Cutting Spending

Some of the ways we have been cutting spending money...

• Not getting fast food very often unless there is money for it in the family spending money. 
• Not getting Starbucks very often unless it's in the family spending money. 
• Having at home Movie night (renting a movie from Amazon for $5 or from on DVD from Redbox $1.99). We do this with candy and popcorn (we have an air popper which makes some great popcorn too) and sodas at home. 
• Instead of going to ice cream places.... taking the kids to pick out half gallons of ice cream which allows us to have ice cream many more times than just the one time at the ice cream place. Getting sundae fixins' to make sundaes at home too. 
• For going to movies out... $5 movies... and not getting any drinks or snacks while there. A small popcorn cost more than the movie admission... no thank you movie theater. 
• I got a library card for myself and have been using the overdrive app to borrow E-books on my kindle from the library. Reading a lot keeps me busy and keeps me from shopping too. 
• Not buying bulk sizes just because we have a SAMs membership, instead buying what we need for that two week period. 
• Finding things we can do that don't cost money... like walking around IKEA... I could walk around there a lot and am not tempted to buy anything... and there is always a few dollars in our pocket in case one of the kids or Bry wants a vanilla cone haha. 
• Bowling... an affordable option for family fun. We haven't done this yet but it's in our plans. 
• Think ahead... it's too late this year but for next year we want to make sure that in January we begin to put money aside for birthdays and holidays for the up coming year. And we want to set up a sinking fund category as Dave calls it, for the camping vacations we want to take.. tent camping... nothing fancy but we feel this would be a great thing to do with the kids and the dogs while being cost effective and budget friendly. 
• For grocery shopping... keeping up with detailed menu planning and using a pen and pad to keep track of what we are spending as we shop to keep in budget. If you see a gal using a notebook to add up prices... yeah that's me haha. Please say "hi". 
• Keep up with unschooling the kids... every once in a while I'm tempted to buy some fancy item for homeschooling... Yesterday I wrote out a list of what Skylar is doing for her 9th grade year using educational speak for the things she does in daily life. Let me say that kid covers a lot of college level stuff and beyond. So that was good. So just to keep on top of that list to help me avoid needless spending on supplies. 
• Remember to ask myself if things are needs or wants before making a purchase. Old Melissa would have purchased all the camping stuff we want on a credit card and worried about it later. There is such power in waiting and planning and saving. 
• Staying in God's word daily. I do some verse mapping each morning on the daily verse that the You version bible app shares each day. Praying daily that God will keep me steadfast in our budget and avoid the temptation to spend. And then I'm doing the 17:18 bible journaling, right now doing the book of John... So marinating a lot on God's word. 
• Focusing on being content with what we have in the moment not what we wish we had. 

~Many blessings to you and yours~ 

August 19, 2016

Today is Payday... so we have made some payments today of course.

We paid down more of the citi card, $651 toward that bringing that balance down to $2,687.20.
We also paid some of the PSECU but that's not due until the 25th so I wait to update the balance after the payment is credited on that account, just because of the interest.

Bringing our total debt balance to $40,562.41 as of today.

Bry and I had sent my parents FPU for home study. In the mail yesterday I received a box, and when I opened it it contained the unopened FPU that I had sent them. They never opened it.
Bry and I decided to keep it and popped in the first DVD. What a great speaker Dave is... and he is so funny. I listed to his Podcast every day but seeing him and his facial expressions as he acts things out... well it's just great. So their loss is our gain in this instance for sure.
We watched two lessons last night. The first being Super Savers and the second (we accidentally skipped ahead to lesson 3 being Cash flow planning. So we are going back to watch lesson 2 the next time Bry is off.
Sparked lots of laughs and more importantly lots of thoughtful discussion on our debt and our dreams.

So even though I had felt prior that if someone read the books maybe they didn't need FPU. FPU is definitely well worth the expense just as it's so motivating!
I signed up for the online tools that comes with the membership, very cool!

~Have a blessed day~

Down goes the debt

We started this journey with $50,530.01 in debt.
Now the total amount is $41,213.77, so since May when we started we have paid off $9,316.24.

As of today the balances due are:
Citi Card:             $ 3,338.56
Car Max (Van):    $ 6,227.97
PSECU Credit:    $15,757.71
Amex:                  $15,863.14 (this one is a little tricky as it's not going down fast enough as I hadn't been making a payment enough to cover the interest, the min due always said zero so I just kept paying $50 a month. Stupid tax as Dave Ramsey would say and now the payment is up to $286). This is effecting the snowball as the money I was paying on on discover was supposed to be shifted to Citi and instead it's going to Amex. So just a small blip in the matrix. This is why after Citi is paid we are going to pay the Amex as the next debt in line.

Since last time I update I did end up setting up a free checking account to use for auto payments online for Xbox and for Bry's gym membership as well. The gym had overcharged us by a month and the capital one card credited us right back, so I'm waiting to see if the gym tries to bounce that charge back to us again before moving on closing this card and moving over to using the debit card instead for this.

The family van is in the shop... since August 2nd.... So that has been an inconvenience. We had it at a local dodge dealer... it's a dodge Van... and they were not helping us... this isn't the first time we have had this experience. So we pulled the van and took it to a Hyundai dealership for service. Here's hoping it's fixed in a timely fashion. We did have to pay $300 deductible for the work that dodge did do on my van, as we have a warranty from CNA that was offered to us when we bought the van through carmax. Hence the $300 cost to us from Dodge. We were told by the warranty company that this would count as one event and shouldn't have to pay the $300 deductible again. The AC compressor is what caused us to take the van in for service and that compressor had been replaced by Hyundai for us with a certified warrantied Chrysler compressor. Dodge refused to honor the warranty on the Chrysler part, which is why we pulled the van and took it elsewhere. Here's hoping I get my van back soon. Getting hard not having a car that fits the entire family.

~Have a blessed night~

Best Buy is gone now

So yesterday we made the final payment on Best Buy! It was a very small balance left on a zero interest offer that we have had since May of last year. The final payment, which paid it in full was $168.52.

We started this journey with $50,530.01 in debt.
Now the total amount is $42,318.37. So since May when we started we have paid off $8,211.64. That feels wonderful!

As of today the balances due are:
Citi Card:             $ 3,838.56
Car Max (Van):    $ 6,588.28
PSECU Credit:    $15,962.73
Amex:                  $15,928.80

I have closed my SAMs credit card and also my Discover. Going to be cancelling Kohls very soon. Just haven't gotten that far yet. Best Buy card will be cancelled as soon as this final payment has been credited. Next to cancel is Bry's capital one. We use this for his gym membership which comes out once a month and also for the Xbox live purchases. However I think I'm going to set up a free checking account that gives us a debit card and just have this be the fund for these two items. I just don't like giving the gym access to our main checking account just in case they have an overcharge error, which has happened in the past.

I read Chris Hogan's Retire Inspired the other day. Great book which I highly recommend to anyone. Not a rehash of Dave's books as some Amazon reviews indicate. I felt Chris really explained heavily the retirement steps of the baby steps, which makes sense since it's called Retire Inspired after all.

~May your evening be blessed~

Dave Ramsey's Complete Guide to Money

So I read this book for the first time just the other day....

I really like this book very much. While I enjoyed the story based conversational format of the Total Money Make Over... I think I prefer this just a smidge more as I like that it really digs in to the money concepts deeply.
I read Total Money Make Over many years ago. I'm currently re-reading that. I also listen to Dave's Podcasts Daily. As you can tell I am committed to keeping the motivation going here.
I had borrowed the Financial Peace kit from my dear friend who took Financial Peace at our church. I  was sort of teetering about if Bry and I should take the at home version.... but we have known about Dave's "system" for awhile.... I don't think there is anything we would learn specifically out of the class that we don't already know very well already from having been following Dave's materials so far.... We don't feel we need the group support/accountability aspect at this stage or the extras provided in the FPU class. I had already listened to all the FPU CD's and since I would like to get the kit back to my friend sooner than later... I was like okay... open this book and read it so I can give it back. It's basically the handbook for FPU, and it's really a great read and I highly recommend it!

I honestly think I would recommend both books since they work in tandem. Yes some of the info is repeated a bit... but not in a word for word annoying kind of way... Total Money Make Over has lots of stories sprinkled in of others and their journey (for your encouragement) where as Complete Guide to Money is more meat and potatoes and details with sparse stories of encouragement. I know that FPU gives you a workbook to complete which follows this book, but that was something I felt I didn't need much for us to cement the concepts. I did look over the workbook my friend completed and the rest of the materials which were a chart to keep track of your debt and an envelope system. We already have encouraging verses hanging up, a space that prominently lists our current debts to keep track of and our envelopes that my younger daughter and I put together firmly in place. We used regular size 10 envelopes but we decorated them fancy with left over scrapbook paper we had, and then stenciled on them either names of the family members or the category (i.e.: groceries, family spending money, holiday/gift money). And we have our budget going well and budget sheets I made custome for our debts (which I just redid a bit) and then our thermometers to color in as a debt is paid off. So we felt that for us reading the Complete Guide to Money was really the piece of the FPU puzzle that we didn't want to miss right now. I enjoyed the book so much that I asked Bry if maybe after he completes some testing he is doing for a promotion at work (which requires lots of reading and studying) that maybe when that's all said and done he may want to dive into the book because it's nice and to the point which he would enjoy.
I also purchased the TMMO audio book so that I could listen to that anytime I don't have any podcasts going or if I just need some Dave inspiration.

I do have Chris Hogan's Retire Inspired on the way. I had sent that to my Mom as a gift for her birthday (she didn't read it yet) and I really would like to read it and maybe the two of us can chit chat about it.

I did realize a few tweaks we needed to make:
List out all budget categories on the bi-weekly budget... Before I didn't include yearly bills like the sewer bill of $229 or the SAMs $45 or Amazon Prime membership fees $99 or Bry's uniform cleaning which is about $5.50 to $8 per week, or the Master HOA of $93 per quarter or the quarterly trash bill of $43.43... so then I was having to cover that from money we may have wanted to put towards another bill or spending category. So I went back in and updated the budget sheets I like to use to write out for each pay period.

Another thing I realized is that we didn't start by paying the smallest debt first... That is our Best Buy with a current balance of $168.52 so this paycheck we are going to pay that all off and then be moving along in the "proper" order, so to speak.

~Blessings to you and yours~