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February in Review

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February was an interesting month for us.

We paid off the beau’s car! 
When we started this journey back in September, we owed $10,106.53 on the beau’s car. He bought it (a 2014 Prius) on February 18, 2017 which means we’ve paid it off four years ahead of schedule AND within a year of the purchase date! Boom pow!

We started tackling student loan 2 of 6!
From here on out, it’s allllllll student loans. We’re now tackling subsidized Stafford Loan 1-01. The beau originally took out this loan back in August 2007 and its original balance at 5.8% was $8,500. When we started this journey back in September, the balance was $10,218.42 and if we stayed on Navient’s track, our anticipated payoff date would be 12/25/2031. My personal payoff goal for this loan is June 2018… that’s a 13.5 year difference in case you didn’t do the math. After all we’ve dumped on it this month, the remaining balance is $8,232.72!

We took a holiday / honeymoon in Mexico!
This trip was booked back in July prior to the start of all of this and frankly I don’t care if it was booked two weeks prior, we were going! It was paid entirely by cash, thanks to the generosity of friends and family who gifted us cash as a wedding gift. Seriously, THANK YOU friends and family! xoxo While planning this trip our intentions weren’t to be frugal, we just don’t prefer extravagant accommodations. No resort for us, or even a hotel; we hit up Airbnb which allowed us to book an entire house in a pretty remote area of Mexico inaccessible by road. It was lovely to say the least.

Returning home from the trip, we had about a thousand leftover and my first initial thought was to dump this toward debt. After all, Dave Ramsey says no holidays during the first four baby steps. In one ear and out the other, we both agreed to continue to keep this cash in a separate savings account and we’ll use it as needed for little mini getaways i.e. long weekends camping in the Adirondacks, a trip to NYC to see the Mets play, a weekend in NH with friends, and possibly an autumn trip to Montreal. I think our friends and family would agree with this decision too.

While in Mexico, we celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary!
Time really has flown by! It’s so cliché to say, but I can’t believe it has already been one year. On our actual anniversary, we traveled from Yelapa back to Puerto Vallarta, ate lunch at a wonderful brewery we stumbled upon, enjoyed a delicious taco dinner, and then walked the boardwalk along the ocean and caught the sunset… and drank more beer at that delicious brewery! It was relaxing, it was fun and it was an anniversary I won’t forget! I love the idea of spending our anniversary each year on holiday buuuuuuuuut with annual reporting in the library community, that won’t be possible. We’ll see what we come up with next year.

And because we were in Mexico for nine days, we saved money on both our groceries and eating out/alcohol envelopes! $229 to be exact! Hopefully we’ll see a savings on our utilities bill too next month! Our meal plan wasn’t very adventurous, a rotation of regular meals we enjoy, switching after two weeks.

I earned residual income while in Mexico.
More on this to come in a future post regarding MLM companies and how it’s working for me and has been over a period of time (I’m not talking legging fads), I earned an income while on vacation doing nothing. Was it as much as it has been in previous months while working toward earning that income? No. But it was income that I appreciate and value and not only did I deposit a portion of it toward debt, but I also invested some back into my friends and family who support me on this journey of abundance. I don’t share Young Living just because there’s the potential to earn cash, I share because I’ve been a fan of their products for a number of years (10+ years) and I know many people can benefit from them as well. Earning a paycheck is a wonderful thank you bonus for making a referral (because let’s be honest, we share our opinions about everything)!

I paid a hefty parking fine.
Long story short I got a ticket back in October for talking on my phone while driving… even though I wasn’t holding my phone. That’s a five point violation on your record FYI. Luckily, it was reduced to just a parking violation with a $225 fine. FINE BY ME! I’d gladly pay that over receiving that many points. Don’t worry, I’m no longer speaking on loudspeaker, I got a Bluetooth device for Christmas from Santa.

We still had fun.
Despite being on a budget, we both had some fun outside of the house this month. Oftentimes I think people assume because you’re on a budget, you don’t get to engage in other activities: not true! You get to decide how much money you spend on fun! The two of us are very content being homebodies, which is great because you save money however I know not everyone is like us. We might spend more cash on groceries because we like cooking at home, while you may add more to your eating out envelope because that’s what you prefer. Budget = options.

This month we participated in Nine Pin’s 26er challenge, sampling ciders #3 and #4. On Valentine’s Day we joined a friend at Rare Form for a chocolate and beer sampling. I had a date night out with an old colleague and friend, enjoying a sushi dinner and cashing in a gift certificate at the Latham Paint and Sip location. The beau had a bro night out with his old biz partner in Albany, checking out an art show and sippin’ on beers. We even had dinner out twice this month, once after our trip because the fridge was empty. We did all of this on a reduced envelope this month, normally $195, set at $100.

Other random facts about February.
We cash flowed an inspection, oil change, tire rotation and registration for the beau’s car. I re-upped my subscription with AAA, as I do not pay for those services via our car insurance. AAA is an expense you use once, see how convenient it is and keep in fear of needing again. Ha! I’m determined to take advantage of their discounts this year! I also renewed hosting for this blog, but for only a month. Dun dun dun. Oh! A little home improvement: we bought a doorknob. And a hot water bottle because hello, it’s cold in Upstate NY and this is my $17 solution for not turning up the heat. And relieving cramps.

Numbers wise, we paid off 4.25% of debt this month, totaling 25.09%! One fourth of the way done! Our balance is now $66,730.17 having paid off $22,345.28 since September. This system works, no need to try and reinvent the wheel or my other favorite motto: keep it simple stupid. According to these stats, we should be debt free by September 2019; two years after starting this debt free journey. It’s hard not to get consumed by that date and what’s “expected” of us each month to reach that goal, but on the other hand, it is motivating. I want to earn more money. I want to spend less. I want to live a life saving and spending my income in a way that makes me happy… not giving it to Sallie Mae. I’m constantly fiddling with spreadsheets to figure out how to move that date forward… and it is creeping up. Slowly but surely.

How was February for you? Did you hit any financial milestones?

December’s Budget Review

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December was a wonderful month for us! Hard, especially saying no to a number of requests to go out for a drink, but we did it. We cash flowed Christmas with no sinking fund in place and even had extra cash at the end of the month to deposit toward debt. Step back and think about it: are you going to be paying off Christmas next month or next summer? Not worth it!

The beau and I had a conversation about Christmas and what it means to us: we both agree that spending money on gifts is unnecessary. We both have families that are fortunate enough to buy as things come up / are needed, and having this added pressure is silly. Looking back at last week, my favorite part of Christmas was being together. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all saved our cash and instead saved it for a trip or vacation together? At least on my side of the family, there are no kids = gifts aren’t needed under the tree for that added Christmas magic moment. Do I sound like Scrooge? I don’t feel like one: I just enjoy being home for the holiday, having a special dinner and playing a couple games.

With the added gift expenses, I wanted to save as much possible in other categories. Here are some things we did this month to reduce our fixed expenses:

  • We combined our cell phone plan: I opened my Cingular Wireless account back in 2003. Eventually AT&T bought Cingular and my plan never changed… until December 3rd! I feel silly for paying as much as I was each month (it was up to $79.29), I was admittedly nervous about getting rid of my grandfathered plan, but it was indeed outdated. The beau joined my plan, as I receive a discount via my employer, so we should save at least $25 per month (we haven’t received an invoice yet reflecting the change). With five days left in this billing cycle, we’ve used .8 of 6GB…. so we will most likely be changing our data plan to save even more.
  • We did our research and changed our insurance company for both auto and home owners insurance. It took us about three weeks to make the decision, but it was worth it: we are saving $24 each month for our auto insurance (or $288 each year). Our home owners insurance actually went up $1 per month, but that’s because we opted in to an additional coverage line that we didn’t have previously (regarding water backup damage). But it wasn’t just about the money: we just weren’t happy with the representative that we were working with and as it turns out, our bartender also slings insurance. Or did, he got us set up before taking time off for the holidays.
  • Ohhhhh Spectrum! I received our INCREASED December internet invoice and called to ask why it had changed (the promotion was over) without notification. They insisted it was on my November invoice, but when we both took a look, it wasn’t. So I negotiated our rate for one more month and saved $10. The cost will jump from $44 to $69.95 for 20Mbps (with Time Warner). But with Spectrum, you can get 100Mbps for $64.95… explain that one. AND they insist on saying I’m a TW customer despite logging on to the Spectrum website… but when I asked to become a Spectrum customer to receive the next promotion ($44 for 100Mbps), I was told I couldn’t because technically overall I’m a Spectrum customer. Talk about confusing. I’m just HOPING and SENDING POSITIVE VIBES that Massive Mesh will expand within the next couple of months so that I can officially DUMP Spectrum. I would cancel it altogether until their expansion buuuuuuuut the beau is taking a class that runs through February and he needs the Internet to do his hw. hw – remember when you’d have to write that little shortcut down in your agenda? Ha! I digress: either Massive Mesh needs to get their act together ASAP or we are going back to track phones to avoid that payment each month.

To save money in general, this month we:

  • Installed a new condensate pump ourselves. And by we I mean the beau and his dad. The furnace service person suggested a replacement costing $346 – we had a gift card to Amazon and bought one for $45 – BOOM! 
  • Registered for a 2018 race at the early bird rate. I learned my lesson with the TTT, the earlier you register for a race, the better. $10 saved 🙂
  • Switched around a dermatologist appointment. I’ll now have a deductible in 2018 for my health insurance ($50), so I changed doctors (I didn’t care for mine anyway) and expressed my intention to the new doctor to save money, and not only did she see me as a new patient, but she also performed a little procedure that same day. Normally that’s a second visit, so I saved $30 for a copay and essentially $20 extra dollars had I gone in January. And I no longer have a skin tag growing on my nose that looks like a booger. Win win.

I continued planning our meals but didn’t use the repeating method this month. I can tell you that it’s far easier shopping for repeat meals! It felt like chaos in the stores running around for a ton of different items, ha! We did use up all of our allocated cash for both food and eating out, with the help of some money won during the holidays on scratch offs for Chinese takeout. Not bad because I also bought some added ingredients for our Christmas dinner…

…which was a portobello wellington via Bosh! So so good! It was a tiny tad bit dry but definitely something I can tweak the next time I make it (just add more stock to the stuffing). A delicious gravy would be a great addition too! But paired with creamy potatoes, I didn’t mind one bit.

I also had two leftover squash in the house and tried three new recipes to use ’em up:

Creamy Pumpkin Marinara however I used an ugly squash via Field Goods and didn’t add the cinnamon or parmesan cheese. It was delicious! The beau isn’t a lover of squash but paired with pasta and made to taste like an alla vodka sauce, we both enjoyed this meal.

I had one other random squash lying around from Halloween and decided to make a spicy curry soup. It was bland despite smelling great and the texture was weird and now I can’t seem to find the recipe used, whoops! I must have deleted it from a Pinterest board it was that bad.

But I did attempt my first loaf of no-knead bread! I used this recipe and it came out okay – not bad but not anything to get excited about. It was what we ate with the soup, and just about devoured the whole loaf. I’m determined to master a good loaf of bread!

Now on to my most favorite part of the post – the total numbers!

In December, we reduced our total debt by $3,556.43 (or 4.65%)! *The smallest payoff month to date. Our remaining debt balance is $72,884.19! That means in just four months, we’ve paid off a total of $16,191.26 or reduced debt by 18.18%! That’s soooooo close to 20% or being 1/5 of the way done and sooooo close to being in the $60ks… which will happen in January! The remaining balance on the Prius (our current debt snowball account) is only $4,257.18.

Other random numbers I calculated this month that keep me motivated:

  • We paid $322 in interest this month, NOT including our mortgage.
  • Multiply that number by 12 and you’d get $3,864; that’s money that we’ll NEVER see again. That is WHY we are speeding up this process to get rid of our debt and pause our retirement contributions.
  • On average we paid $4,047.82 a month! If we stay on that track, we’re projected to pay off $48,573.78 next year! Hint: I hope to BLOW that number out of the water by increasing our monthly income!

I know the month isn’t over yet, but the final payment has been made and we’re both in agreement that our bank account is frozen for the next four days (no pun intended – it was -6 when we got up this morning!). Our NYE tickets were purchased earlier this month and money is set aside for an Uber – we’re ready for 2018!

November’s Budget Review

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Despite booking up most of the month and celebrating Thanksgiving, November draaaaaaaaagged on. And for one reason only: I could not wait to pay my bills! By the end of the first week of the month, all of our bills were paid and I was just sitting around, waiting to get paid so that I could dump money toward debt. I relate this feeling of dedication to when I was training for my first marathon: I had one goal, all in, focused on the finish line. AKA I’m obsessed and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

This month was an outstanding month for us! We paid a total of $4,656.18 toward debt, $755.80 going toward interest! We paid off the last of my personal debt: a credit card that I maxed out a couple of years ago and have been slowly making minimum payments on. Golly, it feels SO DAMN GOOD to no longer have that looming over my head! Especially because it was the debt with the highest interest rate attached to it. We started on this journey back in September with 8 debt balances totaling $89,075.45 and we now have 6 balances totaling $76,440.62! That’s a total of $12,634.83 paid off in three months, down 14.18%. Yes, we are moving at gazelle speed.

We’re now working on debt #3 which is the beau’s Prius. He bought this car in February (of 2017) with a low interest rate of 2.24%. When starting this journey in September, its balance was $10,106.53. November’s ending balance is $7,842.11. My personal goal for this debt is to have it paid in full in February 2018, the one year anniversary of driving it off the lot. I KNOW we can do it!

We also cash flowed a number of items this month (cash flowed = paid cash):

  • 8 snow tires
  • gutters for the back of our house and a cleaning for the ones in the front
  • a baby shower gift
  • a haircut for me
  • three Christmas gifts
  • a birthday gift
  • the Turkey Trot 10k registration
  • a reimbursement to a friend
  • a shirt and dress for myself from the Boden sample sale
  • a winter hiking puffer jacket for myself – thank you Black Friday sales! (the only item I bought Friday)
  • my ADK 46er dues
  • and a domain renewal for the beau

Almost half of those items were gifts, which means in 2018 we need to make sure to start saving for those expenses. To do this, it’s as easy as adding a line to our budget and establishing an envelope to stash cash in each month, similar to our auto insurance savings envelope.

This month we again followed the repeat meals each week:

Monday: Spanish rice
Tuesday: taco pasta
Wednesday: tempeh jalapeno wraps with broccoli
Thursday: veggie pot roast over noodles
Friday: “fish” tacos
Saturday: pizza!

Despite all of my planning, the meals on Tuesdays and Thursdays didn’t work for the beau and his evening class because he didn’t want to bring a meal into the classroom; he’d prefer a sandwich. I’m personally not down with eating a sandwich twice a week for the next three months for dinner, but I let it slide for the first month while he settled into this new schedule. He made a loaf of seitan, our budget friendly alternative to the fake deli slices that are out there. I still made the taco pasta for myself each Tuesday and enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast the following day 🙂 I ditched the veggie pot roast after the first week because although it was super delicious, it was just too much for me to eat day after day. I either made myself a salad on Thursday nights or winged it with other leftovers. We spent every penny of our $400 grocery budget in November. 

We budgeted $195 for any eating out and alcohol purchases for the month and surprise surprise we used it all up. November 4th was our 6-year anniversary of our first date. We returned to Bacchus and enjoyed a drink and an appetizer and looked back on that fun first date. Instead of ordering their wood-fired pizza, we went home and made our own while enjoying some crowlers from Rare Form. The beau has mad pizza skills! We also ordered a box of wine via the Wine Insiders for $65.99. We’re suckers for a good deal and an opportunity to fill up the wine rack in the basement, even if it’s temporarily. Ha! Other than that night out at the beginning of the month, we didn’t eat out again, take out included. This is becoming easier for me because I have a plan and everything needed to cook such planned meals, but I admittedly did want to order takeout at least once. 

For my monthly wellness box via Young Living I stocked up on items that would continue to support our immune systems this yucky time of the year. I spent $301.44 (including shipping) of our $300 budget on 2 bottles of SuperB, 8 bottles of Ningxia Red, 1 bottle of Lime Vitality and a 3-pack of Thieves dental floss. I earned $41.31 back for my next order and received a free bottle of Christmas Spirit essential oil blend… ’tis the season! I also received two free bottles of Red Shot – which I’ve never tried and am looking forward to! The Ningxia Red was 15% off on Cyber Monday, and I snagged 6 of those bottles up then; that just means I won’t have to order Ningxia for the next three months = saving money in this category!

December is going to be another big-spend month for us. I have to wrap up my holiday shopping and the beau still needs to do all of his. This year my gifting will be less, not that I was ever really into gifting, but because I’d rather focus on time spent with family rather than finding something I hope they’ll get use out of. Important to note: we are NOT taking money out of our emergency fund to cover holiday gifts. Nor did we take any out in November to cover the expenses mentioned above. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, dues etc. are NOT emergencies. They didn’t show up out of nowhere. A friend via FB shared a simple spreadsheet she uses for gifts to track what she buys, how much it costs, who it’s being gifted to etc.. I think that’s a wonderful idea! Do you budget for how much you’re going to spend on gifts? How do you keep track if using a debit card?

How we track our monthly budget

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As I’ve been sharing our #debtfreejourney to #financialfreedom progress on social media, more and more people have been requesting to see how I track our monthly budget. I started sending it individually to each person that asked via Google but then thought, why not put it out there for all to see?

I must admit I sometimes felt silly sending it off because it is super simple. I must also admit that just two months ago it looked completely different with tables, a ton of colors and far too many lines. One day it just clicked: log the money coming in, log the money going out. We’re entering three months of officially sticking to our budget and with the new year approaching, I can tell you there will be slight changes made. I will be adding fixed expense lines for:

  • our mortgage. I read that if you pay just one extra payment toward your mortgage each year, you’ll shave off 7 years! (on a traditional 30 year mortgage) I don’t know how accurate that is, as the book was written in the early 90s, but regardless, it has got me motivated to save! For this figure I’m simply dividing our monthly mortgage payment amount by 11 and saving that amount monthly so that in December we can make the additional payment.
  • hair cuts. The beau gets these on the regular and I don’t… but I should. So I’m going to start saving now so that I don’t feel guilty when it happens.
  • Christmas / weddings / birthdays etc: GIFTS! The beau and I aren’t big gift givers and for the holidays my family doesn’t exchange much, as we prefer time spent with each other over items bought just because we “had” to. In example, for Mother’s Day I took my mom to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary and out to a delicious vegan lunch in Woodstock. It was a perfect day out. It would feel good to be prepared for those special occasions, rather than feeling defeated when they roll around. And FYI, they are the same every year, ha! Christmas doesn’t just show up in August out of the blue…
  • the occasional weekend getaway. Dave Ramsey says NOT to take a vacation during baby step number two but for how long its going to take us to pay off this debt, we’ll need treat ourselves occasionally or we’ll get demotivated. I know myself, especially when we start attacking our largest debts and it’ll take longer to see results. I’m not talking thousands each time, I’m thinking a couple camping trips in State Parks next summer, and possibly a weekend in the Catskills next autumn. Our honeymoon is already booked and paid for with cash: I’ve waited a year and I’m not going to wait any longer <3

That being said, here’s what our current monthly budget looks like and as a disclosure, many of the numbers have been changed (those highlighted in green and blue ARE actual numbers):

At the top of the spreadsheet, I list all of our income which includes our two salaries, earned commission from Young Living (yes, not only has this company been supporting my wellness for over 12 years, but it is also contributing to my financial freedom), rebates and any odd jobs I pick up for the month.

Next, I control where EVERY DOLLAR is spent. Many people think budgets are constraining or limiting, but that’s only if you tell it to be! I have two columns for expected and actual because some lines do fluctuate each month i.e. utilities, gas, essential oils, etc..

I prefer to have fewer lines in my budget because when we pay for something randomly, it stands out immediately. If it shows up multiple months in a row, I know it is time to add a line to our budget. The lines that are highlighted in blue are bills that we don’t pay every single month but are fixed on a yearly basis i.e. our water bill will always show up 4 times a year, so we plan ahead and set money aside. Same with our car insurance every six months, trash etc.. We’ll be bumping up the line labeled “inspections” and probably re-name it as “auto maintenance” because my car is ten years old and a newer one is not on the horizon until we’re debt free and I have enough cash in full to purchase one.

If you add up all of the fixed expenses, our hypothetical monthly cost of living would be $3,330. That’s how much it would cost to pay all of our bills in full.

All extra at the end of each month is automatically deposited toward debt, its that simple!

Step one of Dave’s plan is to set up an emergency fund just in case. Prior to us starting this plan, we were both making contributions toward savings. Now that our emergency fund is established, those monthly payments automatically get deposited toward debt, on the same day every month, as if it were going into savings. We chose to do this because we were already use to making those payments, there was no reason why we should be allocating it toward any other line item.

Now for some examples. In this first example, I’ve filled in our hypothetical total income for the month with some of our hypothetical expenses. You can see, we clearly have money left over at the end of the month ($4394.01) to deposit toward debt. Yes!

In this second example, I’ve added some examples of random monthly purchases we’ve seen that reduce the amount we’ve deposited.

The goal either way is to spend less than what you make or to LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS. Case and point: if you’re struggling to figure out how to pay your rent / mortgage, then maybe you don’t need a brand new iPhone. Or a brand new car. Or the newest workout gear for the season. I’m not going to preach because your decisions aren’t going to effect my budget, I’m just going to tell you that I have been and will continue to live below my means because that’s the only way to see results. And if you still want all of those things but are struggling, then that means you have to find a way to bring more income into your budget plan. I’ll stop there for today.

Below is a snapshot of a budget that is lacking enough funds to not only cover the monthly expenses, but random expenses that do pop up.

So there you have it. It is super simple and easy to follow each month. Almost ridiculously simple. And if you aren’t an excel / Google Sheets pro, you can list this out every month in a notebook to keep track. I have tried Minted. I have tried EveryDollar. I have tried almost every app. available to budget but to be honest, I love my spreadsheet.

Another tip I have is to PAY CASH FOR EVERYTHING! Except for your monthly bills that you can pay online, pay cash for everything else. For example, at the beginning of the month I withdraw $400 cash and put it in my groceries envelope. Literally an enveloped labeled groceries. Every time we go to the market, we pay cash. When you run out of cash, thats it for the month, no more groceries. It has been proven that people spend less when paying cash because you literally see it leaving your wallet. If you’re someone who shops for new clothes on a monthly basis, then you have an envelope for new clothes. The same with entertainment, home repairs, and anything else you may wish to purchase on the regular.

As you can tell, I’m 100% obsessed with talking about this topic and could go on forever. If you have any specific questions about this post or anything else related to budgeting and paying off debt, feel free to comment and I’ll answer them in a future post. You’ve got at least two more years of these updates coming your way 🙂

October in Review

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Woah. October was a doozy. And I know technically the month isn’t over but our bank account is officially “frozen” until November first. We got hit with a number of expenses this month that don’t typically occur / we hadn’t saved up for AND my income was slightly lower with the transition into my new job. We cash flowed all but one item, but more on that one item to come.

Items we paid cash for this month that we typically don’t budget for:

  • a new skirt and two new shirts appropriate for my new office job
  • the beau’s Stitch Fix delivery
  • a solo trip to the movies
  • RAM for my laptop
  • tuition for the beau’s upcoming class
  • a hair cut
  • a new (used) phone for the beau
  • a visit from the plumber
  • a hotel night in Long Island for a road race
  • pumpkins and Halloween candy for the neighborhood kids

Also, spending $55 within the first week of the month out of food budget on a garlic braid might not have been the smartest move on my end but oh, was it worth it.

Food wise, we’re learning to just make it work. Completely cutting out our alcohol envelope was a littttttle rough, but again, we made it work. And did over spend a tiny bit. I think we only had take-out once (Chinese) and didn’t eat out at an actual restaurant at all. That last sentence is a complete 360 change from our lifestyle six months ago. Do I miss it? Yes. Is it personally worth giving up for a relatively short amount of time to pay off debt? Yes.

I mentioned in a previous post that our meal plan / schedule changed this month and I think it was for the better! Shopping was much easier and we didn’t get sick of the meals, which is a plus! Above is a photo of our second trip to the market (Trader Joe’s), as we only shop twice a month.

Mondays: Stir fry
Tuesdays: Lentil walnut tacos
Wednesdays: Sissy’s sandwiches
Thursdays: Indian over rice
Fridays: Spicy pasta in the crockpot
Saturdays: pizza!

Sundays we planned ahead but switched it up each week. November I plan to do the same thing however I’ve got to plan and prepare at least two crockpot meals because the beau will be starting his evening class. I’d prefer to send him off / have him pack a dinner that wasn’t another smoothie (he has one for breakfast every day). The tricky thing is, it can’t be soup; he doesn’t prefer a soup as his entire dinner meal. I took out a book from the library to help me – it helps that books get delivered right to my desk!

The only item we didn’t cash flow this month was a new winter coat. A few months back we transferred my old cc debt to a new and much lower rated card with our local bank. We of course got a cc card with it and it sat in an envelope for months locked up. This is the debt we are currently working to snowball and are fully prepared (we WILL!) to pay off this debt in November. With funds getting low this month, I figured, eh, why not? We won’t accrue any interest… well, if you’re a friend of mine on FB, you probably saw my post that the representative who sold me my coat, also stole my cc information! I’m positive it was her as this card has never been used previous to that transaction. Needless to say, I took that as a sign and learned my lesson: ABSOLUTELY NO CC USE, EVER! If you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it.

The only other budget action I took this month was offering to take on the occasional babysitting gig for a local family. I responded to a post on a private FB group thinking, why not? I do love being around kids and I could use the extra cash. For now its as needed, it may turn into a weekly date night thing once they settle into their new routines. AND she offered to barter my services for massages! Hell yes! If you’re in Troy and would like me to babysit occasionally in the evenings, just reach out!

With all of this spending, we still deposited $1,388.73 toward debt! Our new balance is $80,076.40 – so close to being in the 70’s! And in case you’re keeping track, we’re down 10.10% since September when we started this journey and I put my payoff goal out into the Universe…. which is exactly when I told myself I was sick of my current job situation and landed me a far better job; both mentally and financially. Believe in the power of positive thinking my friends!