I am determined to meal plan this pay period. My food costs have just been ridiculous lately! So, I made a shopping list with approximate costs from each store and added a date to shop. Hoping this will make a difference in my pocket, but also my mind! I get really tense when I grocery shop and I worry about every little thing I buy, wondering if I actually need it or how I will actually incorporate it into my meals for the week. Now I have a real plan. I always try but I am never this specific! Wish me luck!
Today is the last day of this pay period. THANK GOODNESS! I, once again, didn't do very well this past pay period and am ready for a fresh start. I am choosing not to feel discouraged by two bad pay periods in a row. Instead, I am choosing to learn from my mistakes and move forward. No matter what, my husband and I are doing better than we ever have with our money and I am so proud of us! More than anything, I am proud of him for sticking with it and even outperforming me! I truly admire his willpower. When he sets his mind to something he rarely makes excuses to steer away from his goals. It is awesome! And he finally seems to be getting as excited about this as I am. He mentioned the other day that he would like to take a couple days and spend $500 to take a little mini vacation to Gatlinburg, TN. That is where we got engaged and where we had our honeymoon. We love it there! I was very hesitant at first but then I started thinking about it. I don't want him to feel like he is too deprived and maybe it would make him feel rejuvinated enough to keep going and going on this long journey ahead of us. So, I said we could put whatever money we made from the yard sale we had this past weekend towards it and we could also take the money he is going to be getting from a refund for a medical bill and put that towards it so that it wouldn't delay our progress. And yesterday he said nevermind, that he wanted to put that money towards paying off our debt. A little reverse psychology may have had an effect, I'm not sure, lol! Either way I was pretty impressed by that statement.
So, this next pay period, my goal is to spend 1/2 what I spent on Fast Food this past pay period, so $21ish. Fast food is by far my biggest weakness, along with not meal planning. I go into the grocery store and just immediately get overwhelmed. I always say I am going to make a shopping list, and half the time I don't, but even when I do, I never stick to it. That is my 2nd goal this week. Make a shopping list and have a plan for every meal for at least one of the two weeks in the pay period. below is a graph of my expenses, I am looking forward to seeing a smaller piece of the pie for fast food next pay period. Well, I finally created an Etsy shop. This is something I have wanted to do for way too long, but I always let fear of failure rule over me. I never saw myself opening a shop for personal finance spreadsheets, however. I always dreamt of opening one for digital, printable invitations. I LOVE to design invitations! But, I no longer have access to the software I used to use to create them, so I will have to wait on that once I have some money to purchase it again.
So...I have put together an expense tracker like I use for myself and added some other cool features, such as a pie graph. It is only $2.50 and can be found on my Etsy shop, here. I created this for people who have glanced at my expenses spreadsheet and asked me to share it with them. I hope it is helpful to others. Had this been available to me I easily would have bought this (before I knew what I was doing in Excel). I actually put together a Debt Payment Calculator that is for sale on my Etsy page as well, here. I was very proud to have sold a few of them. Why wouldn't I want to help others and also make a little extra cash on the side to help my family out? No brainer! opefully it has been helpful to those who have purchased as well! So, I threw together a calculator that I could calculate the months it would take me to pay off each and every one of my debts. All of my debts are in separate spreadsheets, and based on my snowball, the amounts I will pay towards my debts will constantly change, so I culdn't find a product out there that would do what I wanted, so I made it myself. You can find this product that I have put together here.
Once I filled that all in, I added a new tab with the above information to calculate based on the data in each separate tab. So, it has been determined that it will take me 46 months to payoff all debt. Fun fact, it will take just 20 months to pay off all credit card debt and a small student loan thrown in! The following 26 months is student loans, a small mortgage, and car loans. These calculations don't include any of our bonuses that we plan to throw at debt or tax refunds, or christmas money we receive as gifts, or money we make from selling stuff. I am darn happy about 46 months. This process has been difficult so far, but it's getting easier. I have been told time and time again that I am not attacking with gazelle intensity, but I am attacking with what I am comfortable with and still making great process that I am proud of! Well, we had a rough 2 weeks. Pretty much everything fell apart. I had a business trip to Chicago so I had to fork out some of the costs up front for that trip and will be reimbursed on my next paycheck. Then, we had car problems. My husband tried to fix the problem himself but it didn't end up working so we had to take it in to the shop. We had to have our driver's side rear brakes replaced (pads, rotors, calipers). None of that makes any sense but that is what the mechanic said. We got an oil change and 2 new tires, as well. I have been airing up my tires every other day for months! I am so relieved to have that taken care of and hopefully we will be good for awhile on car repairs/maintenance. I have only taken 2 trips to the grocery and during one of my trips, I only got one food item (mac n cheese). I am so excited to have some money in my pocket again, as I got paid today and we are starting our next two weeks of allowance. We had a birthday party, celebrating 2 birthdays in our family. We celebrate everyone's birthday in our family, no matter how old you are. So, we usually just buy cards, but lately we have also been adding lottery tickets to the cards just for a little something. I have been finding that I need to buy clothes lately since it is summer and everything I own is winter clothing. But, I have been very frugal! Ross is becoming a go-to place for me. Their clothing is so CHEAP and cute! My husband is a team manager and he acquired a new team of employees. Our tradition is to make goodie bags for the team members to welcome them to the team. So, anything with "Team Bags" as the reason, is referring to those costs. I went way over budget on these but will show you that in a later post. My husband has been getting away with making vending machine purchases with his debit card, claiming he has no small bills. So, that has been kind of annoying, but he only did it twice, and I am hoping he won't continue to make this a habit. Gas for these last 2 weeks was surprisingly low, to the point that I think I must have missed a gas purchase! But, maybe since I was away in Chicago for a couple days that is why...? I am looking forward to staying within budget this next pay period. I have to after this past pay period. YIKES!
We have some upcoming expenses. For the first time I feel prepared for the things I used to consider "surprises" although I knew they were coming. Father's Day is coming soon. In the past I would wait for the last minute and would have had no estimation of what it was going to cost. I would consider this one of those things that snuck up on me although it is in June every year. Our dog is due for a haircut. Another thing we should be budgeting for once every 4-6 months. Our car needs an oil change. It is WAY overdue. Another thing to budget for every 3-4 months. These are all expenses that we could have prepared for if we were paying attention to our money and following Dave's plans. However, we only just began Baby Step #2, so we do not have the money put aside in a "sinking fund" for any of these expenses. And on top of that, we both have had car trouble.
My husband's brakes completely quit on him while driving down the road. He had to use his emergency brake the whole way home. He thought he figured out what he needed to fix it and he bought the part ($61.29). He put it in the car and tried the brakes again. Still didn't work. So, he gave up and took it to our favorite mechanic. He drained the brakes and rotated my husband's terrible tires. The bill came...FREE! He wouldn't take our money. We owed him nothing. It was such a blessing. But, then my car had brake problems as well. I told my husband my brakes have been squeaky for a little while and it just didn't feel right. But, some days nothing seemed wrong, so I kept putting it off. Finally, while away on a business trip (yesterday), my husband drove the car and he heard/felt it for the first time and suggested we take it to the shop. I drove it this morning and it was just awful! The worst sound and feeling ever when stepping on the brake. So, on my lunch break we took the car in. We were also in need of some new tires. It looks like it is going to actually cost us around ($525) to get 2 new tires, a 3rd one plugged, totally repair the brakes/calipers on the drivers side rear, and an oil change. I only budgeted for ($390) as you can see above. This is super unfortunate, but must be done. On top of this situation, my husband is a team manager and his team members bid for new shifts every 6 months. It has been a tradition to give his new team a goodie bag when this happens. Employees willingly bid on his shift, which is a crappy one, because they like him so much, and I like to think it's got something to do with the cool goodie bags, lol! So, we decided we were going to continue the tradition since our Emergency Fund is larger than it is supposed to be at ($3000) we feel we can still do this. We will both try to take money from our allowances to cover the costs, and to cover the costs of our dog's haircut as well. However, we will be pulling from our ($3000) emergency fund initially. I know, all the Dave fans would like to kill me for pulling money out of our EF just to buy goodie bags, but it is just "one of those things" that you aren't willing to give up because of the greater purpose of it. These bags aren't just goodie bags, they show appreciation to the team. It welcomes them and sets a positive tone. I will update with the actual costs on everything in a later post. I just want to say, I have never felt less stressed out about car problems before! This is the first time I got a call back from my mechanic and said, "Fix everything, no problem!" It is a great feeling and I have that EF to thank for it. Now, we just need to start sinking funds for these types of costs that we know will come up in the future so that we don't necessarily have to use our EF. Thanks for listening! |
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Hello. I am a 30 year old mommy/wifey who is FED UP with DEBT! Join me as my family and I climb out of the hole one day/one paycheck/one month at a time. Archives
February 2017
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