The last couple of years have been very expensive for us and made it difficult to pay down our debt by much. I’m not complaining, just explaining. We didn’t decrease our debt by much and we were able to cashflow a lot of expenses! Going forward, things should change.

We have had two “senior years” in a row. Our son graduated in 2022 and our daughter graduated in 2023. Senior year is expensive. There are all the normal school expenses that everybody has: yearbooks, ASB, PE clothes, school supplies, dances and winter ball, sports, etc. But on top of that there are: senior portraits, prom, powderpuff football, senior trip, senior sunrise, senior sunset, senior beach day, senior movie night, senior ditch day, and that is just what I can think of off the top of my head!

Senior year was expensive for each kid but having to do it back-to-back was brutal! (I feel so sorry for parents of twins!) Quite honestly, just not having a senior this year (or a kid in school at all) is going to help our budget! It’s crazy to me how expensive public school has become. (And just to be clear, I am saying this as a public school teacher. Overall, I think there is great value for money, but the cost of extracurriculars has skyrocketed!)

In addition to not having a senior (YAY!), my daughter aged out of dance last year. We spent a TON on dance. I understand we could have told our kids no about any number of things to get ourselves out of debt faster, but we decided our kids shouldn’t have to suffer because of the financial mistakes we made, so they were able to do most activities that they wanted. (No judgement on anybody else’s choices either!) We paid about $1000 per month for dance, and it was always paid for in cash. We never charged anything for dance. Some of that money is going to be absorbed into our budget, but over half of it is going straight towards debt. Dance is, quite honestly, prohibitively expensive, just like so many elite sports in America are. We feel very luck that we were able to pay for dance, all while making slow progress on our debt, and contributing heavily towards our retirement.

Dance was so expensive. We had to pay monthly tuition, competition fees (which have skyrocketed since Covid), choreography fees, costume fees, and for food, gas, and sometimes lodging at competitions. We always brought snacks and drinks with us, but the costs still added up. I’m very happy to not have dance to pay for anymore. That’s going to help us pay down debt and fatten up my envelopes.

Hi there… I know it’s been a while, but like happens to everybody, life got busy. My daughter was a senior and graduated last year plus it was her last year of dance, so we had a lot to do. I am also a teacher and the summers are always busy… but in the best possible way!

I am back to work now, so in some ways our life is going to slow down.

The last time I posted our debt we had $19,167.74 in debt. It has decreased, but not by as much as I would have liked. Our debt today stands at $14,867.79, so a total decrease of $4,299.95. And interestingly, $1000 of that came in the last month. I can’t wait to get our debt down below $10,000. I’m hoping maybe by the end of the year as we have some good months coming up as far as debt payoff goes.

In September, I will get a small paycheck for some work that was performed in July and August. I will split it in half, half will go towards debt and half will go into our savings. September is also a three paycheck month for The Husband so we are able to send more to debt with that. A little over half of his extra paycheck will go to some various expenses we have to cover and savings and a little under half will go towards debt.

In my last debt update (months ago) I was excited because our minimum payment was finally under $500. On our next statement (in literally a month) our minimum payment should be under $400 as this month’s minimum is $400. We just keep plugging away knowing that slow and steady wins the race. I have to keep reminding myself that we didn’t get into debt overnight so won’t get out of debt overnight.

I am happy we are making progress, but I wish our progress was faster! Hahaha!

I’m really hopeful about getting our debt under $10,000 by 2024! I think it’s doable if we are diligent with our spending over the next few months!

My daughter has been having chronic headache issues for about 16 months. We have seen doctors and specialists, had MRI's, tried prescription medications and vitamin regiments... nothing has worked. As a last resort, her neurologist suggested therapy. She said sometimes our bodies will do anything to not deal with painful things.

Finally in January, we were able to find a therapist that would see a minor. Very few we talked to would see minor's and even fewer still woudl accept insurance. Nearly all of them required cash payment. The therapist we found shared our faith (which was important to us) and sees minors. She did not, however, accept insurance. 

It was worth it to us to pay out of pocket if it would help relieve our daughter of her headaches.  But it wasn't cheap! We paid $140 per session, and she had sessions weekly for almost 3 months. As her headaches started to improve, we were able to space her appointments out more. Today is her last appointment!

I'm so glad her chronic headaches have disappeared! Two days ago, my daughter and I were at our eye appointments, and she was so happy to mark "rarely" when it asked if she had headaches. The therapist has been a God send to us and we are so thankful that her headaches are gone, and she was able to deal with "unresolved issues". 

We still have a ton of debt, but we are making baby steps toward improving it; but slowing our debt payments so we could cashflow her therapy appointments was worth every penny! There is nothing worse than seeing your child hurting and having no way to help them! With today being her last therapy appointment, I am excited to have an additional $500 a month to put back towards our debt and maybe be able to ramp up our progress a little bit, especially knowing my daughter has relief from her pain!

My financial goals for 2023 were to increase savings to $10000, which I may or may not make (but I am still trying!), and to decrease our debt to $13000. Assuming my progress continues as it has been, I'm on track to make that goal by October.

I have been working really hard to pay down debt and have not felt like we have made any progress, but over the last couple of weeks, we have had little bits of money come in (some bigger than others) and I have applied all of those towards our debt.

My son received a tuition reimbursement for his junior college. That was a $690 drop in the bucket! And so unexpected!

 The Husband also received a raise of just over 4% and that has made up a small shortfall we were going to have because of tax adjustments with a little bit of money left over to send towards debt.

 I receive a small extra payment on the 10th of each month for any extra services I do at work. It's usually below $100, but it is extra. I was able to send that to debt.

 My daughter was named editor of her high school yearbook because of how hard and diligently she has worked on the yearbook this year. As her reward, she got a refund for her yearbook that we paid for at the beginning of the school year. That was another $80 to send towards debt.

The last one I haven't actually received yet, but it should be coming soon-ish. I coached intramural soccer at my high school this year. I did this as a volunteer job and was happy to do it! But it was exhausting and a lot more work than I anticipated it was going to be. But I'm still glad I did it. The week after our tournament, I found out I am going to get a 4% stipend for coaching! It was so unexpected and I'm so excited! 10% will go to my CalSTRS account and then of course they will take out taxes, but after all is said and done I'm hoping to walk away with an extra $2500! I will probably split that evenly between savings and debt as my savings account has taken several hits in the last couple of months!

 I'm just hoping to stay the course and that each small drop will help fill the bucket.

My husband got a raise! He received a 4.26% raise! It’s the largest raise he has gotten since he has been working for this company. He’s worked for the same company for 12 years and he has gotten a raise every year, but this year was the biggest he has ever gotten.

I’m so happy for him because he works so hard this past year, and he did not feel he was compensated appropriately at work; he wasn’t upset with his salary, but with certain bonuses that were handed out. However, after his 1 on 1 meeting with his boss yesterday and his raise, he feels a lot better about it. He was able to see his boss’s review of him and he feels like his boss really went to bat for him to receive fair compensation. It is always nice to fell appreciated and valued at work!

In a lot of ways we have worked to avoid lifestyle inflation, but I think we are going to fold this raise into our regular budget. We have a lot of upcoming expenses that this money can help us with in addition to debt that we are still trying to pay down!

The Husband has already set his 401k to max out for the year, so we don’t need to add to his retirement. My 403b is not maxed out and we are considering increasing contributions to my retirement account for at least some of the extra money, but we are waiting to see what his actual paycheck looks like before making any changes.

Hopefully, it will be enough of an increase that there will be a little more money we can throw towards debt and a little more money we can put away towards retirement!

We mainly use cash and the envelope system to budget. We do occasionally use credit cards for certain expenses, but we primarily use cash. Starting with our last month’s money, we started taking all our one-dollar bills to use as a small emergency fund.  Since February 1, we have put $125 into our newest envelope.

We put each of our dollar bills in the envelope and then once it reaches $100, we trade it out for a one-hundred-dollar bill and start over. It’s not much, but it will provide another small cushion for when an emergency arises.  On the front of the envelope, we have a square post-it note and each time we add any dollar bills to the envelope, we update the post-it note, that way we have a running tally of how much is in there.

I’m hoping to have close to $1000 by the end of the year.  Regardless of how much money is in there, it will function as another small safety net, at least until we get out of credit card debt.

It’s been fun to watch the numbers grow. Our debt is going down VERY SLOWLY, and it has been hard to keep our motivation up to pay off debt, but this has been something that has made me a little excited about our finances again. It’s a small thing, that is giving us a surprisingly big morale boost.

For 2023, I have decided to make only a couple goals. I will flush them out in a little more detail but essentially, they are decrease debt and increase savings.

Our credit card debt is hovering right around $20,000 and it has been difficult to get it below that level… this is the year! My goal is to decrease our debt (by the end of 2023) by $7000.  After interest, I want our debt to be lower than $13,000. Still high, but it would be progress. We will need to send roughly $900 a month to meet that decrease (including interest).  More importantly, we would need to not charge any more on our credit card. (*I guess that is a side goal of mine… to stop using our credit card unless it is absolutely necessary and to make sure we have the cash to pay for any charges we do make.)

My second goal is to increase our savings. We currently have $7500 in our savings account. By the end of the year, I want that to be at least $10,000. $10,000 is 2 months of (absolute) bare bones expenses. That would cover our mortgage, food, gas, utilities, and not much else. Eventually, once our credit card debt is paid off, I would increase our savings even more. Meeting our goal of $10,000 should be doable. Currently we are adding $500 a month to our savings and The Husband will have 2 months during the year that are 3 paycheck months. From each of those, I will add an additional $500. Should everything go according to plan, we should actually be able to reach this goal by the end of April. (That is of course assuming we don’t need to take any money out of our savings and are able to contribute the same amount each week.) But, realistically, I’m giving myself until the end of the year to meet the goal, because no matter the best laid plans… things happen!

Once we reach our savings goal, we will have to rejig our budget. But that’s another conversation for another time.

That's it... 2 main goals: decreasing debt and increasing savings. It sounds so easy on paper, but real life is hard! I know these are the goals everybody has, but I feel like this year I don't have much mental bandwidth to make more, or more specific, goals. 

Wish us luck for our goals this year! I want to experience the kind of freedom that you can only get from being debt free! Hopefully we can be credit card debt free in 2 years! If we make a good dent this year, 2 years is a real possibility! 

Our credit card statement came yesterday, so I guess it’s time for a debt update.

We were very close to our goal of an $800 decrease in our credit card debt after the addition of interest.

Our current debt total is $19,167.74. We decreased our debt by $775.73. Next month I am hoping to do a little better and even out our progress to at least $800 per month.

We had an unplanned for expensive month and had to cash flow the expense. The Daughter is going to Tennessee for Thanksgiving break, and we totally forgot to plan for the plane ticket! That was $750 after taxes and fees.  If we hadn’t had that expense, it would have been an awesome month, but I’m still happy with our progress. Our goal is “around $800 per month” and we were right there.

They raised our interest rate… AGAIN! I think this is a combination of two things: one, they “see” we are trying to pay off our debt and two, the Fed is raising interest rates. Our interest rate went up to 17.74%. Despite this, we had some wins this month. For the first time since April, when we really decided to buckle down and work on paying off our debt, our minimum payment due is below $500. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but to me it feels like a win. It’s below $500 because we have paid down our debt. Obviously, it is a win that our debt continues to go down. That is a trend we need to continue. In the past, we were very much yo-yo debtors. Our balance would go down only to go back up the next month. Currently, we are on a downward trend… for six months in a row! That is a win! That is progress!

With the holiday season coming up, I need to plan well to stay within budget. I am almost done Christmas shopping but have a few more things to buy. We host a Christmas party every year and it can be expensive if I don’t plan well.  I need to order invitations and buy food. Generally, we have about 75 people come throughout the day. (I know I could not do this and save money or do it differently. I enjoy my Christmas party and this year I budgeted for it and will host it. Please don’t tell me that not hosting it or doing it differently will get me out of debt faster.) I just need to stick to the plan and remain in budget. If I can do that, then my debt will continue to decrease as planned by about $800 per month.

Next month, our debt will fall into the $18,000s. I know it’s still A TON of money, but I need to count every little win!

We are so excited! Last night, all The Husband’s hard work finally paid off when The Daughter got to drive her truck off to church! The look on her face was PRICELESS! (It actually cost us right around $3000, but it was so worth it!)

The Husband has been working tirelessly most nights and weekends to get this truck back on the road! This is the truck he took his drivers test on 28 years ago! The truck itself is 32 years old but has sat for almost the last 10 years and so needed a lot of love.

He replaced, cleaned, and rebuilt so much on this truck! There are still a few things that need to be finished or fixed, but it is safely drivable. Yesterday, he and my daughter finished fixing the windows (they didn’t roll up or down) and fixing the door locks and actuators.

Although fixing the truck has been costly, at about $3000 so far, it was still less than if we had bought her a reliable used vehicle.  She helped a lot during the whole process, and she feels such a sense of pride in “her” truck. She drove off to church last night and school this morning grinning ear to ear! She kept running up and hugging her dad last night and thanking him for all he’s done!

Although this truck does bring some added expenses, like insurance and gas, it also brings a ton of convenience in that we don’t have to juggle cars around or arrange rides  for her to get her where she needs to be. YAY!

I am finally ready to share our debt numbers… and it’s scary! (Both the amount and putting our real numbers out there for people to see.) In April of this year, our credit card debt reached a total of $24,905.68, which was $1105.68 OVER our spending limit at the time. Amazingly, we weren’t charged any fees for being over our limit, other than our monthly interest. However, our interest rate has increased literally every month since then, so that’s how they are getting their extra money. We went from 14.99% interest to 15.49%, then to 16.24% to our current interest rate of 16.99%.

Our credit card “very graciously” saw that we were getting in over our heads, so instead of suspending our credit card (which was over the limit) or denying transactions, they increased our limit by $5000! We now have a credit limit of (ridiculously!) almost $30,000! It took us a long time to wake up, but I think we finally did! We still have a TON of credit card debt, but we are working on it.

Currently, our credit card debt stands at, $19,943.47. Still way too high, but less than it was.

We have not been able to pay off quite as much as we would like for a couple reasons. First, like I talked about in a previous post, we were given a truck that cost several thousand dollars to get running. (But was still less than the price of a used car!) We paid cash for all of the repairs. Secondly, our dog had an unexpected vet bill. He is 12 and we have been very lucky that he hasn’t been very expensive, but last month he cost us $1000. We were able to pay cash for that too. We also took a long weekend away as a family to Pismo Beach. We hadn’t done that in years and because we paid for that in cash, I consider it money well spent; but I’m trying to be honest in saying why we didn’t pay off as much as we would have liked.

Most importantly, we haven’t added to our debt, and in fact, have made a little headway. As of our September 2022 credit card statement, we have paid off $4962.21, which amounts to 19.9% of our total credit card debt. Honestly, could be better, could be worse.

Going forward, I am hoping to be able to payoff around $800 per month, after interest. At that rate, we will still be in debt for almost 2 more years. Again, it’s longer than I would want, but I think an $800 decrease per month is realistic. I don’t want to set unrealistic goals because then I will just be depressed and discouraged when I missed them.

We don't have any student loan debt or car loans. We have a mortgage and small solar loan in additional debt.  I am really focusing on our credit card debt as that is what is weighing us down.

As I said in my last post, I am expecting a lump sum payment this year equal to 6.5% of my salary. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with it, but looking at these numbers, it is mighty tempting to send it all to debt and just live with one month of expenses in my emergency fund and to work on building it back up, slowly. But I don’t have the money yet so I don’t really have any decisions to make, yet.

I am a teacher and so don’t get raises the same way people in the private sector do. I don’t receive merit raises but do get step raises. This year I am not moving over a step, so was not expecting any kind of raise. However, California gave a hefty (but still below the rate of inflation) COLA raise to school districts of 6.56%. For the first time in my entire career, our school district is giving us the entire COLA plus a tiny bit extra. With the step I’m at, this should make for a take home difference of $4000 for the year, or around $335 per month – a decent increase after taxes!

The union also negotiated a one-time lump sum payment equal to 6.5% of my yearly salary. After taxes, I’m expecting to net right around $4000. I have not yet decided how this is going to be spent. I would love to throw the entire balance towards credit card debt, but with some of the spending we had to do this summer, our savings account took a hit.

My comfort zone is at two months’ worth of bare bones expenses in our emergency fund. Currently, we only have one month of expenses. $4000 would almost replenish our emergency fund. Plus as we won’t get the money for a several weeks up to a couple of months, that money coupled with what I would contribute to savings, would top off our emergency fund.

I could also split it up and send half to the emergency fund and half to debt. Clearly, I’m torn. I guess the bonus is that we are going to be getting the money and that I have options!

We were given a truck for our daughter, but it needed some major repairs before she could drive it.  It is actually the truck my husband took his drivers test in about 28 years ago. It has been sitting in the driveway at his parent’s house for 7 years and hasn’t been moved since. Not to mention, it wasn’t taken care of very well before that either.

Over $1200 was owed on it to the DMV for overdue registration and fees. The DMV took off about $400 in fees and that brought it down to about $800 to bring it current. (We did not pay this. It was paid by my BIL to whom the truck was registered.)

My husband has put about $3000 and many, many hours into getting the truck drivable. He has put on new breaks, new valve seals, a new fuel pump, replaced the EVAP, new tires, and so much more.

Our original plan was to purchase a decent used car for our daughter when she got her license and was able to drive. But as everyone knows, the price of used cars skyrocketed. My car bit the dust back in March, but my mom lives with us and I have been able to drive hers. The Husband’s car is 7 years old but he maintains it well, and The Boy’s truck is old, but reliable. We have been able to get by, but it has been a pain. I will be so happy when the truck for The Girl is drivable!

We are almost there. After two months of work, it passed SMOG on Tuesday. Then, once it passed SMOG, we were able to finish the registration and get it insured in our name. Now we just have a few things left to do before she can start driving it daily. Once it passed SMOG, we ordered new tires for it, to the tune of $600. We also got a new windshield because there were multiple cracks in the old one.

We are getting there!

When The Husband was given the truck, he made a list of everything he thought needed to be done. Item by item, he has been crossing things off as he has completed them. He is also keeping track of how much money he has spent on each part or tool he has needed. The list has been added to since his initial assessment, but he has way less left to do, than he has already completed. Most of the parts have been bought and now we just need to find the time to finish the last repairs. The Girl should be driving the truck to school daily in about two weeks!

Wish us luck!

Two months ago, our credit card debt was the highest it has ever been! In fact, we were over $1100 over our credit limit! We had NEVER gone over our credit limit before. We'd gotten close to it, but never over, and certainly not by more than $1000. 

It was a much needed wake up call for us. Since then, we have topped off our emergency fund savings account (2 months of bare bones expenses), rejigged our budget to send more money to debt, and decreased our debt by $3278.26. I don't know what took us so long!

In our first month of serious debt payoff, we decreased our debt by $640.55, after interest, and were still over our credit limit. But it was a decrease. The first time our debt had decreased in months. In our second month of serious debt payoff, we decreased our debt by $2637.71. (This was an abnormal, but exceptional month!) We are firmly below our credit limit and still making progress.

Our goal is to decrease our debt by $1000, after interest, every month. In order to do that, we have to send at least $1300 towards our credit card debt every month and account for any charges we may make on our credit card in our budget. I think this is doable. It will just take planning and discipline. We have to pay attention to our "extra" expenses every month and actually account for them in our budget. It would be better to send less money towards debt and pay cash for all of our expenses than to forget and charge expenses on the credit card.

Every month has irregular expenses; those expenses that crop up once in while but aren't monthly deals. We need to pay attention to what they will be each month and make sure we set aside money for them in our budget spread sheet.

I’m very happy to be under our credit limit again and to be making some progress on our debt. $3200 is a great decrease and a great start! Now we just need to keep it going!

One good thing that came out of the pandemic for me was kicking the Starbucks habit.

Before the pandemic, I only had Starbucks as a treat.

At least that is what I told myself and anybody else who asked.

However, after 2+ years of Covid, I see that in reality, Starbucks had become part of my routine. I went every Monday and every Friday and the occasional weekend trip when we would walk there or head there on our way out of town somewhere.

I routinely added $100 a month to my Starbucks gift card. That wasn't a treat. I can also see now that I didn't really appreciate the times I did go to Starbucks because it was no longer "special".

I don't drink cofee. I order chai tea lattes, which they make from a syrup that you can add milk to. They sell the same syrup at the grocery store. With the onset of the pandemic, I started buying it from the grocery store and making my own at home. For LESS than the price of one drink at Starbucks, I was able to make 4 for myself at home.

Now I rarely add money to my Starbucks card and I really only do have Starbucks as a treat. I can't even remember the last time I had to add my own money to my card. I get a small gift card here or there and we add those to the balance, so I don't hardly ever have to spend my own money.

This has saved me money and time. I no longer need to detour on my way to work or anywhere else, not to mention my drink was rarely ready when the app said it would be so I had to wait around for it. Now I have chai tea lattes whenever I want for a fraction of the cost I was paying.

I'm so glad I am not spending my money on Starbucks anymore! (That's not so say it was a waste, but the value for money was no longer there for me. If you value spending money that way, it's just another example of personal finance being personal!)

May is always a very expensive month for us and this year was no exception.

In a normal year, we have two birthdays, mother's day, an anniversary, and the end of the school year. This year we added an out-of-state wedding that included an out-of-state bridal shower the week before, and a high school graduation.

This month showed me more than anything else how we have been living outside of our means! Even with all the added expenses, we were able to decrease our debt and cash flow all of our extra expenses, which were many!

Our billing cycle on our credit card doesn't close until closer to mid-month, but so far we have decreased our debt by $1400 (before interest) this month and still have one paycheck left to go that has money budgeted towards debt. In addition to that, we cash flowed two hotel stays ($520) and food for 70 people and decorations for The Son's graduation party ($500). To be fair, The Husband did have some overtime on his last paycheck that helped us from having to dip into savings, but it was only about $300.

The Husband's next paycheck will actually have a lot of overtime. Almost all of it is allocated to go towards debt. I should be getting a small "extra services" paycheck in a few days. So far, the money is unallocated because I have no idea how much it will be. We are thinking of splitting it 50/50 between debt and savings.

I am very excited we were able to pay all of our bills, cash flow all our extra expenses, and decrease our debt. Hopefully, we can keep the momentum going!

I’m still not quite ready to share our debt total, but I am ready to talk about it.

We only have one credit card. (For pretty obvious reasons as we aren’t responsible with credit.) For the first time in our adult lives, however, we have exceeded our credit limit. And we have a very high credit limit!

Our April statement was $1105.68 over our credit limit. Sad to say, I think it might just have been the kick in the pants we needed. We are not proud of it, but it shocked us in a way nothing else has! By our May statement, we were still $465.13 over our limit. Still over, but after interest, we paid off $640.55. We have continued to make progress. With the payments we have already made this month, we are below our credit limit. We aren’t below it by much, but we are making progress. Currently, we are $124.88 under our credit limit.

Throughout this billing cycle, we have 3 more opportunities to put money towards our debt. We have budgeted another $1784 to go towards our debt by the time this cycle ends. (May is a very expensive month for us! We have 2 birthdays, an anniversary, a high school graduation, and an out-of-town wedding.)

I’m just happy we are back under our credit limit. And hoping that we will continue to make decent progress each month.

The Husband’s payday is today, and he had a couple of unexpected hours of overtime on his check! I also received a paycheck from my childcare work at my church to the tune of $50.

In our original budget, we were only able to send $140 of this paycheck towards our credit card debt, but with the overtime we were able to send $400 plus my little paycheck of $50, for a total of $450 towards our debt!

I know it is not much, but every little bit helps! And if we were able to send an extra $310 every month, we would pay our debt off a full 3 months sooner. I don’t know how often we will be able to find an extra $300+ in our budget to put towards our credit card, but I am going to celebrate EVERY small win we have! We need all the motivation we can get as this is going to be a long haul!

Our debt is ENOURMOUS! We currently have the highest credit card debt we have EVER had! I’m too insecure to share the amount right now, but I am working up the courage to do so. Having said that, we think we will be able to send between $1100 - $1500 per month towards our credit card. (Varying amounts depending on what other expenses we have each month).

Our billing cycle runs “funny”. We are thinking about asking them to change our closing date and billing cycle but want to pay some down before we do that.

During our last billing cycle, we sent $1270 to our credit card debt. Not too bad, and more than we usually send. If we have to charge on the account for any reason, that is factored into our budget, so this $1270 is what went towards our debt. (Of course, not all of it because we have to pay stupid tax…. Interest.)

During our next billing cycle, we have $1924 earmarked to go towards our debt. I am super happy with this number! This is not a normal month and I’m hoping we are able to meet it! Two things in particular helped bump this month up. First, we have a pause on our daughter’s dance tuition so I’m anticipating not having to pay tuition this month. Secondly, I should receive my “extra pay” paycheck and it should have 2 months of extra pay. I’m anticipating about $400 of extra take home pay.

If we can send north of $1400 per month, I feel like we will start to see some progress. I know it will be slow at first and a lot of that money will get eaten up by interest, especially at the beginning, but we will start to see results.

Because we are irresponsible with credit cards, we have switched to mainly using our debit cards when needed, which as we all know is money we actually have!  We really like to use cash envelopes but fell off the wagon with Covid and banks being closed. We are trying to get back to cash. Last week I went to the bank with my withdrawal slip and my post-it note with my denominations breakdown and the teller actually asked me what I was doing? (She was nice about it, just curious why I wanted so many $20’s, $10’s, and $5’s.)

I always try to remind myself; we didn’t dig our hole in a day, we won’t fill it in a day. We are trying to make small changes that will add up to big rewards later.

As I talked about in my last post, the last several weeks were expensive! Now we are in recovery mode.

In the last three weeks, we went through a good chunk of our emergency fund, just upwards of $3000. Now, we are only $400 away from filling it back up. Once our emergency fund is back up to our comfort level, I will stop putting money in savings and send everything to our credit card debt.

We have been very lucky to be able to refill our EF so quickly! First, April was a three paycheck month for The Husband. Originally the bulk of that extra paycheck was slated to go towards debt, but we diverted the extra money to help refill our EF.

Second, we also had some regularly schedule deposits that totaled over $1000. (Going forward, those will all go towards our credit card debt unless we need to top off our EF due to use.) It’s super important to us to have a healthy savings account. We really believe in the Dave Ramsey method, but with all our responsibilities, we don’t think $1000 is enough, so we always want more in savings.

I also make small amounts helping with childcare at my work. I received a $100 check that went right into savings. (Once our EF is funded to our satisfaction, that extra money will become my “fun” money, but it is more important to me to have a funded EF.)

Lastly, The Daughter injured herself dancing so she is not currently practicing and hasn’t been for a few weeks. Due to that, the director of her studio paused her tuition. It was a total shock to us and we didn’t know it was happening. That was another $400 we were able to put back into our emergency fund.

I don’t anticipate much extra money coming in during the month, so I don’t think we will reach our EF goal until the end of May. Then, we will start aggressively sending money towards our debt.

Sorry in advance for the super long post!

This last week was EXPENSIVE! We were on spring break, and I feel like we were hemorrhaging money!

During spring break, our whole family had eye appointments. The Kids had never been to see the eye doctor prior to this appointment and had only had their vision checked at their yearly physical. I haven’t had my eyes checked since before our daughter was born about 18 years ago and The Husband went about 4 years ago. 3 out of the 4 of us are getting glasses. The Daughter is getting glasses to see far. She has been having a difficult time seeing the board at school, which is actually what prompted us to go to the optometrist. The Husband is getting a pair of sunglasses and a pair of glasses to use when he is on the computer. I need glasses to see far. At least at the beginning, I am only going to wear them for driving (especially at night). Our son has perfect vision and is very proud to not need glasses! We do have vision insurance and are, in fact, double covered, but we still had to pay about $415 out of pocket for the 4 pairs of glasses.

We had to buy 4 new bathroom faucets as 3 out of 4 were leaking. (Technically, we could have only bought 3 but we have a double vanity in both bathrooms, and I did want the faucets to match.) In our master bath, my faucet started leaking just a few months after we moved in, on the cold side only. The Husband turned off water to the cold and I just used the hot side for years. But about 6 months ago, that started leaking too. Since then, we have just used one faucet. However, unfortunately, about 4 weeks ago, The Husband’s faucet started leaking too. In our kids’ bathroom, our daughter’s faucet has a leak when she turns it on. Some seal must be broken. That was $400 for four new faucets. (2 at $110 and 2 at $80). We chose faucets that were a little over the middle of the road price. We could have chosen cheaper faucets but figured if we were going to spend the money, we might as well get something we liked and that would (hopefully) last. Luckily, The Husband is very handy and is able to install them all himself!

Yesterday, The Husband went to get a new battery, air filter, and spark plugs for one of our cars. That was another $200. It’s money well spent, as we do try to maintain our cars well, but still another expense! Again, The Husband will be able to do all the work. He already changed the battery and air filter and will get to the spark plugs next weekend (we think). Our son is the primary driver of this car and said he can already tell a difference in how the car starts!

Tonight, The Husband and Son are heading to America’s Tires for new tires for our truck… to the tune of $600. We have a 1960 Chevy Truck. The Husband has been working on it nights and weekends for the last couple of months to get it running again (new radiator, cleaned out gas tank, new hoses, new battery, rewired the electrical, new seatbelts, etc.). It’s this close to being drivable, but it needs new tires. We have had this truck since before we were married, for almost 25 years, so I am happy he is working on it and getting it running! I’m just not happy about the timing of it all.

Our last super pricey expense is not a necessity, but it is worth it to us! Our niece is getting married next month out of state, and we are traveling to the wedding. We booked our hotel today and the final price was $468 for three nights, including taxes and fees. We are staying in a 2 queen-bed room. Our daughter is in the wedding, so she is staying at the house of the bride. Staying in the hotel will be my husband and me, our son, and our daughter’s boyfriend. Gas is already budgeted for. Food shouldn’t be too expensive because we will be eating many meals with the wedding party. We will spend the day before the wedding at my brother’s house (his daughter is getting married) as it’s my daughter’s birthday. We will have breakfast and lunch at their home. Dinner on Friday will be at the rehearsal dinner. Saturday is the wedding. We will be on our own for breakfast and then the wedding will be a late lunch/early dinner. And then we will have to worry about Sunday breakfast before we head home. Because most of the weekend will be taken up with wedding related events, other than the hotel room, it shouldn’t be too expensive.

I pray that our expenses level out and we don’t have to keep shelling out so much money! Our savings have taken a huge hit this week and we need to build it back up a little before we can start tackling our debt again!

I read another blog that has an idea I love… I would like to start doing it too, but I don’t actually know how to start.

Every time she does a load of laundry, she adds $1.50 into a fund for a new washer/dryer. I’m not sure if she has a separate savings account for it or if she just keeps it on a spreadsheet, but I think it’s something worth considering.

For myself, I feel like I would need a separate account for it because I feel like it would be too easy to spend the money if I just kept it in my general savings account. Another idea would be to physically put the cash in a jar each month. I would just have to keep track of how many loads were done each month and then pull that amount of money out.

I think this would be a great thing to do, but then I wonder where would I get the money from? We barely have enough money at the end of each month to meet our obligations to pull another $30 - $50 out a month.

We make plenty of money but for many years, we lived above our means, which we are paying for now in credit card debt! It’s no one’s fault but our own, but it makes finding an extra $30 - $50 difficult! Definitely something to mull over though and to try to work into our budget.

To continue on my last depressing post, I have more bad (for my bank account) news.

When we moved into our home almost 5 years ago, the dishwasher was brand new, but it never really worked very well. We have always washed dishes on “high heat” and “pots and pans” and the dishes still didn’t always come out clean.

So, of course, in the middle of our car saga, our dishwasher decided now was the best time to give up the ghost!

The Husband opened the dishwasher the other day and the bottom was filled with water. He assumed that the hose was clogged so he took everything out, pulled the dishwasher out and flushed the pipes and hoses. He ran the dishes again… and the same thing happened. Apparently, the pump went out on our dishwasher. This isn’t a tragedy in that we never really liked this dishwasher anyway. However, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

Obviously, we could handwash dishes; but with 5 people living in our home and 2 of them there nearly all day, every day, we go through a lot of dishes! We run the dishwasher daily and sometimes more than once a day. (Sometimes I don’t know how we go through so many dishes, but we manage to! We eat almost all meals at home and pack lunches most every day.)

After a few days, once we had a chance to get to the store, we bought a new dishwasher. HOLY COW! Dishwashers aren’t cheap! The least expensive model they had was $500, on sale! We opted for a $900 dishwasher. It was on sale $100 off from $1000. We also needed to buy the install kit which was about $30. After taxes, we paid $1002… for a dishwasher! It seems absurd to me, and we didn’t even buy a top-of-the-line model. We bought distinctly middle of the road!

We were very glad that the dishwasher we chose was in-stock and we were able to go pick it up at their warehouse only 15 minutes away. We have seen horror stories of products ordered and never delivered or backordered for months. We were very glad to be able to pick it up and start getting it installed right away.

The Husband is very handy and able to tackle most home projects himself! He has installed windows, microwaves, dishwashers, and fans so we thought this would be a piece of cake. It didn’t go smoothly. There were a few bumps in the road, but luckily my brother is a plumber, so The Husband was able to ask him some questions and get it figured out. After a couple days, it was installed and functional!

Of course, all this came on top of our car drama, as if we weren’t stressed enough! However, again we had so much to be thankful for in this process. We are so fortunate to have money in the bank to pay for this “emergency”. We were lucky the store had them in-stock. We are lucky my brother was able to answer any questions we had, and that we had a truck to pick up the dishwasher with.

It’s so easy to get mired in the muck and negative of these cruddy things happening, so I need to try to be grateful for all the blessings in our life.

This is going to be super long and convoluted so I will probably break it up into at least 2 posts, but we'll see where my rambling takes me.

We are currently in the "when it rains it pours" stage of life; and I can't say I'm happy about it.

In December, driving home from a family day, about 1.5 away from home, our check engine light came on, the car started dinging at us and the dash said "loss of engine power". At the time, we were 2 miles away from where we were going to dinner, so we were able to get there and have dinner.  The Husband keeps an error code reader thingy (that's the technical term, LOL) in the car so he was able to figure out what the error was. It wasn't good! It had something to do with the pistons. (Again, I don't know much about cars!)

We have a very good friend who is a mechanic and The Husband called him and asked him what we should do. He said at this point, we were in survival mode so just try to limp the car home. (He also told us to call him at any point and he would come get us if we couldn't get home! He is a very good friend!) After an arduous trek home at about 40 miles an hour, we made it. (It's a very long story and quite honestly a blog post can't do it justice, but in reality, we felt like God was looking out for us and it happened in the best way it could have!)

Because of the holiday season, we were unable to get the car looked at until the first week in January.  My car is old but has been reliable and a great vehicle and we didn't want a new car payment, so we were hoping to have it repaired. The estimate was $1600. We debated and decided to go with it. We figured if we got only 4 more months out of the car, it would be the same as if we had a $400 per month car payment. 

We got the car back and everything was fine for about 10 days. Then, the check engine light came on again. I cried, The Husband swore, and we were both stressed! This time, the reader said it was emissions problem. For $100, The Husband replaced the O2 sensor. And the car was good for about 5 days. The check engine light came on AGAIN! Out mechanic friend old us if it wasn't the O2 sensor, it was probably the catalytic converter. 

Of course, the catalytic converter is a super expensive fix and our registration was due in March and it was a SMOG year. (In California, you only have to SMOG your car every other year.)

We were both super bummed, mostly because we had chosen to fix the car and it didn't even look like we were going to get the 4 more months out of it that we were hoping to get.

For the next several weeks, the car mostly sat in the driveway. (We are very fortunate that my mom lives with us and we were able to use her car!) However, last week The Husband took my car to his Daddy and Me dance class and when he got home, he told me that while he was driving, the check engine light turned off! (I understand this does not mean my car is fixed.) So this past weekend we decided to see if it would pass SMOG... and IT DID! We actually took it to an "official testing site" and it passed just fine.

We know something is still going on with my car, but its passing SMOG gives us a little more time to figure things out, pay off some more debt, and save up some more for a down payment of a new (or new to us) car.

Unfortunately, even after this whole car saga, it's still "raining" on us. But, as expected, because this turned into a super long post, I'll write about our other storms sometime this week. But not to totally sound like a whiner, I want to add that we are so lucky in so many ways! We had my mom's car to use, we paid cash to fix the car, we still have money in emergency savings, and we were offered cars to use (temporarily) by multiple family members. We are blessed beyond measure and even when we feel like things aren't going our way, we really are very fortunate!

We are super lucky to have some money in the bank. We have about 4 months of bare bones expenses plus close to another month's expenses in cash on hand. However, my car is on the fritz in a BIG way so we are going to need to buy a new one soon. Our down payment will come from the money we have in the bank (we do not have a separate down payment savings, though I wish we did!) 

We will use about half of our current total savings to use as a down payment on a car. We are very lucky in another way, too. My mom lives with us so I am able to use her car until we get a new one, so we don't have to make any rash decisions and buy one quickly, but we still need to figure things out.

All of this to say... I want to try to get a month ahead on my bills, in addition to our emergency fund!

One of my children needed money for something the other day and when I was getting it out for them, I found a $100 bill in my wallet. I have no idea where it came from or what it was for, so I decided to start my "month ahead" envelope with it. I use the envelope system so it is very weird for me to have money floating around in my wallet without a home.

I know $100 isn't much towards our whole month's budget, but it is a start and since it's "found" money, I thought it was a good place to start. I also found an envelope with $20 in it. It was supposed to be a birthday gift, but we ended up getting something else, so the money is extra, too! (It was from months ago!)

I have a goal to save $5500 to get a month ahead in all bills and I am $120 (a little over 2%) of the way there! The goal to get a month ahead is in addition to my regular savings goals, bills, and debt payoff and will probably take me 18 months (or more) to complete. To be able to be a month ahead and have an emergency fund would be awesome!!!

Going forward, I am going to try to put little bits of found money and a tiny sliver of our monthly budget towards that goal. I know I'm not the only one who always feels like there are more bills and goals than there is money, but we will get there! 

When we decided to move 5 years ago, we took out a $15,000, 5-year loan from The Husband's 401k. We were living in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with a 12 year old boy and an 11 year old girl... we had to do something!

I am so happy to say that the loan will be paid off very soon! One month from today (2 paychecks) and we will be 401k loan free! I'm super excited about it being paid off! Because it is a 401K loan, that is obviously through no extra effort of our own, but it will still be paid off!

Once it is paid off, The Husband is going to adjust his 401k contributions to increase by 1% so that he will max out at the full $20,500 limit. He maxed out last year at $19,500 and that small adjustment should have him maxing out again. We are very lucky that he works for a company that also gives a 3% match and 6% profit sharing. All told, he (and his company) are contributing about 28% of his yearly salary to retirement. 

The rest of the 401k payment will just be absorbed into our every day budget. And truth be told, we can use an extra $100 a month or so! With one senior and one junior in the house, school costs are crazy!

The Husband's yearly review is coming up soon too. He generally gets at least a 3% raise. We are actually hoping for a little more this year. Any increase he does receive will most likely go towards increasing contributions to my 403b. I contribute $1400 above and beyond what is taken out for my pension every month.  My school district runs on an 11 month cycle so I put away $15,400 towards retirement and would love to increase that if The Husband gets a raise! We are slowly trying to inch our way up to maxing me out, too!

I'm so excited to have this loan paid off and to increase contributions towards our future! I have said before that we are super far behind and trying to play catch up, so every little increase helps!

Wow, I can't believe it's almost Christmas! I am very far behind! I have been so much busier than I thought I would be! I thought the Christmas season would be slower, but I guess people are getting back to life in spite of the pandemic.

Both The Kids participate in extra-curriculars and those are just about back to normal. They may need to show proof of a negative test or wear a mask, but they have been able to practice and compete without many restrictions. That has definitely added to our crazy schedule.

We host Christmas at our house and my family is huge! We do get some help, but it's still a lot to do the shopping, get the house ready, and prepare the (majority) of the food. And all that is in addition to the "normal Christmas stuff" we need to do. However, I feel very blessed that my family gets together with us and I wouldn't change it for anything!

We are almost done shopping; I only have a couple gifts still need to buy, but I am nowhere near done wrapping! I have probably only wrapped about 30% of what I need to do. So, when I am off school next week, I will be a busy bee!

We set aside money every month, starting in January, to pay for Christmas. I have mostly stayed in budget this year, but more importantly, I haven't put anything on credit. When I haven't had enough actual cash, I have used my ATM card for purchases! That's a small win! For most of my family I made homemade soap (two different kinds), a lotion bar, and a homemade lip balm. I have been working on my Christmas presents all year! I'm excited about them!

This year, both The Boy and The Girl children have "significant" others... a first for us. We wanted to give them some gifts too. We got each of them 4 gifts, but only spent about $25 on each of them. We are giving them soaps, little credit card pocket knives (we've had these for years and have just been waiting for the "right" people to give them to), for the girlfriend we also got a blanket and another small gift, and for the boyfriend we got him two flannels and another small gift! Nearly everything we purchased for them we got on sale... score!

As I said earlier, I am looking forward to my time off work. Work this year is extra stressful, for various reasons (ironically very few of those reasons are COVID related). I'm excited to get caught up for Christmas, finishing our Christmas shopping, wrapping gifts, watching Christmas movies, and getting caught up on laundry! Plus spending quality time with The Husband and Kids! 

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of new years!

Many years ago, The Husband and I took Dave Ramsey's FPU through our (old) church.  We worked the steps, got out of debt, and started aggressively contributing to our retirement. Then we decided to remodel the kitchen at our old house. We fell deeply into debt, all on our credit card and haven't been able to get out of debt since then. Not only that, but our debt has increased. 

Like most people, I am so ashamed of our debt! And although I have had nothing but support from this blog and site, I'm still uncomfortable disclosing the actual amount of our debt because I am so ashamed.

However, today as I was reading different blogs and articles about getting out of debt, I remembered that we have done it before and we can do it again! I'm feeling motivated to get out of debt in a way I haven't felt motivated for years!

This time will look a little different for many reasons. First of all, we have much older (and more expensive) kids. Secondly, we make a lot more money. Thirdly, we aren't comfortable with a $1000 emergency fund, so ours will be larger. (Sidenote: we already have our emergency fund saved up, so we pretty much get to start at Baby Step #2.) We also give to our church regularly (and have for three years!!!) and we have felt so blessed being able to do that that isn't something we would ever change! (This is the first time in our married life that we have given to our church REGULARLY and we are so glad that we can!) And lastly, we are choosing not to stop contributions to our retirement accounts. We have done that before and already feel like we are playing catch up, so we don't want to fall farther behind as we aren't getting any younger.

As far as point three goes, we do have an emergency fund, but we do have some upcoming expenses, so we still need to add to our savings. We need to add $2500 to cover some costs we have coming up and then we will stop adding to our emergency fund/short term savings account and put that money towards our debt. 

Regarding my last point, we contribute a lot towards retirement. As I am a teacher in California, I contribute 10% automatically towards my pention, but I contribute and additional 15% on top of that. The Husband contributes 17% and his employer gives a 3% match plus 6% profit sharing. Totally, we contribute about 25% of our pre-tax dollars towards retirement, but we are playing catch up!

Even while adding to our savings we will be paying off debt. We should be able to save the money we need for some upcoming expenses by The Husband's last paycheck in February (2/18/22) and then we can start aggressively paying off debt.

I have not had anything but positive feedback and support from this site so please wish us luck and send all the good thoughts our way as we tackle getting out of debt following Dave Ramsey... again!

I feel like I'm falling into a trap. We have an emergency fund. We also have an additional $3000 saved above our emergency fund goal.

And. I. Don't. Want. To. Spend. It.

As I talked about a few posts ago, we have savings goals above and beyond our emergency fund and paying off debt. And now that we have the money, I don't want so use it. 

I got such joy this weekend out of using Amazon gift cards for our new fireplace so that I didn't need to transfer any money from savings. And then I was so happy that we sold some things to make the cash for the fireplace surround so that we wouldn't have to touch our savings.

It feels like a trap. Work hard to build you savings. Save cash money for things you want to buy. Then, cry and pout because you feel like your savings account took a hit when you do use the money.

We currently have the most money in savings that we have ever had in our married life. And it feels good! For the first time in our lives, we aren't living paycheck to paycheck and I love it! But then I feel sad and guilty when I want to use our planned savings... It feels like there is no middle ground!

I'm so glad to have money in savings! It's awesome to have an emergency fund! It's awesome to have extra savings for things we want to accomplish! But it sucks that it feels like failure when we use that savings! In my head I know it's not failure to use the money for what it was intended for, but my heart isn't on the same page.

Okay, rant over! I'm trying to look on the bright side and just be glad we actually have money saved for the first time in our lives! Money for an emergency AND money for planned spending!

We ordered the fireplace insert for our bedroom over the weekend. It should be here in 4-10 days. Out of pocket, it only cost us $90!

We participate in a wellness program through The Husband's work. We get points for completing different wellness activities, working out, seeing a doctor/dentist regularly, etc. The points can be redeemed for lots of different things; we almost always choose Amazon gift cards. Apparently, we haven't redeemed the points in a while. We had enough points to redeem $375 in Amazon gift cards, which paid for the majority of our insert!

The insert is 36 inches wide by 27 inches tall and about 8 inches deep. It can be used for heat or just for ambiance. I'm super excited to get this process started! I can't wait for it to come so The Husband can start building the mantle.

Also, over the weekend, The Husband listed some items on Facebook Marketplace to sell. We were given a backyard awning 6 or 7 years ago that we have NEVER used. It has actually never even left the box. We also had a drywall lift that we had bought when we were remodeling our old house that has also been sitting in our backyard since we moved 5 years ago. Lastly, he listed The Boy's basketball hoop. Our son hasn't used the hoop in 2 years probably, it was time. All three items sold relatively quickly and painlessly! We listed the awning for $200 and sold it for $160 to a young couple that had just bought their first house. The drywall lift sold for $140 and I was beyond happy to get it out of my backyard! And the basketball hoop sold for $50!

It was all "found" money to us and none of these things were being used and were actually taking up space! The money from the awning and the drywall lift is going to be used to buy the lumber for the mantle for the fireplace in my bedroom! Although we saved the money for the fireplace, I'm so happy that we won't have to use much of it. We used gift cards for the insert itself and have about $300 from items we sold to use towards the wood!

The money for the basketball hoop we gave to The Boy. It was his hoop, so we figured the money should be his. We have our kids split their money up into three categories: tithe, spend, save. They have to tithe 10%, they get 50% for spending, and 40% goes into savings. 

It was a good and productive weekend.

Thank you all so much for all the support and great ideas on my last post!

One of the comments made me realize I haven't talked much about retirement savings.

We have a couple different accounts for retirement. As I am a teacher, I have a pension, so about 10% of my gross pay is automatically taken out of my paycheck monthly. I also have a 403b which I contribute an additional $900 a month towards. (We are looking to bump that up soon... just as soon as I print and fill out the paperwork.) The Husband has a 401k with a 3% match. He is currently maxing out his contributions. And in addition to the match, his company dumps 6% profit sharing in on the first paycheck of every year. He has been with the company over 10 years and is fully vested.

All told we are socking away about 23% of our gross income annually. Pretty good numbers but we are in our early (almost mid) 40s and feel like we are behind the 8 ball in planning for our retirement. We don't have any other retirement accounts at this time. We are working to max out my retirement next. We are probably about 3 years away from me being totally maxed out too.

Our retirement accounts currently stand at about $500,000 altogether. Much of that is due to the current market we are in. It is going like gang busters, though I'm not sure how long that can/will be sustained. But we are in it for the long haul. Retirement is a marathon, not a sprint.

My goal is to retire at 55, or at least stop working. We are hoping I won't have to draw from my retirement right away and will be able to wait a couple of years. With my retirement, age at drawing funds is the biggest factor in how much money you receive each month. The plan is for The Husband to work until he is 65; one, because he makes more money and two because insurance is EXPENSIVE!

These are all just plans at this point. But you know the saying, "if you want to see God laugh, tell him your plans", so we are just doing our best to be prepared for whatever the future holds.