Holiday Havoc

Hey y'all!  Wow.. nearly 1.5 months since I posted!  Life certainly gets in the way when you let it but I have NOT given up on our quest to become debt free.

I have been updating the little total ticker there on the right sidebar, and if you look you can see we've paid off $3,220.13 since I started this little blog in September.  That's just 3 months worth of effort. Not included in that total are 2 medical bills that popped up, incidentals on a trip to Michigan, baby shower gifts, Thanksgiving expenses, and the fact that we have gotten ourselves a baby emergency fund in place.  I've started a side Avon business (link on the side) to bring in some extra income and Hubs and I have been working our way through Financial Peace University Online. Oh and there's this little thing called CHRISTMAS coming up so a little extra income has been allocated toward gifts the past month as well!  Whew… it has been a busy month but I'm feeling really encouraged about where we are right now even if this month's snowball payment was fairly small.

The plan for December?  Pick up those few last minute Christmas gifts, pay cash for 2 new tires on our car, and hopefully attack the snowball a bit harder.  Also this month we have 3 family birthdays and Christmas!  I’m planning a little extra for restaurants and fun things like going to see the lights in Gatlinburg or other Christmas-y things we can do as a family.  The holiday season has a way of wreaking havoc on the budget but we are trying to be as prepared as possible!  We also plan to finish up our FPU classes and move forward in 2015 with a more complete budget.  This will make us cut back a bit in some areas but will also help us save for a those inevitable rainy days.  Things like new tires or dryer repairs or unplanned medical expenses will have their own sinking funds monthly so that when these kinds of expenses pop up, we will be ready for them.  Even with these extra categories, we will have money leftover to apply to the snowball and will continue to push toward becoming debt free. 

We are wrapping up this year faster than I would like but we feel good about our plan for the next one!

Are you making any special budget considerations for the holiday season? Do you have any budget related goals for 2015?

Getting a Handle on Spending

I came clean a few weeks back on our total debt and our deadline to pay it off, but I didn’t really discuss how we plan to pay it off.  Honestly, I really didn’t know how we would.  I figured we would start a snowball type plan to get it done but I didn’t know where we could get any extra money to do this with.  I spent the last 4 weeks focusing on our grocery budget because to me it was the easiest place to cut.  I knew we were overspending in this area and I was right!  The extra $200 a month is a great start but I want to be more aggressive in getting this done.  You Dave Ramsey fans out there might call this getting “gazelle.” 

I’ve read Dave’s books and looked into his methods. I know they work for a lot of people and I know some of it can work for us. The one thing I was struggling with was how to live on a cash only basis.  My credit union that I’ve had an account with for over 30 years has no branches here in the state so cash can’t be taken out to be re-deposited at specific times to pay bill categories.  But I liked the thought of having “envelopes” and having set amounts for those categories.  I needed a way to keep my accounts electronic while still tracking specific category spending.

Enter You Need A Budget – or YNAB.

This is an actual screenshot of my budget in YNAB.  The “budgeted” amount is the total amount I’ve placed in that “envelope” for the month, the “outflows” are what I’ve actually spent from that “envelope” and the “balance” is the amount left to spend in my “envelope.”  This is all separate from my checking account yet helps me track my allocations without the money ever leaving the account.  I can also track the spending just like you would with a check register – remember those?  The best part is you can load the program on as many devices as you like!  I have the free app loaded on my Android phone that let’s me quickly see how much is currently in my envelope AND enter transactions as they happen to immediately update the totals across all devices. 

For example, I’m at grocery store A and I check to see I have $100 left for the week in that category.  I shop and I spend $75.  I enter that amount on my phone before leaving the store and immediately my husband who is at store B can see on his app that we now only have $25 left for groceries and adjusts his spending accordingly.

Since I started using the program about 4 weeks ago, I’ve been much more aware of what I’m spending and where.  I get a paycheck and immediately prioritize where the money gets allocated.   Then I don’t worry about if we have enough to get gas or go out to eat because I can always see exactly what I’ve already earmarked for that purpose.  If “Murphy” happens, and he always does, you can adjust your categories as needed but still know you have enough to cover everything.  I can’t say enough about YNAB it is the easiest and most liveable plan I’ve ever used.   And in the short time I’ve used it we have “found” over $400 to use toward our snowball this month!

YNAB has a FREE trial – and I mean completely FREE for 34 days – so you can see if the program is right for you.  They also have free online classes to help you customize the product for your needs.  I just bought the program before our free trial ended because I love it so much!  It has made budgeting…. FUN! Yes, I actually said that.   So try YNAB by using their free trial, and if you like it, please come back here and click through my link to get yourself a $6 discount on the program. (out of full disclozure - I might also get a $6 bonus if you do!)

Cutting the Grocery Budget–Week 4

This is the last week in my grocery challenge to trim $200 from our grocery bill and I am happy to report – I DID IT!!  The goal was to go from spending roughly $600 per month to just $400 – about a 33% reduction. The total I spent for this month on groceries (including household and baby items) was just….

In my budget, that is a savings of 37% or an actual $222.09!  I will be putting this extra cash to paying down our debts and to hopefully get us to our goal even sooner.  To me that total above is simply amazing.  Amazing because I always thought I was a smart shopper before. Amazing because I didn’t think we had anywhere to scrape extra dollars like that from. Amazing because it was so much easier than I thought it could be! 

I even saved money this week when I was feeling overwhelmed and tired and didn’t really get the greatest of deals.  This way of shopping and the simple act of using coupons is really saving our family money and is sustainable.  That is the important thing to me -  that this will be something I can achieve consistently if I keep at it.

This week I spent $90.13 between 2 stores – under budget by almost $10.  So without further ado… where did I shop and what did I get? 

First we went to Target – now I admit we mostly went here to get a deal on Starbucks coffee and ended up with other things entirely. This is my problem going to “big box” type of stores where they have more than just grocery items – BUT -  they do tend to have better prices on the household and baby items. I guess it’s a tradeoff and I just need to get more willpower not to scour the entire store!  So, back to the shopping… we went to pick up Starbucks beans that were on sale AND had a $5 gift card offer.  Most of the bags were gone, completely cleared out.  The ones that were left were blends Mr. Wee doesn’t like so we didn’t get any coffee.  Bummer!  By the way, did you know there are smartphone apps that will pay you to snap a pic of empty shelves and upload them?  Holy crap I would make so much money around here…. if only the apps were compatible with my phone! (iPhone users – check out gapNsnap if you are interested)  So what did we buy here then?  Baby Wee was out of Hylands Teething Tablets – best invention ever – so we picked those up using a Cartwheel offer.  We also used a Cartwheel and Target coupon to purchase Plum Organic baby food packets.  Finally, they had a sale on a giant jar of Jif for $5 – normally the same jar runs $6.99 at the grocery store.  Total spent: $24.99, total saved: $6.37.

The bulk of our shopping was done at Kroger.  I will admit I had been in a sort of love affair with Kroger the past few weeks after getting some great deals.  This week, I even decided to skip looking at my local Ingles ad because I was certain the better deals would be here – mistake.  Ok, I did still get some good deals here this week but I’ve become slightly disenchanted.  I got caught up in the 10/$10 promotion but found many of the items cleared out from the shelves… other shoppers informed me they had been empty since the day the ad came out.  Maybe they restocked during the promo, maybe they didn’t.  Either way, I was disappointed.  I was able to get greek yogurt, frozen veggies, organic mac n cheese, pasta and condensed soups (yes, I know making them is healthier but time is sometimes a premium!) for $1 or less when combined with coupons. I also stocked up on organic chicken broth for soups for fall!  Overall I spent $65.14 here and saved $33.94 – a 36% savings.  After the last few weeks of saving 40% or more, this felt like a fail.  But I still saved money – that is the most important thing to remember!

Next week I plan to recap some of the biggest things I’ve learned over the last 4 weeks but if you want to start saving now, I really want to encourage you to check out the banner link to my affiliate below:I know I’ve mentioned Grocery University in previous weeks of this challenge, but I cannot stress enough how great this program has been for our family!  I bought the program figuring I would at least recoup the cost of the program with a tip or two, so what was the harm?  The program costs $9.97 and over the last 4 weeks I’ve saved $222.09.  Seriously, how can you not love that?  Some of the tips are common sense or things you might know if you’ve been on a tight budget, but I think there are at least one or two tricks your family might benefit from in there too.  I encourage you to check it out!

What does your grocery budget look like? Could you stand to trim it?

The Ugly Truth

So if I’m going to be talking about paying off debts, I have to come clean about the total of those debts.  In order for me to stay home with our little one, we decided we need to eliminate all but my student loan debt.  The number we are looking at is {deep breath}:

$18,838.39

I hate seeing that number.  It’s much easier to stomach in individual credit line balances than to add it all up into one.  The breakdown is about 50% credit cards/store cards and 50% car loan.  I read somewhere that the average American family has $8,000 in credit card debt so we are apparently decidedly average. I’m so not proud of that fact.

Why aren’t we including my student loans in the total?  Well I’m ashamed to admit, the amount is ridiculously high and it will be a very long time before those are paid off.  Luckily, my interest rates are low.  Once the above debts are taken care of, we will be putting any extras toward tackling this beast.
So what is the goal? 

Pay off $18,838.39 by December 31st, 2015 or about 16 months

With our current budget, if everything goes perfectly, this should be achievable by October 2015.  If something goes wrong, like losing a couple weeks of work, December gives us a little leeway.  I’m hopeful that I will be able to shave $200 off our monthly grocery bill using the Grocery University program (a 33% reduction!) and will then apply that to our debt.  In doing that, these debts will be eliminated by September 2015 or just over a year.  
There you have it in writing.  Here’s to hoping what they say about putting your goals in writing is true!

Do you have any current financial goals? What are your strategies to help you achieve these goals?

Where Do We Start?

My baby girl is one. O-N-E!?  How did that happen?  Where did that first year go? How much of her first year did I miss?  Why are we no closer to me staying at home?

I met my wonderful husband at the young age of 32… quick 3 years ago.  At that point in my life, I had almost given up hope on my dream of having a family.  I knew in my heart that if I was ever blessed with a husband and then baby, that I wanted to be the one who was there to raise him/her.  I didn’t want to miss any precious moments and, honestly, work/career just wasn’t that important to me.  Fast forward three years and we are happily married for almost 2 years and have a 1year old baby girl!  God is so good!

Since it took me longer than some to get here, I spent my pre married years getting my college degree, starting my career, battling thyroid cancer and collecting debts along the way.  Credit cards, student loans, medical bills… they started building while I lived in the now without a thought for the future.  I had debts, but I had a job to support them so it was ok. Right? Wrong.

When we were blessed with the news of our baby girl, we could hardly contain our excitement! We both had hopes of me staying home to raise her but reality set in when we sat down to crunch numbers. Because of past bad/hasty decisions on both our parts and our current debt load, I needed to work.  At the end of my maternity leave, I went back to work part time (30 hours/week) and have spent every spare minute dreaming of ways to make staying home with our daughter work for our family.

We created a budget and a snowball plan to tackle our debts but it seemed that our goals kept getting pushed back.  To be completely honest, we had a budget but it was only on paper. We didn't live it.  We didn't change our spending habits.  We didn't change so our situation didn't change.

This is the start of our journey to make those changes and to make our dream of me being a stay at home mommy a reality.