half of which I already bought, so I "owe" myself some money.) I was hoping the amount into my account would be about $750. And the closer it got, to "payday" the more anxious I have been getting.

I logged-in to my bank account online this morning and was so excited to see a deposit from my district in the amount of $1383.80!!! Woohoo! That's nearly double what I was expecting!

It actually will be enough to pay for everything we were hoping it would cover: Christmas gifts, food for our Christmas party, and our day at the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair. Depending on how much we spend on gifts, it might even be enough to cover, or at least contribute to, tickets to a family Christmas play!

I'm so excited! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would receive almost $1400! Truth be told, I was afraid that my guess of $750 was high and that I wouldn't even get that much! This money really feels like a blessing as we head deeper into the holiday season. I'm so excited to have a way to pay for all our upcoming expenses and traditions. If we are being completely honest here, I wish the money had come weeks ago, but I am certainly not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!

I'm so excited! In a lot of ways, and for a lot of the people on my list, I have felt like I was at a stand still; now I can really start to make a dent in my Christmas shopping and start to cross things and people off of my list!

Opt Out

For the first time this year, my district is offering the possibility of opting-out for our insurance plan.

Currently, I buy the lowest insurance through my district (as we use The Husband’s insurance, but have no option to opt-out) and I pay a little over $500 per month. This insurance cost includes vision and dental. We do use my vision and dental plan as we opted to not buy that through The Husband’s work.

Only 20% of our union is going to be allowed to opt-out. If more than 20% apply, we will hold a lottery to determine eligibility.

I’m going to apply to be able to opt-out. If I am able to do so I will use all the extra money to accelerate our debt pay-off.

I would still buy our vision and dental plan through my district. Those run about $200. That would allow me an additional $300 a month to send to our credit card. By increasing our debt payment by $300 per month, we would be able to get out of credit card debt 6 weeks earlier.

In the grand scheme of things 6 weeks doesn’t sound like much, but 6 weeks is 6 weeks. It’s 6 weeks less of debt payment. It’s 6 weeks less of interest paid on debt. It’s 6 weeks less of worry. It’s 6 weeks!

Hopefully I get selected in the lottery and I can opt out!

Wish us luck!

Debt Update

Our last debt update wasn’t too bad. We paid off 3.1% of our debt total. Sadly, I don’t think we did as well this month. With Christmas coming, debt reduction has been difficult. However, I’m still considering it a win as long as we don’t increase our debt!

Okay, on to our debt update!

The debt we owe our children has continued to (ever so slowly) decrease. We borrowed almost $1500 from each child and have paid back $1150 to each of them, which means we are well over two-thirds of the way through paying them back! Although once we have fully paid them back, we will continue to deposit $50 into their bank accounts, I will be so happy when I can no longer consider them a debt! 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; to that end, I don’t really focus on paying extra towards our car payment because it’s at 0% interest. I know that goes against what Dave Ramsey teaches, but I can’t see paying more interest on my credit card balance just to get an interest free loan paid off quicker.

I was doing really well using a cash-only diet for a couple months. I fell off-the-wagon so to speak. My credit card found its way back into my wallet and I have used if for small, frivolous purchases. I need to take it out of my wallet again and focus on using only the cash I have on hand.  I still need to do this, but with Christmas looming it’s been hard. I think I will focus on taking the credit card out of my wallet after Christmas, which I know sounds like a cop out, but as long as my debt is still decreasing I have to consider it a win. As long as our debt continues to go down and I am still paying off more than I am adding we are going in the right direction. I am happy to say that for the third month in a row, our overall debt decreased! (I am so happy to get to be writing that instead of having to say again that our debt went up!)

Here are our current debt totals:

            $19,814.17        Credit Card at 16.24% interest

            $350                 The Girl

            $350                 The Boy

            $5475.00           Car Loan at 0% interest

          

Our total debt stands at: $25,989.17. YIKES! I can hardly wrap my head around that number. I absolutely HATED seeing a 2 as the first number on our credit card and I’m so happy that our credit card debt is back under $20,000 and at least our credit card debt only has a 1 in the front! In the grand scheme of things, the actual amount of debt is not that much less but psychologically there is a huge difference! I’m hoping for a much bigger decrease next month!

Plus side: our debt decreased! We paid off over $750 of debt in actual dollars, which amounted to about 2.8% of our total debt. We continue to make progress on both our car loan and the loan to The Kids, and the fact that we haven’t borrowed any more money from The Kids. An unexpected bonus is that our total debt fell into the 25K-something range… barely, but it did. I didn’t expect that to happen until next month and I’m so happy it happened this month! Any little win is a win!

Down side: we didn’t pay off a total of $1000 which is what I’m still hoping for, and of course that several hundreds of dollars went towards interest on our credit instead of towards the principal.

Looking forward to: getting our credit card debt below $18000 and hitting my goal of under $18000 by 12/31/18 (which with our new debt plan should not be a problem). Making continued progress on our car loan and decreasing our overall debt from 25K-something to (possibly…. Maybe… hopefully) 23K-something.

Obviously all my financial goals for the year have been thrown out the window. There are only 2 months of the year left and I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, I can’t change the past, all I can do is improve my future. Since our credit card debt is still so high, my goal for the end of 2018 is to be under $18000 in credit card debt. My other debts will continue to decrease at their slow and steady pace, but I am going to payoff $2000 more in credit card debt by the end of the year.

Clearly, I’m not in an ideal situation. But if I have to get out of debt one baby step at a time, I can do that.

WOW! This was another long post! If you stayed around until the end, thank you! If you got bored and moved on, I totally understand.

Look out goal #1: below $18000 in credit card debt by 12/31/18… I’m coming for you!

Christmas is Killing Me!

I am doing everything in my power to not increase my credit card debt this month… including transferring some money over from savings. We actually dipped just under $10000 in savings again (by $21), but we are putting money from our next two paychecks into savings so it will only be for a week.

But, again, I feel like I’m having to play catch up!

I know we dug ourselves into this mess and that no one else can get us out, but I’m sick and tired of every month being a battle to not increase our debt. Currently, the battle is because of of Christmas.

I did not plan well for Christmas. I understand that is my short coming, but knowing that I am going to have money to pay for it is not helping me right now.

This goal to get out of debt in one year is really quite ambitious. In fact, right now I’m starting to wonder if we will be able to do it. We are supposed to be paying $1600 a month towards our debt and so far we have only managed to decrease our debt by a couple hundred dollars each month. (There is a silver lining there in that we didn’t increase our debt; but it is not decreasing at nearly the rate I would like!)

This feeling I’m having that “Christmas is killing me” is helping me to plan for next year. I love that it is helping me to plan for next year, but I hate the feeling of Christmas being a burden. Like most people, Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday; but right now, I want to get out of debt and through Christmas without adding to our debt at all. And truth be told it remains to be seen if that's going to be possible.

I will just keep plugging away at our debt and buying Christmas gifts and necessities as frugally as possible.

Regardless of our debt, I do love this time of year; and that is what I need to keep in sight! I need to focus on the time spent with family, traditions, and (as cliche as it might be) remember the reason for the season.  By doing that, I will be able to enjoy the Christmas season and not fall further into debt.

If we can stick to our plan, this time next year, I'll be writing a post about being debt free and how it feels to pay for Christmas with cash!

Wish us luck!