budget

Make 2016 the Year you Become Debt Free

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So one of my goals for 2016 is to become debt free.  I’ve been using the Dave Ramsey’s method of paying down debt for a while now, and let me tell you, when you stick to it, it works.  I faltered a little during the end of November and December, but I’m back on the wagon for January.  I made out my budget and so far I’m sticking to it.

It’s not always easy to stick to a budget, but let me tell you, when you set a budget and tell your money where to go instead of blindly hoping your money will go where it’s supposed to go your debt does go down.

So my challenge for you for 2016, if you want to take control of your finances this year go out and pick up a copy of The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and start following The 7 Baby Steps.  The first two steps can help you on the right path.

Step 1: Save $1000.  This is so important.  Life happens, unexpected things happen.  Cars break down, kids get sick.  This baby emergency fund will help get you through rough times without going further into debt.

Step 2: List your debts smallest to largest and pay off the smallest first.  When you see a debt disappear it gives you hope and encouragement to keep moving forward and keep paying down your debts.

Starting with even these first two steps can make a world of difference in your life, so I challenge you.  Make a change.

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Not Keeping Up with the Jonses’- Living Paycheck to Paycheck

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Approximately 1 out of every 3 households in the US with a household income above $75,000 per year live paycheck to paycheck1.  3 in 5 Americans don’t have enough emergency money saved to cover unexpected expenses. 2

Let those numbers sink in for a minute. Now think about your friends and family. How many people do you know that are living paycheck to paycheck or who are bordering on the brink of disaster?  How many names come to mind?  Now, of those names, do you know if any of these people live on a budget?  Now think about a few names of people who you know (or think you know because you’d be surprised) who don’t seem to stress about money.  Do you know if they live on a budget?

I had a conversation with a friend a few months back during a wine date night and she made a comment about how relaxed I seemed.  She said it was more relaxed than she’d seen me in years.  I told her it was because we started using Dave Ramsey’s system to get out of debt. Our debt is steadily going down and  each month I procure a budget telling our money where to go (instead of wondering where it went) and the end result is that I feel much more relaxed in so many areas of my life.

I have a coworker who is on the brink of disaster with his finances.  I listen to him talk about struggling with expenses and then I listen to him plan a ski trip and inside I cringe.  I’ve casually thrown around Dave Ramsy’s name and the words budgeting, but the reception I receive is limited.  He is both of the statistics listed and I am sad for him.  I cannot make him change, only he can do that.

I do not want to be the statistics listed above.  I don’t want to be chained down by debt, so I am taking steps to try to remedy my situation, and after a long while the light is at the end of the tunnel, a faint glimmering light of hope.  I’ve had to make changes and sacrifices.  I’ve had to tell myself NO.  I’ve had to tell other people NO.  Living on a budget is no easy task, and sometimes I do fall off the wagon and make a splurge I know I shouldn’t.  But I pick myself back up and get back to it.  I know I can do it.  I can get to debt free.  I’m 2/3rds of the way there, just a bit of a stretch left to go.  You can do it too.  The hardest part is starting, so I am here to encourage you to START.  Don’t be one of the statistics listed above.  Change your life!  Take control of your money!

1 Marte, Jonelle. One-Third of Households Making More than 75,000 Live Paycheck to Paycheck. The Washington Post. 16 April 2015.
2Morath, Eric. Most Americans Don’t Have Savings to Pay Unexpected Bills” Wall Street Journal. 7 Jan 2015.

And so it begins. . .

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crafting

I have collected the supplies for the child’s Halloween costume endeavour.  As per my usual ways I have looked at a million pictures, pinned and printed ideas and bought what I think I need. I will probably not follow a single pattern I have printed (except for ears that I already cut out except they weren’t even a pattern but a cutout of a picture. . .) I will end up hand sewing most of it because my sewing machine and I have an on again off again relationship (aka I am scared of the sewing machine) and it will not look anything like I hoped. . . A few times the thoughts have flown through my head “What the eff are you doing?” and I tell those thoughts, “Back off, I am making my child a costume.  I can and will do it and he will be adorable, also I’m crafting and crafting makes me happy.”

Wish me luck. . .

Not Keeping up with the Joneses- Fashion on a Budget

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My husband informed me a few months back that I needed some new clothes.  I absolutely dread clothes shopping and since we’ve been on the Dave Ramsey’s baby step’s plan I have had an excuse not to go clothes shopping.  Part of being on the paying down debt plan is training myself that if I can’t buy it at the grocery store (or the hardware store).  I probably don’t need it and for the past year (unless it’s been socks, underwear or something for an ever growing toddler) I haven’t felt as if I needed it.

My husband felt otherwise.  He felt some of my clothes were getting a little worn, and since I recently got a fairly large bonus at work he asked me to set aside some of the money and buy some new clothes.  So then the question becomes how do you look fashionable on a budget?  Even though I don’t like clothes shopping I tend to have expensive taste when I do go shopping.  I love the Gap, Express, Ann Taylor, Anthropologie, Banana Republic, Kenneth Cole, etc.  It’s been years since I’ve actually been into one of those stores, but I do remember the last time I bought jeans from Express (over five years ago) it was over $50 per pair.  Today, I cannot fathom spending $50 one ONE pair of jeans.  These days my thought process is more like, can I get this for $20 or less?

The truth is, you CAN get a nice pair of jeans with the fancy label for less than $20 a pair, you just have to be willing to put forth a little more effort than you might by just running into your favorite retail store.  There are many resale shops out there. You just have to find a few that meet your needs.

Style Encore is where I headed to physically try on some jeans.  Jeans tend to be the one thing I HAVE to put on my body to make sure they will fit.   Style Encore is a resale shop that sells gently used clothes with designer labels.   You would be amazed at the items you can find that look like they’ve never been worn.  It takes a little longer to leaf through the clothing in your size to maybe find what you’re looking for, and they aren’t always going to have what you are looking for but the price you pay is definitely a bargain compared to full retail price (even with sales and “bonus bucks”).  I will also throw in that I have scored some great deals at GoodWill.  When I was pregnant I got a load of maternity clothes for about $80 and I found a $20 bill in one of the pants pockets of the items I bought.

Thredup is my favorite online resale shop.  Since I hate shopping in stores I love that I can head to Thredup’s website, sort and filter what I’m looking for by size, color and type of clothes and it gives me pages of items to look at.  This is better than shopping at one particular store because there are so many different brands and styles.  If you’re hunting for  a long sleeve black sweater or a short sleeved purple top you don’t have to go to 8 different stores to find exactly what you are looking for.  I have found shipping to be fairly quick and returns to be fast and easy if you pick something that doesn’t end up agreeing with you.  Everything I have gotten has been in great condition and they always have several items listed that are new with tags for great prices.

Most online and retail resale shops also buy clothes so if you have anything in your closet you were putting in the Goodwill pile, check the labels first. You can bring these items to Style Encore or send them to Thredup for a tiny bit of cash or store credit.  It isn’t ever much, but it’s more than you would get from Goodwill which can further cut your final bill.

Red TopPantsBlue Top

Not Keeping up with the Jonses- Making the Halfway Mark in your Debt Snowball

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I am more than thrilled.  12 months into starting Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps’ Plan my husband and I are more than halfway through our debt snowball. What does that mean exactly?  It means that we have paid off more than half of the total amount of debt we started off with as of July 2014.

What is a debt snowball?  A debt snowball according to Dave Ramsey’s baby steps is when you list all of your debts (not including your mortgage) from smallest to largest and start paying them off in that order (regardless of interest rates).  You make minimum payments on all debts except the smallest and you throw all the money you can at that smallest debt.  When you knock out the smallest debt you take the amount you were throwing at that debt add it to the minimum payment you were making on the second smallest debt and work on that one.  You continue to use this method until you have knocked out all your payments.

For more visual learners, it looks something like this. . .

Debt                      Debt Amount                Payment Amount
1. Credit Card 1        $1,000                           $500 plus any extra at the EOM
2. Credit Card 2        $2,500                          $150
3. Student Loan        $5,000                          $180
4. Car Payment         $8,000                          $400

When you pay off debt number 1 after 2 months your revised snowball looks like this. . .
1. Credit Card 2       $2,200                            $650 (500 +150) plus any extra
2. Student Loan       $4700                             $180
3. Car Payment        $7354                             $400

It’s an amazing simple process.  I only wish I had begun it sooner.  Now we just have to keep trudging along.  2 debts left.  I feel so much lighter than I did a year ago.  I feel smarter (for having started this plan).  I feel more in control of my life and I definitely feel more in charge of my finances.   It is possible tp regain your finances, to take back control of your life.  You just have to take the first step.

Not Keeping Up with the Joneses- If you’re Broke, do something about it!

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I’ve recently witness a few situations which leave me a little flabbergasted.

Case Number One: The case of too much house.

We recently had some friends we know move into a bigger house.  It wasn’t unreasonable for them to want to move.  Their family had rapidly expanded and they felt they needed the space to accommodate the expansion of family.  They sold their old house and moved into the new house. It was only when tax time came around that they realized they might be in over their heads.  The housing market in our area right now is booming and most houses have gone up considerably in value.  The rise in home values is great, but it also comes a bigger tax bill.  These friends do not have an emergency fund in place and when they were hit with the increased tax bill discovered that they were drowning in a lack of funds.  Despite this money problems the friends have not seemed to change their lifestyle to accommodate for the problem.   They don’t seem to have cut down on extra curricular activities or outings and they haven’t picked up an extra job that we know about.  They continue mini vacations and shopping sprees, and then vent about how stressed they feel.  I think “trapped” is one of the words that was used.

Case Number Two: We’re financially strapped considering a move and career change.

In one of the groups I’m in a lady posted about moving to Texas from her current location.  She lives in California and would like to be closer to some family.  Her husband has a good job at which he makes $100.000 /year.  She said that between their mortgage, two car payments and medical bills it’s hard to make ends meet, because California is just expensive.  Her husband is older and doesn’t want to move unless he can get a job paying the same amount.  I don’t blame him, in fact I totally agree with him.  What I don’t understand is, if you can barely make ends meet how are you going to finance a trip to Texas to check things out?

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that I could have been one of these two people.  It seems like forever ago and yesterday that I felt like I was drowning in debt and would never live life without a payment plan.  Let me tell you a secret. . .The truth is you don’t have to be one of these people and if you are one of these people you can change your situation.  My journey started by reading The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey.  I will never forget reading about people who felt “sick and tired of feeling sick and tired”.  This resonated with me.  Thinking about finances and paying bills had been sucking the life out of me and I didn’t want to live that way any longer.  I shared the book with my husband and got us started on our own money make over.

I will warn you, it’s not easy and there are times that we falter and don’t stick exactly to our budget.  There are times when I feel like we don’t make progress with our debt because mayhem happens and we have to cash flow something instead of attaching our debt.  (But even being able to cash flow unexpected things like a $1000+ car repair bill wouldn’t have been possible without this plan). When I look at our progress over the past year (and really we didn’t even hit the plan hard until January) and see that we are almost to the half way mark (meaning half of our debt is GONE!) I get a little fluttery.  I feel so much more relaxed.  I actually enjoy life more knowing that I can and will be debt free soon.  I no longer stress and obsess over money like I did for so many years.  And recently a friend commented on how relaxed I seemed, and I shared what I was doing with her.  I feel blessed and you can too!  You can change your spending habits.  You can make a budget (Dave Ramsey makes it easy with his FREE budgeting tool http://everydollar.com) You can pay down your debt and become debt free.  You just have to take the first step!

Not Keeping up with the Joneses- Cash Flowing the Unexpected. . . again

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I feel like we’ve been taking little money hits left and right lately.  The latest blow came last week when I had to drop my car off to get the A/C repaired.  I live in Texas, it’s summer and I have a toddler, so this was a bullet I was going to have to bite in order to have peaceful and cool summer car rides.  (If it was just me I’d probably sweat it out a week or two, but I have a toddler and there is no way I’m driving around with him in a car in Texas in summer with no A/C.)

I had been putting a little money aside in my budget so we can redo the floors in our house. . . ALL of my floor money PLUS some of our emergency fund was drained from the bank account in order to fix the car A/C.  My heart broke a little as the money disappeared. . .

When I told my husband the A/C in my car was going out he didn’t hesitate when he told me, you need to have that fixed, he wasn’t too upset that the floor money was now car repair money.  His view was that we HAD THE CASH ON HAND to combat this unexpected expense.  Even though the money was originally slated for something else, we were able to use it for a need instead of a want.  The new floors will come with time, they will just have to be postponed until we rebuild our emergency fund, (which is already happening a week later) and are able to set money aside in the “For New Floors Envelope”  And it feels like even though we experienced this little road bump we are still getting encouragement to keep on track with our budget and money plans as a few unexpected cash making opportunities presented themselves during the great A/C debacle.

It never ceases to amaze me how if you work hard (and pray a little or sometimes a lot) that your bumps in the road will be followed by a little bit of smoothness.  It seems like since we’ve started taking control of our finances instead of letting our finances control us better things happen where money is concerned.  (Like when you need money, money makes itself available to you or if you have to use the money you have more comes to replace what was spent.)

To learn more about Building a Budget go to http://www.everydollar.com and then head over to http://www.daveramsey.com to learn about the baby steps and how to take control of your finances.

Menu Planning

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One thing that I have learned is that when you’re on a budget it helps to have your meals planned when you go grocery shopping.  Planning out your meals can seem like a tedious, time consuming waste of time when you first start out, but once you take your first trip to the grocery store buying what is on your list for meals (and anything else planned for snacks or paper/toiletry products) the savings starts to add up.

There are some wonderful websites that can help you with meal planning. There are  subscriptions to meal planning services for small fees.  Or you can just plan your own meals using recipes you already use on a fairly regular basis and than jazz it up by trying a new recipe once a week.  You can plan your meals weekly or monthly.  You can write down your meal plan on a sheet of paper or display it on a whiteboard or chalkboard in the kitchen so the family has in on the action.  Put down what you plan to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and don’t forget to include snacks.  I also like to pick one or two what I call back up meals for in case you forget to take out something to thaw.  I also recommend to pick one night a week where you can eat left overs or designate one day a week as crockpot night because coming home and not having to cook is just plain awesome (and sometimes you just get burned out from cooking all the time, or at least I do.)

Now it’s time to  make your grocery list.  Refer to your recipes if need be so you don’t forget anything.  You will find most spices and some staples (like butter or flour) you already have in the kitchen, so you won’t have to include them on the list, but double check just in case.  After you have the lists taken from the meal plan/recipes, don’t forget to include your toilet paper or toiletries.

Time to grocery shop!  The hard part of grocery shopping is not straying from the list.  Don’t be tempted to buy a bunch of stuff that’s not on your list.  Those impulse buys are the ones that will blow your budget. Go grocery shopping weekly (or in my case bi weekly as I almost always forget one important thing on my list like bread, or butter or toilet paper and sometimes I like to go bi weekly so my veggies are fresher).  Only buy what you need for the meals you’ve planned so you aren’t wasting as much money. I promise, the longer you do this the more it turns into a habit and the easier it becomes.  You will soon have the recipes ingrained in your head or have them so easily accessible you just have to do a quick double check while you’re in the store to make sure you haven’t forgotten everything.

The plus side to menu planning is the hour it took you to plan the meals will really pay off during the week, not just in money savings but it lowers your stress because you already know what you will be cooking for dinner.  Meals don’t have to be elaborate, it just helps if they’re planned out.

Learning to Live on a Budget

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My husband and I are weird.  I mean really weird.  We live in a small 1950′s house that isn’t perfect and requires us to do manual labor on a fairly regular basis.  Our newest addition to our vehicle fleet was a 1990′s Chevy truck and our newest vehicle by age is from 2004.  We don’t do flashy.  We don’t care if our lifestyle impresses our friends and neighbors.  My husband and I try to live within our means, pay off debts from past mistakes (of which there were many) and look forward to a debt free and prosperous future.

This journey isn’t always easy and we stumble and bumble along the way, but we have each other to report to, so we stay in line for the most part.  If we want something we wait until we have the money to buy it.  We sacrifice, a lot, but we’ve already paid off around $10,000 in debt and for the first time in almost 14 years I don’t have to stress about if there will be enough money to make sure all the bills will get paid.  A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders when it comes to finances and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that light is debt free living!

For us this journey started with Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Make Over (http://www.daveramsey.com/store/books/dave-s-bestsellers/the-total-money-makeover/prodtmmoclassic.html).  The book resonated with me so loudly as I read about how people, just like me, “were sick and tired of being sick and tired” when it came to their finances.  I decided to take the plunge and try Dave’s plan.  His babysteps are:

1. Save $1,000 Emergency Fund
2. Pay off all debt using the debt snowball
3. Build a cushion of 3-6 months of expenses
4. Invest 15% of your income into retirement
5. College Funding for the Kiddo’s
6. Pay off that House
7. Live and Give like no one else.

(You can find out more about Dave and his plan here at his website http://www.daveramsey.com/home/?snid=home)

The biggest challenge of Dave’s method is the budget.  It challenges you to make your money work for you instead of it just magically disappearing after each payday, but it works.  If you sit down and write down where you want all your money to go and then follow that plan over the months, your money starts listening.  You don’t have to figure out where it went anymore because it all has a place to go.  For me being a bit of a nerd, writing the budget down is the easy part.  Sticking too it is sometimes a little more challenging.  It took a few months to catch on as sometimes unexpected expenses do arise and when that happens you have to go back to the drawing board and rework all the numbers, but if you stick with making a budget and living off the budget I promise it helps!  Dave has made budgeting even easier with his new budgeting software Every Dollar (http://www.daveramsey.com/everydollar/?ictid=ag43). Check it out, it’s FREE.

Now, I won’t lie and say I follow Dave’s plan perfectly because I don’t always.  I went a little out of order on my debt snowball and my emergency fund might be a little bigger than $1,000 but in my case we have expenses that come up quarterly or yearly so those expenses have beefed up our emergency fund so that we have them when the payments come due.  I’ve also learned how to work a little magic with money since starting Dave’s program, so often the money earmarked for the quarterly expenses can stay in the savings account and I can wiggle the expense out of the monthly budget.  This plan really has changed my life.  Stress has decreased drastically and my husband and I fight less about money because we have a common goal we are working towards. Communication is key!  So I present this challenge, if you were like me and are “sick and tired of being sick and tired” when it comes to your finances, give it a try.  It can’t hurt any worse than what you’ve already done…

Peace and Blessings!