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A cause for celebration
A couple of things happened this week in the family which called for a celebration. Both of which lead to spending. This triggered a thought about the ways in which we spend to celebrate. You see school ended recently. My wife teaches 2nd grade in public education. On her last day of school, we celebrated. How? We went out to dinner.
Admission: We’re foodies
Now I like going out to eat as much as the next guy. We are foodies. We admit it. If you have ever met us, you would not even have to ask. We like to chow. The problem is, I don’t have the culinary knowledge to whip anything up other than the 6 or so dishes that I have rotated in and out of the menu for years. So…we celebrated the end of the school year for Jen and the kids by going out. As we have done, you can schedule going out into your budget. We did that, but it doesn’t take much for us to break the budget to have someone else serve us dinner. At a cost of course.
Food less celebratory spending
The second cause to celebrate did not involve food. It was an achievement celebration. See the video attached.
The Flickr video is better quality than the YouTube video:
The second celebration was the day that my six-year-old son took the training wheels off of his bicycle and learned to ride two-wheeled. He took to riding without training wheels within minutes. I had tried to teach him months back, but he was not ready. This week he was ready. We celebrated with a trip to the bike shop. Ben’s bicycle did not have a kick stand. His bike was held up with the training wheels that he ceremonially threw away at the park where he learned to ride. So off we went to the bike shop. A couple of impulse buys there not including the kick stand and we walked away spending $64.00.
This week I recognized celebratory triggers for my spending. Who wouldn’t want to treat their family members to celebrations? No one. Go ahead and celebrate! Just grab the mile-high view the next time you celebrate and recognize if it is an excuse to spend outside of your budget.
This not so cool house
Of course the air conditioner in the house is on the fritz. Just a day after asking an a/c friend how his side jobs were going. Looks like we need to ask him for a visit to figure out why the unit is dripping water and the platform is damp and what in the heck is that intermittent noise. Awe heck, I just unplugged the thing and pulled out the fans from storage.
We are on a level pay plan with the electric company. We pay over $300.00 a month in electricity alone. We have paid the bill entirely in the past several months when not paid by my mother-in-law. I have been shutting this and that off when not in use. I can’t blame the kids entirely. I still however; cannot understand why my son needs the light on when taking a bath in the late morning.
We have a large home and I am constantly turning off lights and replacing them with high efficiency long lasting bulbs. We do have two refrigerators and a separate freezer. We should get more in tune with using only one of them more wisely and unplugging the other. The stand alone freezer has aged ice cubes and old ice cream. Maybe it’s time to unplug that as well. The more I type, the more ideas I have for saving electricity and the slower I type because of all of these ideas. Must save electricity.
I wonder if we can get by without the a/c after all…….naaa. Bummer, looks like the emergency fund will need to get tapped. The good news is that we should not have to use credit to get that cool house we once enjoyed.
Snowball receipt
Jen’s mother
June gloom. I have an admission. We had June gloom. The bills are current. The budget is not. I may have shared that Jen’s mother had been ill for several months. Backing up a bit, we moved in to care for her mother nine years ago when Jen’s father passed away. Her mother had hip replacement surgery a year or more before her husband died. She had been unable to walk up the stairs of her two story home for a couple of years. Jennifer and I were in a small 2-bedroom condo across town raising a toddler. Soon after Jen’s father passed away, we moved in with her mother. We cared for her. She cared for us. Earlier this month on her 78th birthday, Jen’s mother passed away after a long slow battle of several different ailments including dementia. Although she had been in managed care facilities since October 2007, we miss her.
Losing it
Gloom. Our minds were busy. Hearts were and still are heavy. We crept back to losing some steam of the debt end journey. Forgotten were the staples that kept us on course. An example would be as Dave Ramsey would say, “On baby-step #1, the only time that you should see the inside of a restaurant, is if you work in one.” We ate out a bit. Comfort food and all. Our church family really stepped up and were a great source of encouragement. We received MANY cards, telephone calls, and dinner delivered to the house. We had just lost it.
Summer savings
The gloom less news was that we met the goal of saving three months of salary for Jennifer to cover her salary this summer from teaching. Unlike most conventional public school teachers who spread their salary across the entire year, Jennifer is paid only 9 months of the 12. Our goal was to save at least $10,000.00. We met the goal only with the tax return and irregular savings of $1,100.00 a month. This would be less than her take home amount each month, so the double savings is on. We have to budget for less income from her salary, plus continuing on with the budget developed from our financial fitness class taken last March.
Getting ‘Chased” by Disney
We have skipped renewal of the family annual passes for Disneyland. Each year prior to March of 2008, the four of us had annual passes for as far back as I can remember. We would spend upwards of $600.00 a year on passes. One year we bought four unlimited passes which were over $300.00 each. Of course we could not really afford this, so we opened a Disney Chase Visa to pay for the passes. We fooled ourselves into thinking that we would use that Visa card only on Disney purchases. We racked up $4,500.00 on it and then CONsolidated it into a CONsolidation loan. So 18 months ago the card was not closed and I have since spent another $2,300.00 on non-Disney related purchases including the Wii.
The good news is that the Disney Visa is next in line to be roll into the debt snowball. The emphasis on CON is mine. I have since learned that consolidaing debt without addressing the spending issue sans budget, is asking for trouble. We have two such loans to which make up 2 of the 6 debts listed in our snowball debt list. They are numbers 3 and 5 on the list.
Memorial service
This coming Friday is the memorial service for Jen’s mother. Until then, I have been watching out for my wife through the grief process. She has not gone into crazy spending mode. She never really has. Ever. Unlike me who is the one that finds comfort in buying, she does not. Thank you soooo much God! We are doing ok aside from that. When a family member passes on, you hear the same heart felt question. It goes something like this. “So, how are you doing?”. I have been answering honestly with, “Better than we deserve.” God gives you peace that passes understanding. If you have peace and cannot understand why, perhaps that’s God’s gift for your soul.
Right now
We have guests over right now. The girls are in the ice cold Jacuzzi. The boys are playing video games. The women are at the kitchen table learning something called a Cricut Machine. I’m once again checking in with you about our debt end journey. So how ‘ya doing?
Her Pressure. My Pleasure.
Taking stock today about personal finance, I was reminded about something that my wife said. She told our Financial Fitness class that she did not feel the pressure of handing the finances that she once felt because I was working with her on the financial responsibility.
My wife took the responsibility of paying the bills. She held the checkbook. She was the one who later wanted to try online banking. I was resistant to online banking even being the family technogeek. I was the one who set the account up, but I would not log on to see the status of the money. I actually had forgotten the user name and password and had to ask her for it.
Prior to our recent debt free journey, I would sit with her while she would go over the bills and input those who she would pay by debit from the checking account. She knew that I had little to no knowledge of how much money was left. This led to my ignorant ability to believe that I could buy now and pay later. What damage could another “small” payment of $10.00 a month do? We could afford that. Right? The problem was not out of control spending, but I would open an account and spend a little thinking I could pay it off.
I did this with computers and clothing. I still use each item and get much use out of them. An example is my 3-year-old Dell computer. It still works great. It has a 15″ flat panel monitor. It runs WinXP Home. It is perfect…..for my daughter who now uses it. I of course bought a Vista ready Dell computer. It was a steal at $299.00 and another $100.00 spent in upgrading the RAM on my own. Dell is the snowball that we are rolling to paying off very soon. It has the smallest balance of the five debts that we have listed. The car being the largest debt.
Aside from the clothes, my family would benefit from what I would spend. That is another lie that I would tell myself. They would benefit more from debt freedom and saving to buy versus what I was doing. Once my wife saw that I had broken the cycle and admitted this to her and myself, she felt the relief that she was not in this battle against money alone. She had the pressure. I had the pleasure.
My advice to those starting out on the path to debt freedom is that you have to work together. Your mate is not your enemy. Work together. Admit mistakes to one another. Pinkie swear and spit shake on the budget that you create. Sign the budgets that you agree to. When you make a new budget, don’t throw the old budget away. Post it in your home where the two of you can see it, but family and friends cannot see it. Unless you need that level of accountability. Then, start your own PF blog and share your mistakes.
It’s 11:21 p.m. I should be sleeping. It’s Father’s Day. The family is in bed. I have been up working on a new photography assignment and reading email. This is a case of using what you have.
I had received a note from the co-leader of the class that we took which led us on this journey. We are having a get together later this month to check in with each other.
It has not been all uphill and we do not sing debt freedom folk songs. Jennifer has been a rock. We are only 90 days into this journey. It is still hard. We have a budget in place. We have a plan of attack on the debt. We have eliminated a few dollars in debt already. It has not been easy, but we are blessed in that my wife and I are of one mind what we have learned thus far. Now, on to bed. I have a long week ahead. Sack lunches are the order for the week.
Getting away
We are heading to San Diego this weekend. Not for the U.S. Open, but to visit the Fair and then my brother-in-law. It’s only 90+ miles away. Part of the GW stimulus check will fund this weekend as we had planned many months ago. Today is Friday and I have taken a vacation day to prepare. Come Monday, Jennifer will be off on summer vacation. Her last day with students was this Thursday. She has a last day luncheon today and then we are off.
90-day update
I just wanted to check in to share that it was a bit over 90-days ago that we began the financial fitness class which in turn started this journey of debt reduction. We started out strong and have lost a bit of the enthusiasm, but the principles of snowballing debt and no new debt has held firm. I stopped listening to Dave Ramsey with Jennifer in the car. I have many excuses, but we are still committed. I will try to explain later, but for now, my 15 minute break from house work is about over. One thing I really enjoy is cleaning the house without the family under foot. Back to work.
A quote and a tip (hut)
I was once a lumber yard manager. I worked for a mom and pop lumber company/True Value hardware store. The owner of the store shared this quote with me on purchasing and pricing lumber. I use it to this day. He said , “Watch the nickels and dimes. Let the dollars take care of themselves.”
We are planning on having a garage sale later this month. I just read some great tips on hosting a garage sale over at Tip Nut. I plan to price low watching the nickels and dimes and allowing the dollars to take care of themselves.
Just found this video over at My Crazy Debt It’s only 3:30.
Dumb Little Man
I have to share with you another blog that I found called Dumb Little Man. This is a fun site with helpful tips on finance. Having spent the past 90 days or so in the mindset of debt reduction, I have been searching and reading other PF (personal finance) blogs. These are simply other bloggers with the courage to share their debt stories and their road to recovery. Check out the blogs that we have linked to.
