This is Me

I'm trying something new. I found this challenge to get my personal history down on paper. It is a series of questions to answer. I plan on answering one question a day. My goal is to get in depth and personal about each question in hopes that someday my children will get to read about my life.

My name is Callie Beth Thurell. I was born Callie Beth Cluff. I was named after my Great Great Grandmother Callie Catherine Cope.

I've always loved my name, and to know that I was named after an ancestor makes it even more special. I think that is why I am so insistant that my children have a family name. 

Growing up my nickname was Bu (like "hey Bu Bu" from Yogi Bear). Not everyone called me by my nickname. Only my parents and brother Kyle. They still call me it to this day.

That is a good nickname. I've had worse in school. In elementary school I was Smelly Callie. Only they said Smelly with an "a" to make it rhyme with Callie. I was Smally Callie. I HATED school. Kids are cruel and not very creative, now that I think about it. In high school I was Keebler. Like the Keebler Elf. I never understood that one. Like I said, not very creative.

Even though I grew up with horrible nicknames like Smally Callie and Keebler. I am blessed that the only name that follows me through life is Callie.

Changes

I feel changes on the horizon. Or maybe, I just want there to be changes! Either way, I am hopeful for things to come.
Our newest little guy, Porter, joined our family one month ago. It has been a struggle to figure out how to handle 3 little boys. Especially when the youngest two are only 14 months apart. But, slowly, I am getting better at juggling the requirement of being a mom of three.
Maybe that is where the hopefulness of change is coming from. My baby blues have finally subsided. I am feeling optimistic again.
I know I can't just sit around and wait for changes to come. (And honestly, in all reality, these changes may not even be anything significant. They may just end up being changes in myself. I may just change my attitude, or my routine, or even my family relationships. Either way, I'm excited.)
I plan to do things to make these things happen. First, I will turn off the tv more. When I end up watching a show I get NOTHING done. These past few days I have turned off the tv for an hour and cleaned, or worked on projects. It has brought my spirits up! Second, I plan to get back on a solid budget. I am so much happier when I am not stressed about money. (Aren't we all though!) I want to get completely out of debt and it starts with a budget. Third, I need to get back on track with a menu. I stay on budget better with a menu. Plus, when 5pm rolls around I don't have to figure out what to cook!

Here's to changes!

Trying to Get Into a Routine

In 5 weeks or so, our little world will be turned upside down with the arrival of the newest member of our family. I am very excited to meet our little one. After Emmett was born, our house was thrown into chaos. The house got dirty and our healthy eating went out the window. I am determined to do all I can to keep that from happening again.

I am trying to get in a cleaning routine. For the most part it is working out. Monday is Kitchen Day. I make sure the kitchen is deep cleaned. This includes mopping the floor and cleaning out the fridge. The kitchen is the hardest room for me to keep clean, but fortunately, this routine has helped me keep it under control. (As long as I get a load of dishes in the dishwasher every morning)

We have not been eating well lately, so my first step in healthy eating when baby arrives is to start healthy eating NOW. I made a menu board which has helped A TON. Now I know what I am making every day and can make sure I have all ingredients needed.

This week I will start making double of whatever we are eating for dinner. This way I can freeze the extra portion.
Tonight we are eating black bean burritos, so I hope to have a good extra two dozen to throw in the freezer tonight.

Here's to hoping it all works out!

Update

It has been a while since I've updated our debt free journey. We have made a lot of progress.

I quit my job to stay home with my boys. I wasn't sure how it would all work out, but we have been blessed. We decided to cash out my retirement to help us get out of debt. We were able to pay off all our credit cards and medical bills. This has helped tremendously! I am now able to teach preschool in my home to help pay the car payments with out the stress of needing a ton of students to make the income needed to pay all our debts.

We fell off the wagon for a few months and would over spend in the eating out department. But Tim and I have become Gizelle Intense again.

I have added tutoring to my list of ways to make an income. We have made a plan to stop extra spending. Our anniversary is coming up and we even have a plan to celebrate without spending any money.

My sister-in-law will watch the boys over night and Tim and I will use free movie tickets that we have been saving to go to a movie (it has been two years since I have been in a theater). I am actually looking forward to getting a full nights sleep and being able to sleep in in my own bed.

Here are our short term goals for the next year:

- Pay off the Passat

Our Future Long Term Goal:
Buy our forever home (the home we plan to grow old in)

Month Two of Our Debt Free Journey

 

We are half way into our second month on a budget. Things are going good... slow, but good. I think once we have our emergency fund in place it will go faster because I will start to see the results of our hard work.

We gave our emergency fund a little jump start by having a yard sale a few weeks ago. I have a lot of teacher stuff I am trying to get rid of and we had some things laying around the house to sell. Unfortunately the weather wasn't quite in our favor. The temperate was great, but the strong wind and eventual rain drove us in doors. I was thinking about doing another one this weekend, but haven't really decided.

We still have a long way to go to reach our $1,000 emergency fund, but it is nice to actually see something other than $0 in that account.

I am getting nervous and stressed about how we are going to pay for baby. Baby is due in 4 weeks. I really don't want to have to use credit cards to pay the hospital bill. I am praying they will let us go on a payment plan, but I don't see that happening. If we end up having to pay up front like we did with Tucker, we can kiss all our progress goodbye. We will have to start this journey from the beginning again.

I am also very nervous about working come August. I have yet to get any kids enrolled in my preschool. I plan on trying to lower the price a little, and I have more advertising to do. But, I really need to have a plan B in place. I will have to try and find an online data entry job or something of that sort.
Tim would like to get his resume out there, too. If he gets a new job that could make up for my not working. I guess you could call that Plan C.

Everything is just so up in the air. I don't like that feeling. I have always known what was going to happen come August. This is all new to me and I don't like it one bit. I know I need to have faith and know God is going to get us through. I just pray that we get through with out the hardship of not being able to pay bills!

THanks for listening to my stress filled rant! :-)

Rough months end

 

I know I said my next post would talk about how I put our budget together. But, this past week Tim and I kind of fell of the budget bandwagon. Let's say life got in the way.

With that being said, Tim and I really could have made the better choice and stayed on budget. Lesson learned for next time.

So what happened you ask? I got sick. It started with a UTI. There is an extra $25 going toward antibiotics. Then because I was in so much pain I didn't want to cook dinner. There went $15 for Chipotle (not big deal if we hadn't already spent our eating out money)

On top of that, I then came down with a stomach bug and still did not want to cook. Tim worked late alot that week and was too tired to cook. More money down the lazy drain.

So, I say we could have made better choices. We could have forced ourselves to eat in. Hindsight tells me, we could have eaten cereal for dinner. Or, even thinking about it now, maybe I should have some meals in the freezer to thaw and throw in the oven. Come to think of it, I have a bunch of soup my mom canned for us in my pantry.

When Tim and I sit down on Saturday to get our budget ready for the upcoming month, we will talk about how we could have stayed on budget and what we will do to be better prepared for something like this again.

It is frustrating to start the month out with an idea of how much will go into savings that month and then to finally get to the end of the month and not have nearly that left.

But this was the first month on budget. We are learning. We will make mistakes. But the great thing is that I am not discouraged from continuing our budget. Yes, we spent more than we should have, but we didn't spend more than we have. We will get into the next month without having an NSF fee.

I would say, progress has been made!

(Tip: Reading Dave Ramsey books and lsistening to his raido show online has really kept me motivated through this month, especially after falling off the budgeting wagon like we did.)

Why We Started This Journey

 

When Tim and I got married, I brought a lot of debt with me. My students loans, a credit cards (used to cover what students loans didn't) pilled up to a good amount of debt. Tim didn't, and still doesn't, have any credit cards. But, while we were dating he got laid off of work. He lost his truck, which added to our debt, and ruined his credit.

We are starting our debt free journey with $54,000 in debt. This includes all my student loans, credit cards, and car payments.

We were blessed by the fact that due to my teaching at a title 1 school for more that 5 years, I was able to apply for student loan forgiveness. There was a lot of run around but it eventually paid off and the government paid $5,000 of my Sallie Mae loan.

We started our journey March 21st. I will explain the unusual time frame later.

We were both very tired of the stress of having run out of money before the month was over. I think mainly due to the fact that we knew it was our fault. We love to eat out... a lot!

We knew we could do better. So I sat down over spring break and really tried to work out a budget that would work us. I had tried a while back to put us on a budget but didn't put the time and effort into it that I needed to. As Dave Ramsey would say, I wasn't Gazelle Intense.

I really feel like our budget is working for us now. Granted it has only been two weeks, but I am not stressed over money.

We still allow ourselves a restaurant budget and some pocket money. It wouldn't work out if we didn't allow ourselves this.

Next I will try and explain how I put our budget together and what it looks like.