Extra Cash!

TGIF! I got some sweet news today. I'm now paid semi-monthly so today I received my first check of the new year and it was higher than I anticipated. How much higher, you ask?!? $58.92 per pay period! I had used the pay calculator online through ADP and they must have estimated the amount of social security they planned to withhold incorrectly because today my check was $58.92 over what I had planned on.

That's $1,414.08 extra in take-home pay for 2011! Today is a good day. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Walking on Sunshine!

Yippee! We made our final payment to CC #1 today. I really feel as though I'm walking on sunshine. What a great feeling this is. I can only IMAGINE how wonderful I'm going to feel once all of our debt is gone. Let's take a look at the numbers so far...

Here's where things were as of July 28, 2011:

Original Debt $60,555.72

Debt on 7/28/11 $50,355.00
________________

Credit Card Debt
CC #1 : $15,217.69
CC#2 : $16,913.81
CC#3 : $0 (Paid In Full!)

Car Loan
$18,223.50

Here's the update, as to where our debt is today:

Credit Card Debt
CC #1 - $0 (Paid in full on 11/15/11)
CC #2 - $13,885.25
CC #3 - $2,905.30 (0% balance transfer card I opened a few months ago)

Car Loan
$17,130.09

For a total of $33,920.64

That means since July 28th, we've paid off $16,434.36 in debt. Not bad progress. Not bad at all! The next one that will go down is CC#2. The plan is to have that one paid off in March 2012. Unless, or course, if we win the lottery before then :)

Another Good Day!

We received a check in the mail yesterday for $1,185! This was the remaining deposit from the previous condo we rented. We originally put down $1,375 but we knew we wouldn't be getting the whole amount back. Mentally we prepared ourselves to only get about $1K back. Happily they only took out $190 : $100 for carpet cleaning and $90 to have a cleaning person come in. I guess that wasn't too bad overall!

I checked in with the hubby to see what he'd like to do with the money and at first he said that we should deposit it and send it right into the credit cards. My heart skipped a beat! So, off we went to deposit the check. Shortly afterwards, he suggested only putting $1,100 towards the debt and keeping the $85 for misc. stuff. I thought about it briefly and agreed! We're on the right path and making progress, so holding back a little isn't the worst thing for us. As long as the majority was going to our debt, I was happy!

So with the extra $85 we plan to do the following:

• $25 we'll put on our laundry card (otherwise laundry money comes out of our food/misc. budget and that already goes too quickly!)
  
  
• $10 towards a car wash (we do the self car wash and it shouldn't even be this much but maybe we'll even vacuum the car too)
  
  
• $25 extra "Mad Money" for Him this week
  
  
• $25 extra "Mad Money" for Her this week
  

Last night we also sold our breadmaker! As much as I. LOVE. FRESH. HOMEMADE. BREAD., I just hadn't used it in years and couldn't picture myself using it anytime in the near future. It turns out I love fresh homemade bread that OTHER PEOPLE MAKE! Who woulda thought? So, that's another $25. I had already earmarked this to go towards a payment to the person who prepared our taxes.

So, I'm happy to say that things are working out and we had another good day. I hope we stay on this path and continue to make such great progress. Time will tell!

Lastly, at the beginning of May I did a post referencing a quote I read from The Quest to be Financially Abundant -

Ask for what you want and be open to receiving it.

I wanted to share it again because for some reason I keep thinking back to it. I know it may not mean much because many of us have been "asking for what we want" for a long time - aka more money, better jobs, additional hours, less stress, etc. I think I'm focusing more on the second half now, "be open to receiving it." The thing that has changed for me is that I'm truly open to receiving it now. I look for what I want in new and creative ways. I'm more willing to do what it takes to get to my goal and opportunities are presenting themselves now.

I'm not much for giving advice, but I guess I'm just saying "stay positive and focused and it will work out!"

It's So Nice When You're on the Same Page

So, ever since the hubby and I had our talk about putting the refunded tuition money into our emergency savings account, he's taken more of an interest in our finances! This has been exciting for me, since I now have someone I can share my overly detailed spreadsheets with. Yup, I'm a nerd.

To my amazement, he recently created his own debt repayment spreadsheet! Hold on... Okay, I'm back - I just fell off my chair!

It's been a glorious week or so since he really started actively participating in our finances. However, a few days ago he threw me a curveball. He suggested going a little slower than originally planned. Although my head was screaming "WHAT? SLOWER? If there was some way I could rent you out and get money faster to pay this off, I probably would!" I sat there quietly and tried to understand where this proposal was coming from.

See, for a very long time we have done pretty much what we want to with our money (hence the situation we are in). He is proposing extending our repayment plan by about 6 months so we can enjoy ourselves a little more along the way. Believe me, I get that, I really do! Recall my question about taking a vacation while in debt? He thinks that giving ourselves a little more breathing room along the way is going to make this whole process a bit easier. In my opinion, although we only have small buffers in for fun and a possible trip in the mix, it's what we need to do right now to change our overspending ways and get this monkey off our back!

Although I was loving the few days when we were in sync and totally on the same page, it appears as though he's flipped a couple of pages without me and we're trying to get back to the same one. Any suggestions?

Question : Would you recommend moving forward as planned with a 12-13 month repayment plan or take the slower approach so we can have a little more wiggle room along the way?

$300 Extra to the Credit Card!

So, in the last week or so, we've been able to put an extra $300 towards our credit card debt! We were able to sell my old Kitchen Aid mixer for $100 on Craigslist. Although we had it listed at $125, the person who came to pick it up asked if we'd take $100. My husband and I are HORRIBLE negotiators, so we said "Sure!" I was hoping to get $120 (I put a $5 buffer in there for negotiating, but when it came down to it, I caved!)

The other $200 came from a weekend trip we took to the casino. As I shared in a recent post, this is something we do periodically for fun. We had some "free money coupons" that the casino sent us. To be safe, we only took those with us so we wouldn't be tempted to take any money from the ATM. Well, as luck would have it, we did quite well. We got up $200! I thought it was in our best interest to leave while we were still up. On the way home we deposited the cash and the very next morning, I made a payment online to our credit card. That's an easy $300 paid off! I know it won't all be this easy to pay off, so I'll enjoy the occasional times that it is :)

Dave Ramsey Would Be Proud!

We did it! We paid off one of our credit cards! I logged into the account today and this is what our account profile looked like:

Previous Balance (04/21/11)	952.04
Minimum Payment Due (05/21/11)	.00
Transactions Since Last Statement	.00
Payments Since Last Statement	952.04
Current Balance	.00
Available Credit	1,000.00

We can officially cross one of the credit cards off of our list. This is a great feeling! We also mailed in our final payment to the IRS today, so make that 2 bills we can cross off. Yippee :) Have a great weekend! Hopefully by Monday Blogger will be working normal again - fingers crossed.

9 months from now!

I won't be giving birth... but there will be a celebration :) If all my late night calculations are correct, we will be done paying off our credit card with the highest balance and interest rate in January!

The current balance is at $20,319.

This card has two interests rates on it, one for our purchases (16.99%) and one for cash advances (23.99%).

Our new target deadlines are as follows:

• CC # 3 - Current balance of $952.04 @ 15.15% will be paid off next month!
  
  (I debated saving this one for last since it has the lowest interest rate, but decided that we could use the momentum to really get us going - so this one will be first!)
  
  

• CC # 1 - Current balance as mentioned above will be paid off in January 2012.
  
  

• CC # 2 - Current balance of $17,702.19. This card has two interest rates as well : 15.24% for purchases and 19.24% for cash. The plan is to have this paid off in June 2012.

For those following along, this pushes our timeline up by 6 months - from December 2012! I AM ECSTATIC and ever hopeful that my rough calculations of interest payments are fairly accurate. I'll keep a close eye on statements as we move forward to check that we are on track to meet our goals. Honestly, I know the jury is still out on whether we should spend money to take a vacation while in debt, but these dates are not even calculating in those additional paychecks, so it could be done even earlier if we decide not to indulge along the way.

I liked this saying I recently found and I wanted to share it:

"Hard Work + Good Choices + Wise Decisions = Success".

I know it seems like common sense, but doing it can be tough. Print out the saying and put it up on the fridge or mirror or use it as your screen saver as a constant reminder. We can all do this! It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. Stay positive, stay focused and you will be successful in the end.

I may not update for a few days since this is the weekend we move. I'm scheduled to have Friday and Monday off so I likely won't be back until Tuesday. Enjoy the weekend!

2012

It's official! We've set the date. "What date?" you ask. The date we are GOING to be out of credit card debt by! I'd love to say we'll be completely out of debt, but our focus has really been on our looming credit card debt (since the interest rates are high) and we haven't really focused on our car loan.... yet! We'll get there. For sure. But with an interest rate under 1%, we're not too worried about that one just yet.

We started with about $40K on our credit cards and if all of my budgeting is correct and if we stay the course, we'll be completely out of credit card debt by December 2012! There are a some assumptions in here (that our bills don't increase significantly, that we both maintain our current incomes, and a few others) but I did build a slight buffer in there and I truly believe that we will be celebrating that New Year's Eve in style! (And by "in style" I don't mean in an expensive fashion, I just mean popping a bottle of $4 Andre champagne and toasting how great it feels to be out of debt! Then in 2013, we'll tackle that damn car loan and bulking up our savings for a future home! Ahhhh, I love having goals to work towards.

Tuition Update...

So, we got the news... it looks like my niece didn't get the job as a Resident Advisor (RA) for the upcoming year at college. Ugh, this was really disappointing to me, as I was hoping we could put the almost $600 a month towards our debt repayment. After taking a few days to cool off and wrap my head around another year of payments, I'm in a much better place.

I'll need to tweak our spreadsheet again to fit those payments back into the budget. Unfortunately this may mess up one of our goals in 2011 of paying $20K towards our debt. That's okay though. If there's one thing this year has already taught me it's been to "roll with the punches!" We didn't plan on having to come up with $7K by mid-April for taxes, but somehow we're doing that and we'll do this too!

On a side note, there is still a small chance that she'll get the job. They offered her an "alternate RA position" so she could officially be a back-up RA if someone resigns or gets fired. She has a week to think about this and decide if she wants it. Right now her feelings are hurt and she doesn't think she wants to accept the role and I get that, I totally do. I'm just trying to have her look at the big picture and understand that it may be in everyone's best interest if she accepts the back up position. They told her the odds are very good that this could work out in her favor and she may get a real position in the new school year. We'll see though, until then, I have a spreadsheet to update!

Emergency Savings - Fully Funded!

Our emergency savings is now fully funded! Thanks to my new in-laws who sent us a very lovely wedding present, we've been able to fully fund our emergency savings account. This is super news! I've been kind of stressing lately over how we were going to get everything done (emergency savings, deposit on a new apartment and paying down our debt), then BAM, we receive a check in the mail on Saturday :) Needless to say, I was very surprised by their kindness. I deposited the check first thing this morning. I hope to transfer it over to our savings account later this week. Now, anything extra we get can be sent straight to the credit cards to help lower our debt quicker! Yippee :) I hope the week continues to be filled with good things.

Budget Update

First of all, Happy Veteran's Day and Thank You to those Veteran's out there!

Today I got a pleasant surprise when I found out I was paid early because of Veteran's Day. I was so excited that I spent my whole lunch hour online paying bills. Okay, I just re-read that sentence and I sound like a complete dork, but I don't really care! I'm hoping that if you're reading this, you are kinda obsessed with your finances, like I am, so perhaps you can appreciate it and maybe even do the same thing? :)

Anyway, this week I got our account down to 6 cents! Yippee :) I'm proud. That's progress from when I started this last week and felt a little embarrassed to be so low. Now, I hold my head up high. I even showed a friend my checkbook and how little I had in it! Way to go me. The way our budget is set up, my husband and I get paid on opposite Fridays. My checks go to our bills for the month and his checks go to gas and groceries, so his becomes our actual cash that we play with. I'm loving the envelope thing and I've already convinced my hubby to look for the least expensive gas and make sure to get a receipt so we can track it.

One thing that came up while paying the bills was that I had a little extra in our account after paying the mandatory bills. I was torn on transferring it to our pretty much non-existent savings account, or putting it on a credit card that has a very high interest rate. I decided to put it towards savings. This was a bit tough for me, but I know why it makes sense. As Dave Ramsey points out... if you don't have an emergency savings account to fall back on when an emergency happens (WHICH IT WILL), you're stuck putting more money on your credit cards. In theory it all seems perfectly logical... it was just tough to do for some reason. I guess I think of all that interest building up on the credit cards and I just want to pay it off fast. Again, the magic word this week for me appears to be patience!

Question : For those of you who follow Dave Ramsey's seven steps, was it hard for you to build up your emergency savings account? Did you feel a strong desire to throw every extra penny towards your debt instead?

The hunt is on!

So, in an effort to reduce our monthly expenses even further, we've been hunting for a new place to live. We currently rent a fairly large condo for $1375 a month. It's much further North than our jobs and we carpool together about 60 miles a day (round-trip) between work and home. The commute is rough on us. It's constant stop and go on a very busy highway. We'd like to try to move further South so we can 1) be closer to our jobs, which will lower what we spend on gas, 2) hopefully reduce our monthly rent and 3) reduce our stress levels with our daily commute. I've sworn to my husband that the highway we drive on will be the death of me!

Although places further South typically cost more, for less living space we realize it's the best option for us right now. We're in a 1300+ SF, 2 bedroom/2 bath condo on a nice golf course. Realistically we'll probably have to downsize to about 600 SF, 1 bedroom/1 bath, in a crowded complex. There are a few non-negotiables for me though... it has to be a top floor (I'm super-sensitive to sounds and can't stand someone walking above me) and the area needs to be pretty safe (it's not worth it to me to move and live in fear for a few hundred dollars). The nice to haves would be a dishwasher, porch and a washer/dryer. I'll keep my fingers crossed on those last ones :)

We're in a bit of pickle though. We have yet to build up our savings and every place we check out wants a heafty deposit. We'd love to move into something between $1000 - $1100, so we could put another couple of hundred dollars towards our debt each month. We know it will be worth it in the end to make the move, it's just that our hands are tied and unless by some miracle, we find a complex with a low deposit, it looks like it may be months before we're able to move. It's a bit of a catch-22 and somewhat frustrating, but I guess it's just the situation we've gotten ourselves into. We're focused now and want to make progress TODAY, but I guess it'll all happen in due time. As they say... patience is a virtue.

So long cable bill!

We did it! We canceled our cable/internet. I'm still kind of in shock. Perhaps in denial too. I hate to admit it but we watch a lot of TV. Let me say that again... A LOT! I'm a bit confused, wondering what we are going to do with all that time!

Anyway, let me get to the story... My husband texted me on Friday saying that he thought we should get rid of our cable. I almost had a stroke! Although the idea was in the back of my mind, I never thought he'd go for it. So, I immediately agreed. I've been struggling with ways to reduce our monthly budget so that we could build up our emergency savings and start paying down our debt faster. Cable and internet are nice to have but definitely not necessities in life - especially when you're in debt like us. So, he made the call and canceled our service.

We went in to our local cable office on Saturday to drop off our cable boxes and internet stuff. While in the office, they had about 12 different TV's going at the same time and I could see my husband starting to second guess himself. Believe me, I was too! We stayed the course though and handed in our dusty old equipment.

I should explain that we are not going completely without some form of home and couch entertainment :) We have decided to still keep our Netflix account active. For about $10 a month, we do get a good amount of use out of it. Now, we're planning to get a lot more! There's got to be some old shows that we missed and good movies to catch up on. Also, I do get internet access on my work phone. Although the screen is tiny, it's still access! Lastly, I was able to score a wireless internet card for my work laptop, so I could use that at home as well. Although the speed it dreadfully slow, we're hoping it'll be sufficient to get us online as needed.

Yayyyy! So, that's my good - no, GREAT - news. It's only $120ish a month, but will certainly help us out. Oh yeah, one more bit of news - my hubby also willingly canceled his wrestling show account (about $4 per month). So, make that $125 going towards savings and debt. Today is a good day!

Question : Have you ever given up cable? If so, was it difficult? What did you end up doing instead to fill up all your spare time?

Confession...

I just updated my debt numbers in my "Status Updates" section on the right side of my blog. This is the first update since I started the blog in September. I was kinda postponing this since 1) I was super busy in October with the wedding and stuff and 2) I was embarrassed. Truth be told, we charged more than we should have for our wedding, so not only did our balances actually increase, but we also put items on another credit card. Phew, glad to be honest and get that off my chest. Ouch though! I knew things would cost a bit but was surprised by how expensive some items were and unfortunately I didn't appropriately budget enough to cover all of the incidentals that arose. Lesson learned. Enough said.

So, our new total debt balance comes to... $60,926.30. With the wedding behind us, a new budget in place and a ton of motivation, I truly believe that this will be the highest our debt will ever reach! I look forward to more positive status updates in the future :)

Weekly Money Check-Up

Happy Monday! I'm excited about a new week and a new month :) I spent most of last week working on my budget (decided to go with an Excel spreadsheet... for now anyway) and I'm pretty happy with the results. I also spent a while listening to Dave Ramsey's online broadcasts. They were interesting and eye-opening. It's sad to see how many people are in the same boat that I am - many were worse off. I tell myself that if they can dig themselves out of it, so can I!

To continue with the posting I started last week from My Pretty Pennies, here is my Weekly Money Check-Up:

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on an unscheduled night out. My husband and I wanted to have fun for Halloween and we spent more than we planned for. This caused me to have to adjust our budget for the remainder of the month. Although it's not a HUGE deal, it was a set back for us that I don't feel good about. I know I can't turn back time and this is just the start of this long journey, so I have to cut us some slack but these types of things won't get us to the finish line any earlier.

2. Today I feel positively challenged about money. I'm finalizing our budget and although it's overwhelming at times, I'm staying positive and looking at it as a challenge... one that I plan to be successful at!

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was cleaned my house. I know that sounds crazy, but when the house is a mess, it makes me feel a bit uneasy. We had our suitcases, clothes and a bunch of miscellaneous junk all over the place that needed to be put away (or at least out of my sight in the back bedroom!). I spent a few hours picking up and now when I get home, I feel a sense of peace come over me when I look at my clean living room.

4. I will consider this week a success if I stay within my budget for the rest of the week!

5. If I could grow one thing, it would be a money tree?!? :)

YNAB, Mvelopes and Dave Ramsey...

Until now, I've been using a simple budget that I created in Excel. However, lately I've been reading up more on budgeting ideas. I found Dave Ramsey and his baby steps interesting and have been considering following his approach and maybe even attending his classes. However, I've found some other budgeting software that sounds interesting. One program that caught my attention is called "Mvelopes." It seems to match up with Dave's philosophies (envelope budgeting) and makes it easy for people to track their envelopes electronically. Today I discovered You Need a Budget which seems to push the idea of not living paycheck to paycheck (our current problem) and makes it easy to track your money and get ahead. This also sounds interesting. My frustration is that as I'm trying to dig myself out of debt, I'm not interested in spending more money to buy a program to help me do it. I'm a smart girl and I think I can just use Excel and be fine... however, that approach hasn't worked great for me in the past. Right now I'm considering downloading a free trial version of YNAB to see what that's like. I'm hoping maybe I'll be able to get a few ideas for my spreadsheet which will help me along the way.

Question : Do you follow a certain system or philosophy in your get out of debt journey? How do you do your budget? Do you use any special software to track your budget? If so, have your experiences been positive or negative, it is worth it?

Ups and Downs... but I DID IT!

So, Friday had some ups and downs for us...

My Husband's Job: My husband got his paycheck for the time we were out of the office. Turns out that his boss did not put in for vacation time pay for him, so his check was about half of what we expected. Ouch! Unfortunately, my husband's hours were recently cut and he is no longer considered a full time employee, so he doesn't qualify for vacation time. Glad we knew about that BEFORE we planned on taking time off. Now that we are on a budget this threw me off a bit. I know that there will be unexpected challenges along the way and I guess this was our first. I was able to creatively move things around a bit so that we can still make ends meet for the time being, but it was tricky. It may also require us eating some of the several boxes of pasta that we bought, Pre-Atkins, that are now gathering dust in the kitchen cabinet. We'll have to cut costs somehow this week...

*On a side note, my husband's hours will be cut AGAIN as of November 1st - when his company starts closing an hour earlier each day. Not only will this effect our car pooling schedule some, but our budget will take another hit. This weekend we did lots of job searching for him and hopefully (keep your fingers crossed) we'll find him something better with full time hours soon!

My Job: At my job, I had the opportunity to put my name out there for a promotion/salary adjustment! I ended up doing it via email, which may not have been the best approach but due to timing and circumstances it just worked out that way. (Plus, I do tend to express myself better through written word than in person, so I was kinda relieved.) I'm really proud of myself for taking this step and making some progress towards one of my professional goals that I wanted to achieve by the end of the year. If this comes through, it will give us the breathing room needed since my husband's check will be less. A friend shared a phrase that I'm going to keep in mind on this : I have not, because I ask not. So I asked. Let's see what happens!

My Husband's Health: My husband suffers from panic attacks. They started happening to him randomly about a year ago. He read up on how to handle them when they happen and hasn't seen a doctor yet. Unfortunately, they've been occuring more frequently and he asked me to make him an appointment. I fully support him going because we need to get to the bottom of this, but it was another unplanned for expense. This makes me really look forward to that emergency fund that I hope to start soon! Having a little cushion to fall back on when needed will be helpful.

Car: Lastly, we discovered that someone stole the antenna off of our new car. It's been rainy lately and radio stations weren't coming in as good as they used to, so we chalked it up to that, but then we actually got out to investigate and we noticed it was gone! I think it happened at the airport parking garage we left the car at on our honeymoon. Oh well, it's not the end of the world and we can still listen to the radio some, it's just a bit staticy. So, a replacement antenna may end up on the Christmas wish list but we certainly don't need to get it right now. This is an improvement for me because the old Steph would have gone right out and bought a replacement one. Progress, I tell myself, progress.

Question : Have you ever asked for a promotion or salary adjustment? This is my first time. If so, were you nervous and how did it go for you?

How large should your emergency fund be when you are broke?

Today I was reading an old posting on a blog called Wise Bread, about the size of your emergency fund. As you'll notice, my current savings is at zero ("...point zero" - for those Howard Stern or Animal House fans out there). Anyway, I'm smart enough to know that I need to start growing my emergency fund. What I'm unsure of is how big I should grow it. Since savings accounts are currently paying next to nothing in interest, any extra funds I have at the end of the month, I'd almost rather put right towards lowering our high interest debt.

I do plan to set aside $100 (or more) per month into savings, but at what point will my emergency fund be complete so that I can begin putting that $100 towards debt? I've read different theories on this one. Some say 3-6 months worth of expenses should be your target. That would take me a very long time to do and I think it's a bit more than I feel I want to do at this time. Others recommend $1000 as a good start. I'm worried that $1000 may not go far if I were to lose my job, especially given that our rent is currently at $1375.

I'm leaning towards my emergency savings goal being equal to one month of expenses - to start. I would like to increase that in time, but I think this is a realistic goal to shoot for. A quick analysis of my budget tells me that one month of expenses is about $4500. Wow. That's not rock bottom expenses though. It includes our current cable package, cell phones, NetFlix, paying a little extra on our debt, putting some in savings, etc. If I had to cut some things out and live on the bare necessities, I'm sure we could lower those expenses some. For now though, I'll think I'll target $4500 as our new emergency savings goal.

My current plan puts me meeting only half of that goal by the end of 2011. That would mean December 2012 is when we'd hit our emergency savings goal target. Hmmmm, kinda far off for my liking, but I guess some goals are a little harder to achieve to than others. I keep telling myself that it's a marathon, not a sprint and that we'll get there. We'll get there.

Ways to Get More Money

Since I recently analyzed how to cut costs in our budget, I thought I should also consider ways to increase our cash flow.

Increase Our Income
I do plan to ask for a promotion later this year, so hopefully my income will increase at the same time. If not, I'll probably begin a job search in the new year.

My fiance has been looking for work for a while, but due to the economy, has come up empty. In addition his hours were recently cut at work. Since he's paid hourly, this negatively effects his take home pay. (Although it does give him Saturdays off, which means we have the weekend together now, which I do love!)

Start a 2nd Job
I'd really like to start a home based business to start earning some extra income. I'm still not exactly sure what it is I'd be doing yet. I have a lot of passions and things that I think could make money, but I know I'll be most successful if I can decide on a niche. This has been holding me back some. Once I actually sit down and figure out what to focus on, I think it would be good for us. Sure, the business may take away from some "us time" for a while, but it may be necessary to help dig us out of debt quicker. A home based business would enable us to write off part of our home as an expense for the business, which would be an added perk come tax time! (Which I sorely need this year, but maybe I'll get to that in another post!)

Sell Stuff
Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a pack rat. We're not talking that TV show Hoarders or anything, but I do keep my fair share of items longer than I should. I'm going to make it a goal to start going through our stuff and selling some of it. It will be a bit challenging for me, as I tend to think that I may not need an item right now, but possibly could in the future and it would likely cost me more to re-buy it later. I'm willing to try though! Honestly, as I get older, I am finding that it's a bit easier to let things go. Maybe it's because we move a lot and I'm getting tired of lugging all of our stuff from place to place. That's probably it! Although we may not make a lot of money, we'll end up with fewer non-essential items (aka - CRAP!) and a cleaner place.

Question : How have you increased your income or found creative ways to get more money? Any suggestions to share?

Areas to Cut Costs in Our Budget

Our monthly budget doesn't have much wiggle room to decrease costs, but there are some possible areas that we could look at...

Rent - $1375
This could be decreased if we move to a smaller location or further away. Since my fiance and I carpool together and we both detest driving too far to work, moving further away isn't really an option. Although moving again would royally suck... we're open to moving to a smaller location. We've passively looked at new places and haven't been successful. Perhaps this will be on the 2011 goal list as a way to cut costs. My goal would be to get something closer to $1000 per month. That would definitely help things!

Electricity - $100
I am determined to get this lowered! For some reason when we moved from a one bedroom apartment to a two bedroom condo, our monthly electricity doubled! We have the same lamps, don't use heat and have no A/C... so I'm stumped here. I even called the electric company previously to see why it would have increased so much but they weren't much help. The only suggestion they had was to shut off the switch for the heat in the breaker box, because it's possible some heat could still come up, even though the temp was set to zero. I've done that and nothing has changed. I've even changed all of our light bulbs to energy efficient ones, but haven't seen any difference. I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with our hot water heater, but I'm not sure. One day I'll figure this out!

Cell Phone - $150
I currently cover 5 people on my cell phone plan: my parents, my fiance, my niece and myself. I enrolled in a 1400 minutes a month plan, with unlimited texting. The plan below this one is 700 minutes - which is closer to what we actually use. My only fear here is that I'll lower the monthly minutes and we'll go over and be stuck with the high cost of overages. Plus, my niece is a teenager, who actively sends texts and there would be a per text charge, so I'm thinking in the long run, it's probably cheaper to just stay with this plan until my parents and my niece get on their own.

Cable & Internet - $120
I'd love to be able to lower this one. We actually lowered it once before, by removing HBO. We tend to watch TV a lot... and when I say "a lot", I mean A LOT. (Please don't judge us, it's just how we like to relax after a day of work.) The only premium channel that we have now is Showtime and there are a good number of shows (Dexter, Weeds, The United States of Tara and The Big C) that we watch on there, so we'd like to keep it.

I've considered lowering our internet speed if it would get us a cheaper rate, but our internet is already soooooo slow. We can't image a slower speed than we currently have! So, unless we start to look into other cable and internet providers, it looks like this area is fixed for now as well. Perhaps another area to look into for 2011...

NetFlix - $9
Although this is not a necessity... we've enjoyed it and I'd say we've gotten our monthly cost worth. Sure, I could go to RedBox and rent a movie for $1 a night, but the selection is less than desirable and we can't watch some of the TV series that we are able to get from NetFlix.

Wrestling Show - $4
This is another thing that isn't a necessity, but my fiance loves watching the old days of wrestling! So it's well worth the $4 per month for the amount of joy he gets from watching these old shows.

Sirius - $197.04 Annually or $16.42 Monthly
I've been a loyal Sirius subscriber since Howard Stern joined way back when. I tend to pay for an annual subscription to Sirius every year. There are two reasons why I think I'll let my subscription lapse which will enable me to save a few bucks: 1) Sadly, Howard's contract expires at the end of this year and he may be leaving Sirius for good and 2) Our car that had satellite radio installed was recently donated, so we don't even have the capability to listen in the car anymore. Although we loved listening to it while driving (nothing beats a road trip without having to change the station!), since it's gone now, we're getting used to just using the iPod instead.

Question : Where do you cut costs in your monthly budget? Any suggestions for me?