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.

The Start of Our Journey

Just two short weeks ago, Tim and I put ourselves on a budget. We were tired of living pay check to pay check due to the debt we brought into our marriage.

I say just two SHORT weeks ago, but it feels like it has been MONTHS. I am a very impatient person and I just want to see the money we are saving go into our savings account. It is quite hard to wait till the end of each month to see the progress we are making.

I plan on documenting our journey here on the blog. Mostly for me to work through the thoughts and stresses I have along the way. But also to hopefully motivate others to join the ride (and keep me motivated to stay on this ride).

In my next post I will share where our debt came from and why we chose now to start this journey.