Today is Payday...
We are down from $40,562.41 to $39,367.30 as of 9/2/16 in our debt snowball. We started this journey with $50,530.01; so that's $11,162.71 paid off since we started in May 2016.
The citi balance is down to $2,398.28 now, which is super exciting to see. I really can't wait until we pay off the family van! I think my parents may be inspired by that too (as my Dad co-signed for us on it) - Dave Ramsey has a lot to say on co-signers and not doing so which we know now of course, but didn't think about that. But I think once my Dad sees that paid in full.. perhaps he might get bitten by the Dave Ramsey bug too. Here's hoping!
The process is going a bit slower than it could be as we want to save up for birthdays and Christmas. But once that is done, our momentum should increase I believe. January has my car registration so we will make sure we have that set aside in advance. And then also next year Summer, our 12 year old, wants to get Invisalign treatments, we do have a flex card (which is our flexible savings account that comes out of Bry's check pre-tax) but his employer only allows us to put $2,500 per calendar year in that, and this year I sort of burned through a bit of it because of my Emergency room visit and the related co-pays for that. So hopefully for Summer's treatment we can use $500 from our Flex that restarts in January 2017, and then cash flow the other $500 on that. She's got a baby tooth not yet in so her treatment has to wait until that comes in anyway, so we have some time to save up. Hopefully some tax refund money can contribute to this.. but I will make about $20,000 working part time this year and that may or may not effect us tax wise this year. Praying that we won't owe anything and if we break even that will be a blessing.
The family and I like to go walk around IKEA and the other day we saw a couch we would love to put in the family loft / gaming area, the Ektorp sectional (washable cover). But it's $999 so that's not in the budget right now. So we will keep the futon with the washable cover up there for now and maybe start a small couch fund down the line.. but it's not an emergency so it's okay for now. Not a need but it's a want. There is some stuff Bry and I would like to do to our room as well. I think as parents we always tend to put our room last on the design spectrum. We've had our same bedroom set for over 13 years now. But it's still kicking so no reason to replace it. I was thinking maybe of doing some painting though and giving it a bit of a make over or something just to make it feel new. We use chairs as side tables in our bedroom... I've seen it in design photos and it's not that it looks bad.... but I would eventually like something different, again not an emergency and just a want not a need, so I'm good with waiting. We could actually probably cut the backs off the chairs and then they would be true tables then, but someday we may need the extra seating haha, so I don't want to do that.
Well that's all for now.
Have a blessed evening.
