Weekly Money Check-Up

Here's my Weekly Money Check-Up, courtesy of My Pretty Pennies :)

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on our car payment. This is only our 2nd car payment out of several, so we've got a long journey here, but one that I'm okay with right now.

2. Today I feel challenged by money. I keep looking at each week as a challenge. When we fill our envelopes with our spending money, I feel challenged to stay within our budget and make it work.

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was moving our bedroom furniture around. I spent all day on Sunday rearranging our bedroom and I love how it looks now. I like change and I'm the type of person who gets bored with the same old, same old, so although I'm sore and have several pulled muscles, I love the new layout of our room!

4. I will consider this week a success if I find something inexpensive for us to do on our days off. This is our first long weekend since we started our budget and I hope we are able to stay on track and within budget.

5. My favorite food at Thanksgiving is mashed sweet potatoes. My grandmother gave me the recipe a few years back and I've tried to make it yearly ever since. It's a wonderful southern recipe with pecans and cinnamon on top. Yummmm!

A new way of thinking...

I'm changing. In the past, I would just go out and buy something when I wanted it. It didn't matter if it was an hour out of the way, if I wanted to get something, I got it. Now, not only do I not buy it on impulse, but I'm also not going to spend my gas money or put miles on the new car, just to get it!

I received a gift card to Nordstrom for my wedding. I don't shop there so I wasn't sure what I'd be able to use it on. My only knowledge of the store is that it's pretty costly. I looked online and found out that they sell some lip gloss that I love - score! I ran out of it about 2 weeks ago and wanted to get a replacement, but at $18 there was no way I was going to pay for it out of pocket.

Unfortunately only certain Nordstrom locations carried it so I was stuck either shipping it (at a ridiculous price) or driving 30 minutes out of my way to get it at the store. Although I wanted it LIKE YESTERDAY, I didn't really NEED to have it. So, I waited (patiently) until we were already in the area for something else and I picked it up with the gift card. I know it sounds minor, but this is progress for me :) I think many of us have gotten into our current situations because we make too many rash, unplanned for purchases. It's a process to change your way of thinking and I just took a step in the right direction. Yayyy me!

Question : What little steps have you taken in your get out of debt journey that you are proud of?

Determined

First off, my apologies for not blogging much this week. I've been on a quest this week to find ways to lower our bills. I'm determined to find us less expensive housing and get my husband a new, better paying job. So, any downtime that I've had has been put towards those efforts. I think my eyes may fall out of my head! I've spent so many hours online searching and searching for housing and jobs.

The quest will continue into the weekend, as we tour local apartment complexes and search the want ads. Hopefully I'll have some good news to report next week! Have a great weekend everyone :)

Weekly Money Check-Up

Courtesy of My Pretty Pennies, here is my weekly money check-up :)

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on our credit card payment... followed closely by our car payment. Ugh, what a waste of money. It is what it is though and if we stick to our plan, this payment will go away and I'll have happier things to post that we're spending our money on... like maybe a retirement plan!

2. Today I feel pretty fabulous towards money. If you saw my earlier post today, we received a check from our in-laws that allowed us to fully fund our emergency savings account! I feel pretty fabulous about it :)

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was watched last week's episode of Dexter (which we love!) streaming online for FREE (besides the small cost for the electricity). We canceled our cable last week but were able to use my work laptop and wireless card, to tap into my sister's online account and get access to our dear cable shows. Score!

4. I will consider this week a success if I make it through to Friday without any unexpected expenses coming up. Again, it's a tight week budget-wise, so I'll be thrilled to make it to Friday (read: PAYDAY) without anything happening.

5. I am afraid of ants. I don't want to be, but I am. The tiny little ones drive me crazy. I absolutely can't stand them. I'm okay with spiders, snakes, and all the other stuff but ants are my kryptonite!

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.