It was my birthday last week. When we made the budget for April, we decided not to budget any money for my birthday. Right now, it's more important to me to get out of debt than for JD to buy me something that I don't really need. We planned on staying home and just spending time as a family. An unnamed benefactor ended up giving JD some cash and telling him to take me out to dinner for my birthday, so we ended up going out after all. Dolly watched the little people, and JD and I went out to a local restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
I received some birthday money from my in-laws and grandfather that will be going towards getting our kitchen/dining/living area painted. You know you're a grown-up when all you want for your birthday is paint.
With 4 days to go in April, we've spent most of our allocated money for the month. A couple of things went over the amount we had budgeted, but they were things out of our control like car repairs and fuel bills. We did well in every other area. JD worked many more hours in the past two weeks than the100 that we budgeted for, so we were able to put the "extra" into the property tax fund and also pay several bills that are due in May early which will enable us to put some of June's bills into May's budget and keep us ahead of the game.
After watching the FPU lesson on insurance, we realize that we need to make some changes as far as our insurance goes, so we'll be working on that in the next couple of weeks.
Showing posts with label FPU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FPU. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
FPU Update- The Budget
The budget is going okay, but not perfectly.
We somehow forgot to include our HELOC (home equity line of credit) payment in the budget. The HELOC was used to build our garage and nothing else, so technically it's our garage loan. It would be nice if the garage was part of our mortgage, but since it isn't, we'll have it paid of a lot sooner. We won't forget to include it next month!
I had to get a new inhaler which we didn't budget for.
One of our dogs may have to go to the vet as there is something going with one of his paws.
Our fuel bill was more than we expected.
I broke a coil spring in my car, and now they both need to be replaced. The springs can only come from Toyota, so we're expecting a hefty repair bill. Again, "car repair" was not in the budget.
All of the above items can be budgeted for, but you have to be expecting a certain income in order to fit them in. We couldn't fit them in this month.
On the bright side, we were able to sell a few things that should cover any costs that we didn't budget for, and JD's first bi-weekly check of the month was more than we had included in the budget. (Because his checks have a huge range, we based our budget at the lower end of the range.)
I'm still trying to get the hang of using the envelopes. I've had to "borrow" from an envelope and then remember which envelope "owed" which. It gets tricky. Also, for groceries I buy gift cards from school that give a percentage back to the school and help out our tuition a little bit. I bought too large of a gift card for the grocery store for this month and didn't leave myself enough cash for using everywhere else that I get food/milk.
We had a lot going on last week, and JD worked late a couple of nights, so we haven't watched the next FPU lesson. That will be on the schedule for this week as they definitely help keep us motivated!
We somehow forgot to include our HELOC (home equity line of credit) payment in the budget. The HELOC was used to build our garage and nothing else, so technically it's our garage loan. It would be nice if the garage was part of our mortgage, but since it isn't, we'll have it paid of a lot sooner. We won't forget to include it next month!
I had to get a new inhaler which we didn't budget for.
One of our dogs may have to go to the vet as there is something going with one of his paws.
Our fuel bill was more than we expected.
I broke a coil spring in my car, and now they both need to be replaced. The springs can only come from Toyota, so we're expecting a hefty repair bill. Again, "car repair" was not in the budget.
All of the above items can be budgeted for, but you have to be expecting a certain income in order to fit them in. We couldn't fit them in this month.
On the bright side, we were able to sell a few things that should cover any costs that we didn't budget for, and JD's first bi-weekly check of the month was more than we had included in the budget. (Because his checks have a huge range, we based our budget at the lower end of the range.)
I'm still trying to get the hang of using the envelopes. I've had to "borrow" from an envelope and then remember which envelope "owed" which. It gets tricky. Also, for groceries I buy gift cards from school that give a percentage back to the school and help out our tuition a little bit. I bought too large of a gift card for the grocery store for this month and didn't leave myself enough cash for using everywhere else that I get food/milk.
We had a lot going on last week, and JD worked late a couple of nights, so we haven't watched the next FPU lesson. That will be on the schedule for this week as they definitely help keep us motivated!
Monday, April 2, 2012
FPU Update #4
BANK ACCOUNTS- I forgot to mention in my last update that I had opened up a new savings account specifically for our Emergency Fund. I also opened a savings account for Quin. The big kids have had theirs for several years, and I was a little behind on getting him one. I've kept pretty good track of how much we "owe" him (birthday and Christmas checks from grandparents and great-grandparents) and will be transferring that into his account. Our hope is that the kids will have enough money in their savings to buy a decent vehicle for cash when they are 16.
CREDIT CARDS- I've called and cancelled most of our credit cards. We had two main cards and a bunch of store credit cards. The only store cards I ever used were Kohls and Gap and that was because I liked the perks and coupons that I received. At this time, we are planning on keeping one credit card until we're comfortable with the idea of not having one. I know that the idea is to have no credit cards and no credit score, and we don't plan on taking out any other loans and already have a mortgage, so having no credit score shouldn't be a problem. I have heard stories of people having a hard time renting cars and hotel rooms without a credit card though, so we're holding onto one until we experience renting easily without. We got our statement for our second credit card. Again, we didn't have the $0 balance I was expecting. Instead, we had a negative balance! I returned a swimsuit back in February and the return was just credited to the March statement, so now I have to use the card somewhere and have exactly $17.59 put onto it in order to not lose the money.
SELLING STUFF- We're still working on selling "stuff" that we don't need. A few things are pending sale and we're hoping to hear back about a biggish sale today. I'm usually a bit of a pack-rat, but the purging feels surprisingly good. Ryley and Quin's outgrown clothing is now going out the door as soon as they don't wear it anymore. I'm holding onto most of Zeke's stuff for Quin, and by next year, I'll be at a point where I won't need to buy very much in the way of clothing for the little guy. Our adult clothing goes to a local consignment shop that supports the school that I work at. The kids clothing either goes there or to a resale shop that pays on the spot and offers a higher percentage if you take store credit. Either way, we get a little bit back from our old clothes. Sometimes I deal with trying to sell things on eBay, but I am finding that I don't have a ton of extra time for that right now.
THE BUDGET- We sat down again with our planned budget for April and adjusted a few numbers. We assigned certain categories to envelopes and put the budgeted amount of cash into them. I'm not expecting things to work out perfectly this month as it's our first shot, but the sale of "stuff" will hopefully make up for anything that we didn't think to budget for (like dog licenses). A friend who has gone through FPU gave us an Excel budget template that was designed specifically for a zero balance budget, and using it made creating a budget a lot less work as the calculations were all done for us.
CREDIT CARDS- I've called and cancelled most of our credit cards. We had two main cards and a bunch of store credit cards. The only store cards I ever used were Kohls and Gap and that was because I liked the perks and coupons that I received. At this time, we are planning on keeping one credit card until we're comfortable with the idea of not having one. I know that the idea is to have no credit cards and no credit score, and we don't plan on taking out any other loans and already have a mortgage, so having no credit score shouldn't be a problem. I have heard stories of people having a hard time renting cars and hotel rooms without a credit card though, so we're holding onto one until we experience renting easily without. We got our statement for our second credit card. Again, we didn't have the $0 balance I was expecting. Instead, we had a negative balance! I returned a swimsuit back in February and the return was just credited to the March statement, so now I have to use the card somewhere and have exactly $17.59 put onto it in order to not lose the money.
SELLING STUFF- We're still working on selling "stuff" that we don't need. A few things are pending sale and we're hoping to hear back about a biggish sale today. I'm usually a bit of a pack-rat, but the purging feels surprisingly good. Ryley and Quin's outgrown clothing is now going out the door as soon as they don't wear it anymore. I'm holding onto most of Zeke's stuff for Quin, and by next year, I'll be at a point where I won't need to buy very much in the way of clothing for the little guy. Our adult clothing goes to a local consignment shop that supports the school that I work at. The kids clothing either goes there or to a resale shop that pays on the spot and offers a higher percentage if you take store credit. Either way, we get a little bit back from our old clothes. Sometimes I deal with trying to sell things on eBay, but I am finding that I don't have a ton of extra time for that right now.
THE BUDGET- We sat down again with our planned budget for April and adjusted a few numbers. We assigned certain categories to envelopes and put the budgeted amount of cash into them. I'm not expecting things to work out perfectly this month as it's our first shot, but the sale of "stuff" will hopefully make up for anything that we didn't think to budget for (like dog licenses). A friend who has gone through FPU gave us an Excel budget template that was designed specifically for a zero balance budget, and using it made creating a budget a lot less work as the calculations were all done for us.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
FPU Update #3
Almost daily, I go to Dave Ramsey's facebook page, click on "everyone" or "all" (so that I see everyone's comments and not just those working for Dave), and read the comments left by people. It keeps me motivated. Reading about what a difference FPU has made in the lives of strangers boosts my confidence in the program. I haven't yet listened to the radio show and probably won't until we have watched all of the lessons on DVD.
In an effort to being more organized relative to money and bills, I have been trying to check our bank accounts online and balance the checkbook daily. It only takes about 5 minutes and will save me time in the long run. The kids and I worked on cleaning out the office and I focused on organizing the desk. All incoming bills now have a little bin rather than just being tossed on the desk.
We're still trying to sell different things that we don't really need. An extra patio set, a canoe, an air hockey table, etc. There are a few things that we can't decide if we should try to sell or not.
Last night, JD and I watched the 5th FPU lesson, Credit Sharks in Suits. It was very timely as I received an email from Bank of America with my newest statement as soon as we finished watching the lesson. I was excited to look and see a balance due of $0.00. We hadn't used it in about 6 weeks and had paid the balance in full earlier this month. I was confused when I saw a balance of $15.90. There weren't any new purchases, and we realize it was categorized as an interest charge. We had paid the balance due in full, so we weren't sure why there would be an interest charge. We called Bank of America and were surprised to get a real live person at about 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. When I asked about the charge, the gal was extremely pleasant and immediately said she'd reverse the charge due to there being no new purchases, and she then went on to explain why the charge was there. Since some of the previous month's charges were from a prior month, interest was still being added daily until payment was received. I'm still a little confused as to how you can pay a balance off in full and still get charged, but I didn't question it since she did reverse it. At the same time, we asked her to cancel the card. Yay!
Next, we printed out free credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com. Federal law requires the three main credit reporting companies to provide a free credit report each year. We each printed one out (you can get one every 4 months by choosing a different company each time) and looked through them. We marked off all the things we needed to cancel, mostly store credit cards like Sears, Kohls, etc. We are going to keep one credit card for now, but we have no plans to use it.
I will be calling to cancel all of the other cards this week; some are accounts with stores that I don't even shop at and have no idea what happened to the card (Pacific Sunwear?). We'll also be looking at our budget plan for April and figuring out how to do the whole envelope system thing. JD and I were talking to friends about FPU and I like how he described it to them as a challenge, something we're out to prove we can do. Stay tuned.
In an effort to being more organized relative to money and bills, I have been trying to check our bank accounts online and balance the checkbook daily. It only takes about 5 minutes and will save me time in the long run. The kids and I worked on cleaning out the office and I focused on organizing the desk. All incoming bills now have a little bin rather than just being tossed on the desk.
We're still trying to sell different things that we don't really need. An extra patio set, a canoe, an air hockey table, etc. There are a few things that we can't decide if we should try to sell or not.
Last night, JD and I watched the 5th FPU lesson, Credit Sharks in Suits. It was very timely as I received an email from Bank of America with my newest statement as soon as we finished watching the lesson. I was excited to look and see a balance due of $0.00. We hadn't used it in about 6 weeks and had paid the balance in full earlier this month. I was confused when I saw a balance of $15.90. There weren't any new purchases, and we realize it was categorized as an interest charge. We had paid the balance due in full, so we weren't sure why there would be an interest charge. We called Bank of America and were surprised to get a real live person at about 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. When I asked about the charge, the gal was extremely pleasant and immediately said she'd reverse the charge due to there being no new purchases, and she then went on to explain why the charge was there. Since some of the previous month's charges were from a prior month, interest was still being added daily until payment was received. I'm still a little confused as to how you can pay a balance off in full and still get charged, but I didn't question it since she did reverse it. At the same time, we asked her to cancel the card. Yay!
Next, we printed out free credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com. Federal law requires the three main credit reporting companies to provide a free credit report each year. We each printed one out (you can get one every 4 months by choosing a different company each time) and looked through them. We marked off all the things we needed to cancel, mostly store credit cards like Sears, Kohls, etc. We are going to keep one credit card for now, but we have no plans to use it.
I will be calling to cancel all of the other cards this week; some are accounts with stores that I don't even shop at and have no idea what happened to the card (Pacific Sunwear?). We'll also be looking at our budget plan for April and figuring out how to do the whole envelope system thing. JD and I were talking to friends about FPU and I like how he described it to them as a challenge, something we're out to prove we can do. Stay tuned.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
FPU Update #2
We managed to make a zero balance budget for April. The idea is that you designate where each dollar will go as soon as you get it. This is a little tricky if you have an irregular paycheck like JD does. There is a pretty big difference between working 50 and 80 hours a week, so we have to guess at how much he'll be getting in each check. We decided to base our budget on 50 hours, and anything "extra" will go towards property taxes until we have that amount stockpiled. The budget thing is tricky because we keep thinking of extra things that we forgot to account for (like Ryleys piano lessons). Also, our school auction is in April, and we like to support that by bidding on some things, so now we need to decide on a dollar amount that we can't go over. I'm pretty sure that things won't be perfect the first month, but I'm expecting that we'll be pretty close to our target amounts in most areas.
We watched the 4th lesson, Dumping Debt, the other night. It took a little work though because our DVD player decided not to work and the disc was stuck inside. JD had to take the DVD player apart to get the disc out. A new DVD player is not in the budget, so we'll be watching the rest on our computer.
We have completed Baby Step #1 which is to have $1000 put away in an Emergency Fund. The Emergency Fund is not to be touched unless it absolutely needs to be.
Baby Step #2 is paying off all debt except the mortgage. This will take us awhile. Right now we have a car loan, a personal loan, and a HELOC (home equity line of credit). We're going to be doing something called a Debt Snowball. The Debt Snowball works by putting all of your debts in ascending order by total due (not by interest rates). We're going to include Reagen's braces in our D.S. because, although it's not technically a loan, we are going to have payments for another 9 months. The braces are at the top of our list, followed by the personal loan, the car loan, and the HELOC (we used this to build our garage, so sadly the garage isn't part of our mortgage). We'll be making the normal payments on everything, and if we have extra money, it will go toward paying the braces off earlier (the extra payments won't start unless we have stockpiled all of our property tax money). When the braces are paid off, the $115 payment will not disappear; instead it will be added to the personal loan to pay that off sooner. It won't make much of a difference because the personal loan payments will be done a month or so later anyway. Next will be the car loan. The amounts for both the braces and the personal loan will be put towards the principal of the car loan, and if we did our math correctly, it will reduce the time paying off the car by about 12 months. We will then put the monthly amounts that we were paying for the braces, personal loan, AND car all towards paying off the HELOC which will take a few more years. We understand that things will probably come up that cause us to pause the Debt Snowball from time to time, but here's hoping they don't!
We watched the 4th lesson, Dumping Debt, the other night. It took a little work though because our DVD player decided not to work and the disc was stuck inside. JD had to take the DVD player apart to get the disc out. A new DVD player is not in the budget, so we'll be watching the rest on our computer.
We have completed Baby Step #1 which is to have $1000 put away in an Emergency Fund. The Emergency Fund is not to be touched unless it absolutely needs to be.
Baby Step #2 is paying off all debt except the mortgage. This will take us awhile. Right now we have a car loan, a personal loan, and a HELOC (home equity line of credit). We're going to be doing something called a Debt Snowball. The Debt Snowball works by putting all of your debts in ascending order by total due (not by interest rates). We're going to include Reagen's braces in our D.S. because, although it's not technically a loan, we are going to have payments for another 9 months. The braces are at the top of our list, followed by the personal loan, the car loan, and the HELOC (we used this to build our garage, so sadly the garage isn't part of our mortgage). We'll be making the normal payments on everything, and if we have extra money, it will go toward paying the braces off earlier (the extra payments won't start unless we have stockpiled all of our property tax money). When the braces are paid off, the $115 payment will not disappear; instead it will be added to the personal loan to pay that off sooner. It won't make much of a difference because the personal loan payments will be done a month or so later anyway. Next will be the car loan. The amounts for both the braces and the personal loan will be put towards the principal of the car loan, and if we did our math correctly, it will reduce the time paying off the car by about 12 months. We will then put the monthly amounts that we were paying for the braces, personal loan, AND car all towards paying off the HELOC which will take a few more years. We understand that things will probably come up that cause us to pause the Debt Snowball from time to time, but here's hoping they don't!
Saturday, March 10, 2012
FPU Update #1
JD and I both finished reading Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey. We're both on board with most of his ideas for paying things off and saving money for the future. I'll be updating on how we're doing with the plan. If you aren't interested in our experience with achieving "Financial Peace," skip the FPU Updates!
- We've watched the first three DVD lessons of Financial Peace University.
- We're watching our spending in every area. Meal planning has helped with the grocery budget.
- We're going to make our first ever detailed zero budget this weekend for the month of April.
- We're selling stuff that we don't need! I just sold a pack-n-play for $80 that I bought used before Quin was born, and I bought a smaller used one that will meet our needs for $15.
- We're planning for next year. JD has a pretty good stack of wood drying in our lean-to for next winter. Hopefully we won't have to buy wood!
- We have completely stopped using credit cards, but have not closed the accounts yet.
I love this picture because:
A-I can't imagine JD dressed like this
B-I can't imagine him jumping for joy
C-I CAN imagine the thrill of being debt free!
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