Quick Start Guide

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while; a very basic, down and dirty, step by step guide on how to get started on being debt free. This is what WE did, and more or less how I usually respond when people say “I want to take over my finances but how do I start?!”

1. Get Mad. Write down all of your debts on a piece of paper. Everything. Every personal loan, every credit card medical bill, car loan, student loan (you can add the student loans together for each person in the household to save room on the page), the mortgage, everything. Make it look nice because its going to be on display.  Add all of those numbers together and write your total on the very bottom of the page. Woah huh? Now post that up someplace where you’ll have to look at it every day. One of those places in your house where the floor cleaner people call a “high traffic area.” Now leave it there for a few days and just marinate on that figure.

   This can also be the time when you dream about what you would do with your life if you didn’t have debt payments. For me it was to be a stay at home mom of a big family. If we didn’t have car payments, credit cards, student loan payments, we wouldn’t need as much income, I wouldn’t have to go to work and we wouldn’t have to count on baby sitters or after school programs or family members to take care of the kids.

2. Educate Yourself. Now you know how deep of a mess you’re in, you’ve marinated on it until the point where you’re mad. But don’t be mad where you’re just flopping around like a fish out of water with no real direction. Educate yourself about debt reduction and financial fitness. If you knew how to manage your finances effectively, you wouldn’t be in this mess right? So ask an expert.

   Read Dave Ramsey’s book Total Money Makeover. Sign up and attend Financial Peace University. A lot of people like the book Barefoot Investor, but personally I haven’t read it yet. I also really was inspired by Ruth Soukup’s book Living Well, Spending Less. Find some expert plan that inspires you and create your game plan.

3. Make your Budget. You HAVE. To have. A Budget. Your budget is your new great uncle that died and left you all kinds of money. Never have we ever “found” more money than since we started a strict budget. Last month I wrote a post about how to make a budget that fits your income. You can read it here. I worked really hard on it and made sure to include tips on how to cut expenses and add income, so I hope that you find it helpful.

4. Track your Progress. Motivation is key. Personally, I know I can only deprive myself
of pizza delivery and Dunkin’s coffee for so long without seeing some type of payoff. I like these debt free charts and I used them a lot for my student loans. But they just weren’t doing it for me now that we’re tackling Jeff’s loans because he has like 17 of them. So I switched over to this style with the boxes. Find some type of way to show what you’ve accomplished, and then post it up in the same high traffic area you have your debts listed.

5. Tweak and Adjust. Don’t get discouraged if you’re not debt free in the first month, or if you fall short of some of your goals. Reflect on what you’ve learned so far and adjust your plan for the next month. Change your goals to be more realistic, or change your methodology to accomplish your goals no matter what. Cut out expenses, sell something, add more income through a side job or overtime. Like anything else this is a journey, and its not without stumbling blocks or a learning curve. But no matter where you are on the journey, you’re always better off than before you started.

Advertisements

How to Make a Budget

The most important thing we did when deciding to get out of debt and take over our finances was to make a budget. Right after making a list of all of our debts and posting it up in a central location, looking at it every day and marinating on it for a while. Now that we’ve had an updated, working budget, I have no idea how we were functioning (or trying to) without one.

If you want to get out of debt and have savings goals, you. Need. A. Budget. No lie. No way around it.

But when we were first starting out, actually MAKING one was the hardest part. This isn’t a skill taught in school anymore, and judging by, not only my personal experience, but the recent report from the Federal Reserve that states that Americans now carry more credit card debt than ever, even before the Recession of 2009, people are not seeing responsible financial behavior modeled in their homes or other relationships. What do you actually do? Pen to paper, what do I need?

1. Gather your bills, receipts and pay stubs for 3-4 months. As with anything, you have to start with a good foundation. Income and bills can fluctuate, especially utilities and grocery spending, or income if you’re an hourly employee like myself. The rest of your budget is based on what you observe yourself bringing in and spending, so those numbers need to be accurate, and one month’s worth of info isn’t going to cut it. Grab 3-4 months worth to start.
2. Figure out your monthly take-home pay. Whether you get paid monthly, weekly or bi-weekly, total up all of your paychecks for each of 3 months and get your total income for each month. Then add them all together and divide by 3 (or 4 if you’re using 4 months of data). This gives you your average monthly income. If you are self employed or have an otherwise irregular income, read Dave Ramsey’s guide here, on how to make a budget with irregular income. (This is the fun part where you say “Yay! Look at the money I make!”)
3. Figure out your monthly expenses. This part takes some work, especially in regards to the time you put into it. To track your spending monthly, get all your bills together for one month. This is just going to help you create categories for your budget, and you’ll be surprised at how many there are when they’re all out there on the table. Don’t forget to track things like groceries and housewares. There is a worksheet here from consumer.gov for a visual aide.
   Then, get the bills from the other two or three months you’re using for your baseline data to make your budget, add the number for each category and divide by how many months. Example, for category Electric Bill, go back and find your electric bills from May, June and July (if those are the months you’re referencing), add them together and divide by 3 to give you your average expected electric bill.

   Tip: For utilities that fluctuate throughout the year, such as oil in the winter or electric in the summer when AC’s are running, use the months where these numbers are highest to create your budget to avoid running over your budget for an entire season. You might not spend all of the money allowed for your oil budget in August, but you’ll be thankful for the cushion come February. If you are running a tighter budget and aggressively paying off debts and not keeping a big cushion in your utilities account, redo your budget every few months using current or more relevant data and make your adjustments accordingly.

   The most important expense to include in your list here are your savings goals. These can include your starter emergency fund of $1,000 if you’re doing the Baby Steps, Christmas gifts, or medical bills that are upcoming. As Dave Ramsey says, “Pay yourself first.” After all, a budget is how you tell your money where to go to avoid wondering where it went (another Dave-ism), and every singe dollar of your income needs a purpose.

4. Figure out the difference between the two. Very easy step but a very difficult one. Total up all of your monthly expenses (including your savings goals that we described earlier as a necessary expense). Then subtract that number from your total monthly income.
   Take a deep breath.
   Is that number positive? Then woo hoo!! Nice job, you make more money than you spend. You have met all your monthly expense requirements and savings goals and have money left over to service your debts.
   Is it negative? You then are in the majority of people who spend more money than they make. Proceed to step number 5.
5. Make adjustments. If you spend more than you make, you will need to make adjustments to your budget. You can’t keep on running deeper and deeper into the red every month. You’re not Congress after all.
   Look back over each category of your monthly expenses. What surprised you? Were there a few things that cost a lot more than what you had been telling yourself there do in your mind? What we did when we were in this very same position a few years ago was to rank our expenses from most to least important, and then lop off a few at the bottom of the “important” list. This is called prioritization. It is absolutely essential. If you can’t meet your monthly expenses with your income, some things have to go.
   So what can you cut or reduce? This will be a mindset that will carry you through. Every month I’m thinking “what can I cut? What can I reduce?” Check out my post about What Do You NEED Really? for inspiration. For starters, the first things to go for us were:
   1. The cell phone bill. This saved us hundreds of dollars and was a huge motivator. This seems like a big shake up, and some people might stop right here and abandon this whole budget mindset because as a society were are addicted to our phones and cannot even remember how we survived just a few years ago without them. But sometimes a big shake up is exactly what you need. We have honestly not suffered at all without our phones. Jeff has a work phone that his company pays for, and I use my phone just like I used to except only when wifi is available. In the great scheme of priorities, the latest and greatest phone out there with the fastest internet were not even close to the top.
   2. Subscription box. I used to subscribe to Citrus Lane, a subscription box of kids stuff I used to get for $20 a month. I liked getting it, but it was an easy thing to cut. There are so many more subscription services on the market now than when we started; it seems like the industry has kind of exploded, whether its dog treats or kids stuff or new clothes and accessories or makeup or whatever. What seemed like a trifle to me then might be very relatable to people now. None of these are necessary for sustaining your existence.
   3. Weight Watchers app and Gym Memberships. The WW app was another $20 a month, and I don’t even remember what our gym memberships were. I like the WW app, but I had successfully done the program using pen and paper for free before. Cutting the account and going back to this low tech method was a pain in the butt, but I felt like it was worth it. There was a time we had gone to the gym regularly, but that was long ago. Both of us working and having kids at home, it was easier for us to work out at home, and the monthly gym payments had to go.
   4. Reduce grocery spending. When we first started out we were spending over $1,000/month on groceries and eating out. This is obviously outrageous and unsustainable. Since then, keeping food costs down has been my constant hobby. Read all of my thoughts on Surviving the Grocery Stores and Meal Planning, Even When You Hate It. And check out my Week of Budget Dinners.
   5. Reduce heating and electric. Even up until this week I’m still working this. A budget isn’t an iron clad soul surrender that guarantees everything is going to go perfectly. You continuously will have to recommit to your goal. Look at my post Little Things for ideas on how to cut utilities. Turn down the heat, turn up the AC’s or turn them off. Line dry clothes, shorten showers and go to cold water washing. Wring every penny out of your budget to work closer and closer to your goals.
   6. Increase income. Another thing that you can do to get things moving aside from cutting expenses is to add some income. I have a crochet goods side business. I have a friend that drives for Uber. Pick up a few shifts at a second job. One of my favorite things to do for more income is to sell stuff we don’t like/want/need/use anymore. Check out my post 7 Things You Can Do to Save Money This Week! for more information and ideas.

Thats it really. Finances are just numbers, and not even hard math, just addition and subtraction. Ok and division when you figure out the average in the very beginning.

Frequently revisit your budget to make sure that it continues to work for you. Adjust your expected monthly expenses and savings goals. A budget isn’t useful if its not accurate.

And a budget will change your life. You will feel more in control. You will see the change not only in your finances, but over time, in your outlook on spending, saving and what your goals are.

Just try it for six months and see where it takes you.

Week of Budget Dinners

Last week on my Instagram account I did quick posts about what I made each night for dinner, along with how much I spent total and then broke it down to the per person costs (for our 5 person family).

I wanted to put them up on here as well so I could post links and more information and so they would be more permanent. I also hope to do this more and more.

1. Honey-Apple DrumsticksI found this recipe here, on the Food Network website a few weeks ago searching for easy, healthy dinner ideas. The first night, it got rave reviews, and the second time were even better because I had more practice making the glaze. Even Sam ate two drumsticks after six years of refusing to touch any food with a sauce on it. I was intimidated at first because I had no idea how to make a glaze, but it’s seriously so easy, and I feel like a more experienced cook now. Doesn’t take much I guess.
   Served with two dry packaged Spanish rice bags.
   Cost: $4.88 total, .89/person.

2. Spiced-Apple-Stuffed French Toast Casserole

After taking two months of the summer off, I restarted Weight Watchers last week (and lost 5.4 lbs!).  So when I was looking for dinner ideas, I knew I should check out some WW ones just to make my life easier. I found this crockpot recipe here, on the Weight Watchers website. I like having breakfast stuff for an easy dinner, and this was just filling enough. The apples and spices in it made it taste like fall, so I’m sure in a few weeks it’ll be a new favorite.
Cost: $4.10 total or .82/person

3. Soup and Paninis

This is on the meal plan every week. Another easy, fast dinner, and everyone can have just what they want (read: no whining). Conveniently this was for dinner the first night I started feeling really sick with what I now think is Lyme disease after visiting my doctor and starting treatment the other day.
Don’t have a panini maker? No problem. You can also use a waffle iron, a non-stick-sprayed pan (as if you were making grilled cheese), or toast both pieces of bread before assembling the sandwich and microwaving it for a few seconds.
Cost: $4.23 total, or .85/person.

4. Pizza Night

Ok I was feeling pretty cruddy by this point AND I worked until after we usually have dinner, so there’s no picture for pizza night. Anyways, this is another thing that stays on my meal plan. I love pizza. We used to order delivery several times a month; sometimes ever more than once per week. This was obviously ridiculously expensive, and after we added drinks and sides, we could top $40-50 easy, for one dinner. Not wanting to give it up, I have a frozen pizza night weekly. Aldi has a million different varieties that go from classic cheese and pepperoni to roasted veggie bistro style to (my latest favorite) taco and gyro pizza. I get two so little people have options and we usually have left overs for lunch the next day. Sometimes we even do make-your-own, and pick out our own toppings and have a little mini-cheffing.

5. Honey Mustard Pork Chops

This one was from my Weight Watchers cookbook, but I also found it here, on food.com, except I go with boneless chops. I must be on this week because all the kids ate this one too. Pork chops are so cheap, and after they’re left to marinade, they cook on broil in like 12 minutes.
Served with mashed potatoes (red russet because you don’t have to peel them). You could also add a bag of frozen veggies for under $1.
Cost: $3.60 total or .72/person.

6. Skinnytaste Greek Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner

From my Skinnytaste Fast and Slow cookbook, but you can also find the recipe here. So I couldn’t fine heirloom carrots and I wasn’t interested in driving all over creation to find them, and I used goat cheese crumbles instead of feta because my Aldi was out this particular day. Anyway, it turned out delicious and we ate every bite. Definitely going on the plan for next week.
Cost: $6.45 total or $1.29/person

7. Leftovers/ Poverty Meal

I really have to say, when I posted about pasta with butter on my Instagram, I never ever thought it would get such a response. So many people (considering my small amount of followers) either said they had something similar or wanted to know how to make it. Something borne in my childhood when we had no food in the cabinets, and no money to get anything more, this still goes on my meal plan for Wednesday nights to supplement the week’s leftovers. Its cheap, easy and for some reason, everyone seems to like it.
For those of you looking for the recipe: 
Boil 1lb pasta (any type) and drain.
Add 1 stick of butter and mix until butter is melted and pasta is coated.
Sprinkle with grated Parmesan/Romano cheese.
Add salt and basil to taste.
Cost: $1.61 total or .32/person

I really like the idea of the budget meals posts. I’m definitely going to try to post more on here as I discover and try some more out so stay tuned!

Painting on a Budget

When we bought our fixer upper house, we knew we had a fair pile of projects ahead of us. Pretty quickly after that, we realized that to get all of these projects done, we would have to figure out how to do them all for cheap.

One of the most expensive projects is painting rooms. Painting requires a lot of disposable supplies and paint itself can be pretty pricey. So this is what I know so far about how to paint on a budget.

Do it yourself. Duh. This is the one thing that will probably save you the most. Painting is a pain in the butt, sure. You have to clean out the room and put your drapes down and tape everything off; it’s the worst. But its really not the hardest thing ever and there are some really good tutorials on YouTube that show you exactly what you need to do to get that not-so-DIY look.

Use free color matching service to get a designer look without designer prices. Lowe’s home improvement store will match paint to anything you bring in, whether its a pillow or a swatch of fabric to an old sample. This lets you get your high end designer color into more affordable paint, and on to your walls without tanking your budget.

Shop discards in the paint section. Every store’s paint section has a shelf or an end cap with already made colors that people have either returned, changed their minds about or never picked up in the first place. These gallons are deeply discounted because the store wants them gone and off the shelf, and you never know what color you might find. Take a quick walk through and you might just score.

Paint DOES go on sale. Sales aren’t just for holiday decorations and school clothes. Big box home stores put paint on sale during summer holidays like Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day. Paint companies like Sherwin Williams offer coupons throughout the year, and there are frequently big discounts and Buy 2 Get 1 Free sales at home improvement stores around the holidays when people are likely to fix up their homes for guests.

Hang on to your disposable stuff and left over paint. Clean your brushes thoroughly, rinse out your paint pans, fold up your plastic drapes and drop cloths. A little effort after a project will save you money next time. Also hang on to your extra paint. Instead of tossing it and then having to buy a new gallon to touch up dents and scratches, you’ll already have everything that you need for free. Unopened paint kept indoors can be used up to TEN years after purchase. Opened cans of left over paint keep for around two years.
We had our dining room painted a grayish blue that I loved for years. Now I’m over it. The color that I picked to repaint was so close to the color we had painted our entryway, I decided to just use that old paint in the dining room and spent $0 on the new project.

Don’t forget to ask for your discounts. Lowe’s has a 10% off military discounts. Seniors, police, fire and students are also often offered percent discounts at check out. Also check out sites like RetailMeNot.com and AAA (if you’re a member) for offers like free shipping and percents off a regular price order. If you’re not sure if you qualify, ask the cashier “what discounts are available today?” The worst that can happen is they say “None.”

 

Anatomy of a No Spend Week: Prep

I wanted this to be a guide for people who have no clue how to start budgeting and being conscious with their money; something I would have loved to have had when we started out.
When we really want to strip the spending down and purpose our money towards something important (like finishing off my student loans), we do a no spend week. Which sounds really nice. But what does it actually mean? What do we do and not do and how??

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.
The first thing I fell like I need to do is to define what “No Spend” means here. A no spend week is successful when you don’t spend any money on anything other than necessary and budgeted for items, like your rent, groceries and electric bill. You can’t very well call your student loan company and say “sorry, I know my payment is due this week, but I’m on a no-spend challenge so its going to have to wait.” No spend is no food other than groceries, no new toys, clothes, housewares, movies, no nails done. If you get sick and have to go to the doctor, go. That’s necessary spending. If you’re sick of cooking at home and go out to eat… not so much.
For a no spend week to work out you need to prep like your life depends on it. If this is your first time, look back at your bank statement from last month and see what you spent that wasn’t bills, savings goals or groceries. What did you buy? What did you buy without even thinking about? Now make a plan on how to not do that.
For me the usual perpetrators are fast food, take out, Target runs of primarily clothes and kid’s stuff. And also online shopping. Shopping online doesn’t even feel like I’m using real money, its just magical that I click and type and the mail brings me gifts. Right around the time when I was getting my credit cards returned to me maxed out, I had my debit card number, expiration date and CVC code memorized so that I didn’t even have to get up and make the long lonely walk to my wallet to impulse buy.

Anyway, the prep I usually do starts with heavy meal planning. I plan all meals and snacks for the week. I get all my cookbooks out, open up my “Budget Meals” board on Pinterest and dig out my plan from last week to see what worked and what didn’t. For more info about this, see my other post about Meal Planning, Even When You Hate It. Add a few alternates and snacks in there too. Do you usually go out for ice cream Saturday night? Plan make at home sundae night instead.

So now that food is covered, what else are we going to be doing except eating? You have to think of some stuff to do to keep away the not-so-emergency Target runs that end up being a two hour aisle-wander with a full cart. For me, the kids are out of school now, so to keep them from catching cabin fever, I have to have something planned.
Luckily, my mom has a pool. Which is awesome, but kind of a pain since I usually end up chasing Ben around the perimeter for a few hundred laps, sweating on the hot concrete.
Everyday I plan something. Kids love novelty, but it doesn’t even have to be as much as a pool day. We can eat lunch outside one day, or visit the playground near the house, or visit the library. Sometimes I DVR a kids movie earlier in the week and we pop some popcorn one night and have a movie night. Tuesdays I deliver for Meals on Wheels and the kids (especially Abby) think we’re just going to visit their (elderly) friends.
If you have a friend who consistently invites you on fun days out to expensive parks and activities, make a preemptive strike and invite them over for a nature hike, Slip N’ Slide party or a move night.
If you crave more than playgrounds and playdates, Google free fun in your area. during the summer, a lot of museums, historical places and some smaller zoos offer one day of free admission. In Massachusetts, its sponsored by the Highland Street Foundation and you can read more about it here.

The last thing I suggest for a successful week of not spending is to remove temptations. Fill your gas tank and then take all of your credit and debit cards out of your wallet. This way, after you’ve recovered from the panic of leaving the house penniless, you won’t accidentally find yourself in the line of Dunkin’ Donuts, or ordering out Tai food at work as your carefully packed lunch sits in the break room fridge.
Go through your email and mark all of those promotional messages as spam. Groupon, Amazon, Wayfair, even my beloved Etsy can go to the junk folder. If you’re not buying anything, don’t even look at it. I also deleted all the corresponding apps, and went into my phones browser and close all the shopping tabs I keep open (because I always have 1,000 open tabs).

Stay tuned for tomorrow as I break down how we put our plan in motion for day 1!

Behind the Scenes

Recently I finished paying off one of my remaining two (at the time) student loans. I wanted to celebrate in a big way, so I brought my debt payoff chart out to the backyard and burnt it in the fire pit. The video brought me the most comments on Instagram and the most daily views of this blog of anything else I’ve posted so far.

The day you finally get to burn those loan documents or that mortgage is a HUGE day and I’m so grateful for everyone’s words of encouragement and congratulations. But I do want to remind people who may be struggling, or just starting out on their debt free journey, that the one big day is the result of. So. Many. Small days. So many small choices. There were so many little things going on behind the scenes of that video that were the reasons I was able to pay off $3,200 in 30 days.

So this post is all about “behind the scenes,” so show that it’s not all sunshine and bonfires and precipitously dropping loan balances over here. When I was new at this whole debt paying thing, it was nice to think about getting that “Paid in Full” letter, but like.. what do you actually DO to get there? This is what we DO.

We don’t have huge incomes, we didn’t hit PowerBall, no one died and left us an inheritance. And none of those things have to happen for you either. What we do have to have is determination, a goal, and patience.

Get on the Same Page, Make Goals, and Make a Budget. Everyone in the house that has the power to spend money has to be on the same page with saving it. Jeff knows my game plan: pay off my loans from smallest to biggest, then tackle his smallest to largest. He supports me, me encourages me. Every month when he finishes paying the bills, he lets me know “Babe, we have $xyz left over in the joint account, how much do you want me to send you for your loans?” Or “I got my tuition reimbursement” or travel expenses approved or whatever it may be. We review our budget frequently and make adjustments as we go along (read how we made our budget here). It just wouldn’t work if one of us was pinching pennies and the other one was buying a new iPhone or trinkets and trifles off of Amazon.

Just… No.  The most effective tool we use to reach our goals is just saying no. No I don’t want to go out to eat, no we can’t buy that new toy, no we don’t need a new car. We won’t go on vacation this year, or to Great Wolf Lodge or Davis Farmland or Six Flags. We absolutely will not be at Disney World or on a tropical get away. My kids don’t have a trove of brand new clothes and a hundred pairs of shoes every season and nor do we. We won’t be doing swim lessons and soccer and tee ball and dance class and karate.

Find Free Fun. All these No’s seem like a life sentence of boo-riiinnggggg, but we have plenty of fun. During the summer we use Jeff’s veteran status to go to Blue Star Museums free of charge. The Highland Street Foundation in our state sponsors Free Fun Fridays, where local zoos and parks have one day that is free of admission. We also play outside, set up the kiddie pool and have a “pool day,” go to local playgrounds, have movie nights, set up play dates, visit the lake in town if its not too busy, or do art projects. I might plan a cupcake decorating day or a make your own sundae night and include the supplies into the grocery budget. Kids have fun wherever they are. You don’t need to whip out the plastic to enchant their youth.

Priority 1: Food. I plan the meals and the grocery list for two weeks and buy our groceries from the discount grocery store Aldi (read my other posts about grocery stores here). Actually, edit that: I TRY to. Food (also include here personal care items and household supplies) is the thing that changes the fastest and is the easiest to either reign in or to go completely out of control.
In summary of my other posts, my perfect plan is to 1.) plan out all three meals and snacks and school lunches and all supplies for two weeks, 2.) make the shopping list from that plan, 3.) search for online deals or coupons to get this cost down as much as possible, 4.) try to get as much as I can from Aldi or generic and clearance items at Walmart, 5.) stick with the plan over the two weeks using my meal plan and keeping that actual piece of paper handy to remember what the plan is.
If everything goes perfectly, we don’t get any take out or fast food items.

Utilities and stuff. The idea is pretty easy, the less you have to pay in bills, the less of your income goes to utility companies, the more you have left over to service your debt. We keep the heat at 62 in the winter. We have window unit AC’s that are only on during heat waves and are only on as cool as 70. Some days I feel like all I do is follow people in and out of rooms and turn off light switches. And sinks. Some of this stuff I’ve written before in Little Things.
The best thing we’ve ever done for our monthly bottom line is cancel our cell plans. Yup. We don’t have cell phones. Weird, right? Except it saves hundreds of dollars a month. When I tell people this they get this terrified look in their eyes. “What do you mean you don’t have a cellphone??” Recently I asked the receptionist at my optometrist’s office if I could use the phone. “Um… for what purpose?” she asked.
I still have my iPhone and I use it on wifi. Exactly zero of our dollars go to Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or whatever. At one point I loved my phone. I had totally fallen into the consumerist trap. They told me I NEEDED it and I believed them. It was hard giving it up but I’m so happy I did. And now I fell like I could live the rest of my life without the latest gadget.
Not long ago I was at a party and heard someone totally freaking out about the new phone they had just gotten. Like completely 100% FREAKING out about how amazing it is. It was clear this person wanted everyone to jump right on board and tell her how they have no idea she survived without it for so long. I couldn’t help but feel sad for her. The phone is over $800, or about the same as a month of rent.

Do it (all) Yourself. We don’t have a staff over here. Theres no housekeeper “helping me out” one day per week. There’s no baby sitter so we can go out on a date night. There aren’t any personal training sessions. There’s no hair stylist, no waxer no manicurist. If the kids were old enough for sports, there wouldn’t be any private coaches or trainers multiple times per week. If something in the house needs fixing, we fix it and if we don’t know how, we learn. If a button falls off or a new shirt (or even an old shirt) gets a tear, I fix it. Am I a pioneer woman? Not even close.
A while ago I read an article written by someone recounting how their grandparents lived on basically nothing. Part of it spoke about repairing things as soon as they were broke, not tossing them in a junk drawer to be forgotten, and keeping things in clean working order. These efforts reduce your want for things and keep you on budget. I tried to find it but I can’t remember the name. The tone of it was really simple and inspirational.
A huge part of us staying on track with debt repayment has been learning how to do basic things ourselves. Jeff learned how to do all of our basic home repairs, and some big remodeling projects. He also changes our oil right in the driveway which has saved us consistently. I’ve developed a basic understanding of hand and machine sewing. I can reattach a button, repair a small hole, add a hem. I even made Sam a pair of sweatpants out of green fleece when I refused to pay rush shipping for a Halloween costume. Instead of throwing that buttonless shirt in the donate bin and buying a new one, or doubling the price of the pants by rushing them to the house, we keep everything “in-house.” You can do it too, I promise. Check out YouTube for how to and beginner videos. Be resourceful. And have a little faith.

There are so many things I could write about here. Family finance in a culture of consumerism is a complex animal. Spending without regard to our income is part of our norm now. Friends and relatives will look at you like you’re crazy for being on this journey, and spending for the fun of it is part of our fabric. When we first started it took a lot for me to be able to examine each area of our spending and deem it necessary or extravagant. It’s ok. Good things take time. As does scrapping everything you know about managing money and starting fresh. These points are a good start, and I’ll keep writing. From behind the scenes.

Mid Year Update

So somehow 2017 is half over. Lets look back on the goals we set on New Years and see if we’re on track so far.

1. Don’t Take on Any New Debts: Check! So far we’ve only reduced our debt and not taken any new debts on, even despite an unforeseen $800 medical bill.
2. Recommit to Mint: Meh. This one is about 50:50 so far. I definitely started out the year with more excitement about Mint, and its kind of tapered off since then. Taking this mid year review to reinvigorate!
3. Pay Off the Van: Check! And a big Wooooooo!!!!!!! We now have NO car payments and both of our cars are totally paid for. I’m not sure if we’ve ever done this as a couple, and it feels so good. Now that $191/ month is going back into the home renovation account that we dipped into to make this happen since there have been huge delays in getting our boiler replaced. After that, it’ll go into the debt snowball towards my remaining student loans.
4. Student Loans: At the beginning of the year my goal was to get my total student debt under $10,000, which I’ve done so check!! I hate my student loans so much; I have such a bitterness towards them. Especially after I looked back over my transaction history and saw that when I initially started paying them off in 2010, almost my entire payment was going to just interest. Seriously like $113 of a $140 payment. Just interest. Just for the sole privilege of having a loan. If you follow me on Instagram you know that I’ve paid off Mohela completely and my total student debt is now at $7,915.
5. Remodel the Bathroom: Nope. I can’t. Believe. How long its taking to get this boiler replaced. We seriously started this process in the fall. Almost zero progress has been made so far. We needed to pour a concrete slab in the basement to put the thing on, then we have to have someone upgrade the electrical panel, and then the guy will come out and do it. Not to mention the weather had to be above 50* for a certain number of days so the concrete will cure. The slab is now poured and set, which is something, but we’re still waiting for an electrician. So I guess we’ll sit on this one for a while. Which makes me crazy because the plumber didn’t even give us a rough estimate, so we don’t have a good idea how much money we need to keep on hand to pay for this. We had budgeted and saved $10,000, but when we told him that he laughed and said “no way, not that much.” So now I feel like we have some extra money hanging around that we could be using for something else. So the whole bathroom project is probably going to be pushed to next year, since literally nothing can happen until the old heating system is out and the old chimney is removed.  Sigh.

 

So I feel confident about where we’re at for the halfway point this year. The only thing we’re stalling out in is the bathroom project, and that has a lot of moving parts that aren’t just financial. I can’t wait to see where the next 6 months takes us.