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A new week, two new Baby Steps!

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Just as the photograph suggests, we are DONE with Baby Step 3! Wahoo!

Having 6 months worth of savings means should we both lose our jobs tomorrow, we’ll be able to cover our monthly expenses for 6 months without having to work a single day. Add in any residual income that I earn on a monthly basis, and we’ll be golden. Fingers crossed we’re never put into this situation but it’s worth reminding the world that emergencies happen. Life happens.

Here’s a recap of our progress:

  • Baby Step 1: Save $1,000 – DONE! Finished August 2017
  • Baby Step 2: Pay off all consumer debt – DONE! Finished in December 2018, $89k paid off in 16 months!
  • Baby Step 3: 3-6 month emergency fund – DONE! Finished June 2019, 6 months of expenses saved!
  • Baby Step 4: Invest 15% of income toward retirement – NOW UNTIL RETIREMENT
  • Baby Step 5: Save for college for kids – SKIP! (We don’t have kids.)
  • Baby Step 6: Pay off mortgage – Sorry SEFCU, you aren’t going to earn much interest from us! 
  • Baby Step 7: Live and give like no one else!

That means we’re up to Baby Step 6 on the list!

For the first time ever (yes, it’s true) I’ll be investing toward my retirement. And for the first time in a long time (we’re talking a decade), the beau will be able to start re-contributing to his. I can’t tell you happy this makes me feel – I was dancing this morning as we re-capped our investing plans, which will begin in July. And for those of you who are interested, here’s a quick breakdown of what that’ll look like for us:

  • Me: I’ll be maxing out a Roth IRA and then I’ll be contributing to a 457b plan (deferred compensation which is offered by my employer). Even though my position is not a state position, we are a member of the NYS Retirement System, so it is and has been mandatory that I participate (aka invest) into that. That figure is NOT calculated into the 15% I’ll be investing – so in reality, I’ll be investing 19.5% of my income.
  • The beau: his employer offers a 401k match! He’ll be investing the minimum to receive the maximum amount of match and then fully funding his Roth IRA.

Both of our paychecks will become significantly smaller but that’s okay – in fact, that’s great news for us! That’s money we aren’t going to have to think about from this point forward and is going to grow and grow and grow (the majority of it tax free) for our futures. This step won’t end for us until we hit retirement. We’ll continue to invest 15% of our gross income from now until then, making changes as we earn more.

Baby Step 5 is saving for college for any children that you may have. We’re both happy to be skipping this step, ha!

Baby Step 6 includes paying off your mortgage – can you even imagine?! We took out a 30 year mortgage with SEFCU back in October 2016. If we’re like many other Baby Steppers, we should have our home paid off within the next 5 years. That’s in 2024! That means we would shave off 22 years of interest payments! Ay-oooooo! If we were to keep our gazelle intensity, I know we could do it within 3 years but here’s why that won’t happen (with our financials as is): because we don’t want to live that way for another 3 years. Ha!

Our mortgage payment is only like $400 a month, if that. The remaining amount (like $650) each month is taxes… and those are something we’re going to have to pay forever. I’m not complaining and yes, I’d like an extra $400 in my pocket each month but I guess because it’s not a larger amount, I’m less gazelle about it. But the idea of selling our house and getting ALL THAT CASH is a great motivator!

We’re also going to be saving for other items during these two baby steps, so we won’t consistently have a lot of cash to dump toward the mortgage each month. Examples of such items include:

  • a new couch for our living room (Kitty oh so kindly peed on our current couch on the regular toward the end of his life and we don’t use it and wouldn’t expect anyone else to use it while visiting)
  • a new back deck because it’s starting to sag oh so unsafely
  • a new (used) desktop computer because the beau hasn’t had one for over a year now – as a graphic designer, this is a need ha ha
  • finish our upstairs bathroom because we’ve had exposed drywall since February 2018 (new everything except the tub)
  • travel! I’d love the opportunity to take two big trips a year
  • oh and remember the section of roofing that was leaking during BB2? We’d like to fix that / room as well
  • a new car. Neither one of us needs a new car right now but eventually I will. My car is now 11 years old – I bought it brand new off the lot – and my goal is to have it until 2023 (15 years!). Cars are expensive, so we’re going to start squirreling cash away each month NOW so that LATER we won’t be scrambling.

The list is never ending as an adult, right? And while the list grows, so does our trust that this plan works. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saving up money for something. In fact, I think it makes you appreciate whatever it is you’re saving up for even more. It also gives you a lot of time to think about what you want / research all of your options. We haven’t had the money to buy a couch yet but we’ve been looking for months. It not only motivated us to stick to our budget to finish BB3 as fast as possible, but it’s given us time to shop around until we find one that’s juuuuust right. We haven’t found it btw, the deck has been bumped up to be our first saving priority.

Something else that’s changing this month that’s been weighing heavy on my heart over the last 8 months or so is our budget line to GIVE. Dave Ramsey talks about this extensively throughout his program and honestly it was something we didn’t connect with, not having the same faith background. He suggests tithing 10% of your income throughout your entire debt free journey. I couldn’t wrap my head around that concept until I met a couple doing just that. They make less than the beau and I AND STILL GAVE AWAY 10% of their income. And yes, they are debt free! Each and every time I watch lesson 9 of FPU I cry and get worked up with anticipation of doing more. The time has finally come.

We are officially giving 10% of our gross income! It’s built into our July budget and ready to be implemented. Because neither one of us are of faith, we will not be giving this money to a church but to other causes and organizations. We’re opening a separate savings account to deposit this cash in to and as we see fit, will put the money to good use. Top on my personal list is a lifetime membership to the ADK 46ers, mostly because I’m always behind on my annual $10 payment, ha! I’m also looking forward to sponsoring a child for summer camp via a local organization – I’m telling you, the possibilities are endless! I LOVE thinking about making a difference, no matter the size. Think about it, if you had say, $1,000 a month to gift to someone or some organization, what would you do with the cash? DR has this amazing visual that I love sharing:

Picture yourself holding a handful of $100 bills. You’ve got a tight grip on that cash, not allowing any of it to “get away” from you. Essentially, your hand is making a fist, holding on to that cash so tightly. This is the grip of someone living paycheck to paycheck, unable to save, unable to help their community. That fist is a symbol even a dog can recognize. That fist doesn’t allow money to leave your palm, but it also doesn’t allow any more to enter.

I don’t know how much I’ll be sharing from this point forward on a monthly basis on this platform, as I know progress will be slow in Baby Step 6, but you better believe we’ll be walking the walk. And once we get to the halfway mark on the mortgage, I’ll keep you posted. I’m a true believer in the budget and will continue to make one for the rest of my life, regardless of how much income we earn. It feels pretty surreal to be at this point, saving 15%, giving 10%, paying off our mortgage (who does that in their 30s?!) and living life to the max. But let me tell you, it feels pretty damn good.

It’s day 176 of 2019, which means there are only 189 days left of the year. That happened REAL FAST. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this entire process is that time goes by, regardless of whether or not your working the baby steps. Regardless of whether or not you’re training for a race. Losing the weight. Eating organic, whatever your next goal may be. Make your days count.

Hiking the Tongue Mountain Range: Fifth, French and First

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To celebrate Earth Day, Paula and I took the day off from work to be outdoors and hiked a section of the Tongue Mountain Range. We had wanted to complete these six peaks during the winter season but time got away from us. I secretly had been dreading this range because Paula had hiked it years ago and kept mentioning the relentless ups and downs. Also: rattlesnakes. I had also wanted to hike this range last Autumn as a training run for my ultra but was too afraid to do it solo because all of the recent trail reports mentioned multiple sightings of rattlesnakes. Yeah, no thank you.

Hiking this range in late April was the perfect time to go, here’s why:

The views! The trees didn’t have any buds on them whatsoever so you had views of Lake George for almost the entire day.

We parked at the Clay Meadows Parking lot and headed down into the woods at 7:34AM. Within a short distance, we were crossing a man-made bridge over a swampy area, with a beaver dam to the left and two ducks swimming along, minding their biz. I don’t know how this caught my eye but I saw a painted turtle stuck in the dam! Hims was stuck in a vertical position and with his legs and head up in the air. I sprung into action and walked out on the damn (luckily it was very sturdy) and freed the little fellow. Good deed of the day done!

The hike up the red trail was beautiful – while a steady incline, there were many gorgeous waterfalls along the way. We stopped a number of times to take photographs and take in all of the green; it was a welcome, Spring sight! During this section of the trail we heard an owl and I spotted my first orange salamander of the season.

Before long (2.6 miles), we were at our first junction of the day: we now had to follow the blue trail toward 5th Peak. We followed the signs to the lean-to, unsure if that would lead us to the summit, and it did! It also lead us to our first set of views for the day.

This would be a wonderful spot to camp out at – I’d consider it next spring! There’s even a privy! We took five minutes to grab a bite to eat and take a look at the map; we decided to bushwhack down to the trail to head over to French.

I didn’t take any photographs along this section but I don’t remember it being difficult (any part of the hike really). It took us about an hour at an easy pace (no rush on this day) to make it over to French Peak and once again we were rewarded with sunshine and more views. We sat down to eat our lunches (it was 11AM) and couldn’t stop saying, “this is a perfect day!”

The trail from French to First Peak again took us about an hour, stopping once to admire all of the frog eggs and salamanders in a vernal pool. There were so so many eggs, and they must have been fairly new because they were only but tiny black specks. (Sometimes you can see the tadpoles moving around in them.) There were more – you guessed it – views along the way and this was about the time that I mentioned I could see why it was an attractive area to rattlesnakes. There was less tree cover and more and more sections of exposed rock = warmth. We didn’t stay on the summit of First too long because we had just eaten and we knew we had a number of miles to still cover in the day.

This is where the trail starts to go down down down – nothing too tricky but being my first long Spring hike of the year, a couple of spots did have me scooting down on my butt to avoid tripping. Gotta re-learn to trust the boots! We saw a deer running off in the distance, many robins, one red winged black bird, a big-ass spider that took my breath away scurrying under some leaves, some minnows and Paula wiped a tick off of her pants. So much wildlife!At the base of the range around mile 8, there’s a second junction. We opted out from visiting Monticalm Point and headed back toward the lot, still following the blue trail. This section was right along the lake! The day was starting to get a little warm but the breeze off the water kept us comfortable. AND kept the annoying flies away. Win! There are less trail markers on this side of the range but we easily stayed on track. We even saw the remains of a deer! The trail had rolling hills, nothing that made me stop and question what the heck I was doing out there and despite my feet starting to ache, my spirits were high.

While Paula and I were in conversation, me following her, I saw this HUGE shadow appear on the ground. Paula immediately stopped and my gaze was up toward the sky: a bald eagle! I see them often on my runs in Cohoes but this one was fairly close. She had seen it too and gave me a hug: such a good day!

 

But it gets better! As we were approaching bear point, we started to hear loons calling to each other. I had never heard them mid-day! The peepers were peeping, we saw a frog at one of the water crossings (nothing too tricky) and then we saw it again: the bald eagle flying and swooping around the point. I had once heard that seeing a bald eagle fly was good luck; that it signifies that it’s watching over you like a protective guardian and also symbolizes power and freedom – the stamina to unearth your capabilities and the liberty to move ahead triumphantly. I Googled that list bit and it confirms what I had previously heard, ha! Nonetheless, is was a beautiful sight and a great way to wrap up a great day / hike. We were back at the car by 4:30PM with 13 miles on my watch.

I loved this hike and can’t wait to go back and hike the other three peaks – but I can promise you it won’t be when the snakes are out!

Read about prior Earth Day hikes here and here.

April in Review

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Oh, April.

The beau and I definitely let loose this month and while that felt good, tallying up the month’s spending did not. We aren’t progressing through Baby Step 3 as fast as I had anticipated and we’re the only ones to blame. After all normal household expenses, we should have deposited $5,684 toward savings, but we only deposited $1,780.

Ouch.

But a friend, who has also successfully paid off all debt using this plan, reminded me that we paid cash for everything this month! Despite how long the list, we didn’t dig ourselves a bigger hole. I was appreciative for that positive outlook and reminder.

Here’s a list of everything we purchased that wasn’t budgeted for:

  • our summer CSA via Denison Farm // 22 weeks at $595
  • our annual garbage bill and quarterly water + sewer bill // A lot of Troy residents in my neighborhood were complaining about these two invoices coming due at the same time. I wasn’t shocked and was prepared for these two expenses because they were both due at the same time last year. Shocking how that happens! Our garbage fee went up by $4 and our water bill was consistent (actually slightly less).
  • our last two flights for holiday were booked!
  • the beau and I each got our haircut
  • we had some business expenses: postage, a new URL and web hosting for said URL
  • we paid to have our taxes done
  • the beau had his snow tires removed
  • we each purchased some running gear (sneakers and fuel, both on sale and a race registration)
  • Mets radio ($3)
  • Kitty’s end of life expenses
  • and a few random splurges: milkweed seeds for our yard ($7) and a new rug ($242)

Life.

On the plus side, we did have $11.03 leftover from our eating out / alcohol envelope, so that’ll go in to our vacation cash fund! Whoop whoop! We’re both pretty excited to get our garden up and growing in May; there’s nothing like stepping out into your backyard and harvesting food for dinner.

Our emergency fund is officially 58% funded. I’m still gunning for a July 1st end date – we’re really going to have to buckled down these next two months to make it happen – or get another side hustle. We both have a long list of things we’d like to do / purchase, but can’t until this step is complete. Don’t be surprised if you see us working at Trader Joe’s – I’m joking, kind of. Baby Step 3 is hard, y’all!

Springtime Favorites

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I don’t know about you, but I’m loving the weather this past week or so! The birds are chirping (my favorite way to wake up!), the sun is rising before 6AM, our windows are open in the house, even through the night. The heat has been off for a week! I repeat, I no longer have to pay for heat! Ahhhh, life is good. Spring is a favorite time of the year for me – so green and warm. I remember being a kid outside waiting for the bus in weather like this, thinking nothing could be better than waiting without a coat on.

I’ve rounded up a list of things that are additional favorites of mine from around the Internet – happy surfing! xo

Now that we’ve finished binge watching Queer Eye on Netflix, I’ve become obsessed with the History Channel’s Alone. We’ve just finished season one and I’m admittedly learning a lot about wilderness survival! I’m excited to see season two start because there will be three women attempting to win the cash and survive the longest.

And because I should always be focusing on watching less and reading more, this book is STILL on my dresser and WILL be read this season. Do you manifest materialistic things into your life? Interested in having me share more? Because I totally think I do it on the regular – and I think you could too!

Speaking of books, NPR’s best books of 2018. I’ll be adding a few to my list!

I’m a woman of influence, which means speaking up instead of falling silent. Regardless of what political party you align yourself with or how discouraged you are, I encourage you to read and to continue to show up at the polls. It’s very early, but here’s a list of candidates who have thrown their hats into the presidential race.

I love this company and want this coat in my life!

With an empty house, the beau and I are finally starting to dream about settling in to our home – aka buying furnishings that a cat once ruined. First items up on the list: a couch, an area rug for the living room and bedside tables. We found this company that makes couches out of recycled plastic bottles! We’re going to visit the store in NYC this summer to give them a test.

This lamp is the bedside lamp of my dreams – and it’s on sale!

I’m officially on the hunt for a special dress for dinner at NOMA. I’m looking for something that I’ll be able to not only wear that evening, but throughout our holiday and back home at work. When I’m looking for something, I can’t seem to find it… but when I’m not shopping / don’t have the cash, my list is forever long. Does that happen to anyone else? Do you have any suggestions? I have stumbled upon this dress, this one, this color block one, this bright red one and this one – but they aren’t all work appropriate.

Help a girl out! Where’s your favorite place to shop for staple, long-lasting items (that can’t be purchased in the mall)?

February + March Recap

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So here’s the thing about my opinion re: all things debt:

  • it’s my personal opinion (influenced by Dave Ramsey, yes), not yours, and if you ask to hear my opinion or help, there’s no reason to get defensive if you don’t agree with me
  • it’s not a professional opinion, as I am not a professional financial adviser
  • it’s personal but has proven to work for us AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER PEOPLE

Just had to get that off of my chest before diving into the recap. I’ve been putting it all out there for over a year now and I’m well aware that what we’ve done / currently doing is not the norm and doesn’t align with everyone’s views on money, credit cards, debt, etc..

I know we’re weird as Dave puts it. And I know a lot of you want to be weird too because you’ve told me.

Everyone keeps asking me how. Here’s the thing: we became debt free by deciding to become debt free. If you’ve been following along, you know that we made a lot of sacrifices and said no to a lot. Getting out of debt was hard work, every single day sticking to a budget BUT it was a whole lot easier than making excuse after excuse and staying in debt. And I get it, getting to the actual point to take action AND following through with your plan is probably the hardest step. It took me YEARS of following the Dave-ish plan – while racking up more credit card debt – until it just clicked and we ran and never looked back.

Can you tell I’m sick of people reaching out to me, making excuses and wasting my time? I make zero dollars when I teach FPU. I make zero dollars when I respond to your private messages. I make zero dollars when I reply to your texts.

And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE receiving the texts and messages from friends and acquaintances who are rocking the baby steps and want to update me on their progress. Keep ’em coming! But I can’t stand the people who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk… month after month after month. I’m just not welcoming that in my life anymore. Bye, Felicia!

Like many changes in one’s life, there needs to be a mentality shift.

If you want to lose weight, you have to be committed to changing your diet in order to see the weight come off.
If you want to run a marathon, you have to be committed to running a shit-ton of miles / following a training plan to cross the finish line.
If you want to be debt free, then your spending habits must change.

Numbers (weight, miles and savings) change when YOU change.

And you have to be fully committed. You can’t eat healthy for a week and expect lifetime results. You can’t run 4 miles and expect to cross the finish line of a half marathon and feel good. Been there, done that, ha!

This is my motivational, get off your ass or shut up speech.

Back to the recap:

February and March weren’t high savings months for us, but for good reason… we’re paying cash for our summer holiday! Yes, it’s true, DR doesn’t suggest taking a holiday until you’re debt free with a fully funded emergency fund, but we’re flexing the plan for a once in a lifetime opportunity to eat a vegan meal at NOMA. Ahhhh! We’re still in disbelief that we even got a table for two! Total so far we’ve spent just over $2300 for our flights, dinner reservation and our accommodations (a hostile and Airbnb). Traveling on a budget posts to follow once we’re back and prove it can be done, ha!

We also lived a tiny bit.

  • The beau and I each got a haircut
  • We had taken Kitty to the vet.
  • We celebrated my dad’s birthday
  • We had car things pop up: an inspection and registration
  • We each bought new sneakers and the beau got a few new items of clothing for work
  • And we splurged(I’m kidding) and got new sheets for our bed from HomeGoods and mousetraps + lawn bags from Home Depot

Livin’ it up I tell ya!

We’re still using the envelope / cash method (for groceries, eating out/alcohol, gifts, car insurance and personal cash) and I’m still on the meal planning bandwagon. We’ve even thrown in a little twist on the envelopes: if we have any cash leftover at the end of the month, we’re putting it into our change jar. We usually roll the change at the end of each year, but we figured we’d do it right before our holiday and use whatever’s in there as spending money. Boom! It won’t be much but it’ll be nice for those times when we don’t want to spend money – like in the airport on food. It’s so expensive to eat in airports! This time there’ll be zero guilt.

Oh, and food wise, I’m now buying organic as much as I can. Yes, it is slightly more expensive however since the 21 day processed food / sugar cleanse that I completed, I’ve been buying far less processed food items – so I’m essentially transfer buying. Spending less on the easy, processed stuff, and spending more on healthier, real food items. Still 100% plant based and still 100% within budget.

Because I’m finishing this post two month’s after starting it, I can disclose that we’re getting basically nothing back in taxes this year – which we prefer. And by nothing I mean like $300. We’d rather have our hard-earned cash NOW (or on a monthly basis) rather than loaning it to the government, interest free for a year, then getting it as a giant lump sum. We’ve found our sweet spot with deductions to allow us to basically break even. Being debt free and an emergency fund sure does change your outlook on specific things!

Speaking of things, our emergency fund is now 47% funded – wahoo! My goal is to have it fully funded by July 1st because we’d like to start investing in retirement ASAP and we’ve got a couple of home projects we’d like to complete this summer. Our deck needs to be replaced and while we’re at it, we’d like to install french doors / replace the sliding glass door that doesn’t have a screen and leaks cold air into our home like woah. It’ll take us a couple of months to save up that cash while investing, so we’ve got to buckle down and pinch those pennies!

Another two months in the books… and another one more than half-way completed. Baby Step 3 is far more difficult for me than Baby Step 2 mentally, because I am a spender and want to relax and shop, but we’ve got goals and I’m not shopping until we hit them!