zeelemons

Are you getting sick of these monthly updates? If so, you’re in luck because there will only be two more. Two! Well, fingers crossed there’s only two. I don’t want to jinx myself or anything.

October was a stellar month for us. Despite barely working at my side hustle (ugh, rain), we still managed to put $6,365.74 toward debt! Boom pow!

This month was a three payroll month for me and we both got raises. Our annual gross salary increased by almost ten grand and I share this not to brag, not at all, but to be transparent, as I have this entire process. However, because coworkers visit this page (hello there, co-workers!) I’m not going to disclose who got what. Ask me how much I make in person and I’ll tell you, I’ve got nothing to hide. What I love most about Dave Ramsey’s plan is that it works, regardless of how much you make. Yes, if your shovel is smaller it may take you longer, but it works. You’d be surprised how much people assume we bring home in order to make this much progress… I can tell you you’re probably assuming wrong.

Rule number 3 of the Four Agreements: Don’t make assumptions.

YOU can do it, you just have to choose to do it.

We also got a boost this month in the form of a refund. $819.64 to be exact, from Navient. Looooooooong story short: one of the beau’s loans was eligible to have the last 6 months of payments refunded back to us once it was paid in full. This was a loan that was paid off back in September and we received the money in record time (compared to the 5 months we had to wait for a previous loan refund). That refund was applied immediately to the balance of the solo remaining loan; we chose not to have it deposited into our checking account.

Back to the stats!

This was our 14th month on our #financialpeacejourney and we’ve paid off a total of $80,937.71! That’s 90.86%!!

We only have $8,137.74 left to pay off! This month we hit the milestone of officially being under $10k!!

57 days until our DEBT FREE SCREAM! (December 26th)

Spending wise, we were pretty tuned in to what our budget dictated:

• but we did overspend on our grocery line by $14 and by $10 on the eating out/alcohol line
• the beau donated $10 for the Breast Cancer Walk through his employer
• and we spent $8.64 on Halloween candy (note: no pumpkins this year)

Fun was once again built into our monthly budget! We got two punches in the Nine Pin 26er Challenge and won free box tickets to see Phish at the TU Center. I can tell you that two beers cost us a whopping $23 at that show! Yikes! And we splurged and went out to dinner the night we got the refund from Navient. We used money gifted to us from Christmas last year (!) for this special date night. It was the first time we had been out to dinner together, just the two of us, since February! It felt funny and I was super conscious / aware of how much I could easily drop in just one night, but we made compromises and had a delicious meal. If you haven’t tried the impossible burger at The Shop, animal style, you’re missing out! And take the gamble on the $3 random cans of beer – they were a fun twist!

Personally, I continued strong with the 30 Day Minimalism Challenge. And despite not sharing each day individually on IG, I did complete 27/31 days. I did a giant email purge during the last week and let me tell you, that one felt oh so good! Logging in each day and only have 14 items in my inbox is a delight. I can now solely focus on what’s truly important. (For reference, I started with 788.) I also purged a shit-ton of trash, legit garbage, from my bedroom closet. Why I had been stashing wrappers, receipts and old band aids (not used) in a box, I couldn’t tell you. I’m continuing to make progress each week and have been focusing on small areas at a time. I know that storage container cabinet in the kitchen is calling my name… so.many.mason jars!

Speaking of the kitchen, we had some great meals at home this past month! Here’s a look at some of the meals we ate (a number of photographs shared on IG):

• Mondays: Indian stir-fry, tofu scrambles with home fries
• Tuesdays: lentil soup, black bean soup
• Wednesdays: spaghetti squash with a tvp & mushroom “meat” sauce, quick veggie stir-fry, tofu and broccoli
• Thursdays: homemade sushi with spring rolls, beans & greens
• Fridays: tempeh wraps with roasted broccoli, “fish” tacos
• Saturdays: pizza!
• Sundays: eggplant parm., a tomato bake with crescent rolls, beet balls and a homemade “mozzarella”

I also baked a beautiful (and tasty!) cake for the beau. He had been gone traveling for work so I decided to surprise him with a treat the day he got home (a sweet for my sweet). I stayed up late to bake the cake one Thursday night and then got up early the next day to pick flowers from our garden and frost it. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Running wise, I only ran 45.3 miles. I don’t blame my running friend buuuuuuut she’s on holiday and I’ve skipped the last two weeks. I’m lazy and prefer to sleep when left on my own, ha! It’s pretty damn dark out there in the mornings now, FYI. Excuses, I know. BUT I did do two at home workout videos (Cardio Fix and Upper Fix) and it is SAD how sore I was following those workouts. Like, sore for days. Whelp. I need to do more strength training.

October also brought the finale of my second Financial Peace University class that I co-taught with my friend Rhi. It was a success despite only one person showing up and taking a chance on herself. I can’t wait to follow along with her on this journey! I’ll most likely be teaching one more FPU class in January – keep an eye out for that announcement soon! ((I do not get paid to teach this class; it’s 100% volunteer work. I will show up whether I have one person in the class or 50. You do not need to share your specific numbers/debt with me but I will share mine. You do have to show up to all 9 classes. You may have wandered into debt but you cannot wander out (there is no quick fix).))

Whew! What a month! The final countdown is on…

Oh, September.

September was a challenging month for me mentally. Our 13th month on this #debtfreejourney and Murphy paid us a visit: we woke up one weekday morning to find not one, but two leaks in our roof. Plaster is falling from our ceiling in two locations. And before I dive further into the specifics and frustrations of this house let me just say, breaking gazelle intensity is effing hard.

I cried during my last FPU class seeing the gazelle outrun the cheetah, despite seeing that clip at least 4 other times. Working so so hard and being so laser focused on a goal for over a year to only be sidelined is mentally tough to wrap your head around. It’s not like I shopped us off track. The morning we found the leaks I just walked out of the house and drove myself to work early, unable to look at what we now faced. And I must clarify, my frustration with this occurrence did not stem from fear. Had this happened a year ago, we both would have panicked over how we were going to afford this fix. Now, despite only having $1,000 in savings, we had a plan: we were to suspend all payments to debt (except minimums) until this issue was resolved.

I think we’ve resolved the issue… for now. More on that in a hot minute.

Our totals for the month
In September, we paid off $4,040.70 in debt! Boom!

In total, we’ve paid off $74,571.97 over the last 13 months (that’s 83.72%) and we only have $14,503.48 of debt remaining.

In 2018 alone, we’ve paid a grand total of $56,899 toward debt! To put that into perspective, that’s more than the gross total of one of our salaries. We’re essentially living off of only half of the other person’s gross salary. Yeah, really.

So imagine this: if you’re married, take the higher of the two salaries and split that in half. That’s the only amount of money you have to live on for a year. Every other penny will be thrown into the trash. That’s what it’s like paying off debt in our situation. That’s money we’ll never see again. But just think! Once we are debt free, if we continue to live the same way, every other penny will be put into savings, our future, or travelling! Can you imagine?! At what age will we be able to retire? How much of the world will we be able to see?

You may be asking, “how did you do this if you’ve suspended all payments?” Well, the leaks happened before the second pay days of the month. We had already thrown a huge chunk toward debt at the beginning of the month and then just let the cash pile up over the last two weeks until we knew what the plan was for the roof. Our plan: call every roofer we could find. And we did and only heard back from one guy who offered to come out for $425, for one hour, to tell us what the cost would be. Ah, no. Apparently this is the busiest time of the year for roofers, preparing and fixing roofs before the snow dumps down on us all in Upstate NY. So, we took matters into our own hands.

After climbing up on the roof multiple times and consulting with my dad, the beau took some time off from work to fix it himself. Not only did we find a huge chunk of siding that was flapping in the wind, we found a portion of the rubber roof folded down and most likely the spot where the water had been entering the house. The theme over the last two years with this house has been SHITTY WORK: The tale of two homeowner’s who slapped shit together to sell a house. Seriously, everything seems to be done half-way. Or cheaply. Or in a hurry. Or however you’d like to put it. We saw this in little details during the home buying process, we just didn’t expect the scope of it. This past week it rained pretty hard and the adhesive the beau applied seems to be working… we just now have 3lbs of roof adhesive sitting in our basement. Ha! We now need to replace the drywall / plaster in our entire dining room / sun room and most likely one wall before painting and moving forward. But the good news is, we think we can do this after the snow arrives. We think. We’re going to ride it out over the next month or so to see if there are any changes before we jump to having any further work done. I can live with missing plaster on my roof, just like I’m living with drywall in my master bathroom.

With that, we took the $2,000+ we had saved during those last two weeks and dumped it toward debt. We can always pause later on again if needed.

September was a “normal” payroll month for us and I actually only worked at my side hustle three times this month. BUT I did sell the diamond! Dun dun dunnnnnnn. I won’t mention who I sold it to or for how much (that person or partner may read this blog), but I got more than what I would have gotten if I pawned it and I didn’t have to deal with social media. Win win in my book! I also sold a pair of 10k gold earrings with matching heart pendant from an ex-boyfriend. Seriously, they had been sitting in the box for YEARS in a closet. No hard feelings just not my taste.

Items we purchased this month that weren’t originally in the budget:

• Troy Turkey Trot 10k registration!
• fuel for my race
• the 3lbs of roofing adhesive
• a new-to-me cell phone (iPhone SE used via the internet)
• leaf bags
• personal items

Items paid for using our sinking funds:

• a gift certificate for my grandmother who celebrated her 90th birthday! (gift envelope)
• the second half of our garbage fee (garbage envelope)
• our 4th quarter water bill (water and sewer envelope)
• haircut for the beau (haircut envelope)

Stashing a little money aside each month really helps!

Let’s see, we stuck pretty closely to the dinner meal plan which included our favorite beans and greens served over rice, tempeh jalapeno wraps, plenty of pasta dishes with various veggies from our CSA and a delicious homemade tomato sauce. We even took out a freezer meal (pulled “pork” aka king oyster mushrooms) to use up what we already had on hand for variety. I started teaching another round of FPU on Tuesday evenings, so I’ve been utilizing the crockpot overnight on Mondays so that I have a delicious homemade meal to enjoy after work without having to go home.

We got two more punches toward becoming a 26er with Nine Pin cider – planned fun within the budget! Oh, and we visited the garlic festival in Saugerties with my mom and sister! We didn’t break the bank at this tempting outing: we only purchased one bottle of hot sauce and the beau enjoyed some perogies and a potato pancake. With money worked at my side hustle, we got Chinese takeout twice this month.

A personal challenge I took on this month was the 30 day minimalist challenge. Super easy: for each day of the month, you throw out (donate, sell) that many corresponding items. On 9/1 you get rid of one item, on 9/15 you get rid of fifteen items… and so on. Pretty proud of myself for making it 25 days! You can see each day’s worth of items on IG. Between Board meetings, FPU, running and working on the weekends, I don’t always have a lot of free time when I’m home. Golly, I grocery shop on my lunch breaks to avoid having to do it during my scheduled home time! This challenge has really got me motivated to tackle each room in the house and I’ve been cleaning and organizing throughout the process. I’m literally going through boxes that haven’t been touched since we moved almost two years ago! The beau has been a great sport and participating as needed. I’ve been using what I’ve learned from Marie Kondo along the way to make the process a little easier. HIGHLY suggest her first book if you have yet to read it. I’ll be restarting the challenge for the month of October because I still have more work to do.

Dream job: being a consultant that not only helps people get out of debt but helps them declutter.

I really do think the two of them go hand in hand.

Maybe one day when I’ve walked the walk.

Positive thought moving forward into October: only THREE more payments until we’re debt free! THREE!