Our own little celebration at the wedding

Hubs and I shot a wedding last night and we've earmarked a portion of the wedding money to pay off our last student loan.  I've been telling him for weeks that as soon as the wedding is over, we're debt free.

We were pretty busy with other things all night obviously and were across the room from each other during a slow part of the reception.  The first chords of Baker Street, which is the Dave Ramsey theme song, started playing and I turned around to see my husband with a huge grin on his face as he pointed at me.  Just awesome.

Oh, and WE'RE DEBT FREE!!
$22,000 paid off in 14 months.

Resolutions

I do not usually do New Year’s resolutions.  I do not really believe in waiting for a specific day to start making changes to your life if it needs changing.  My main goal for this year is just to be a better version of myself.  I have a wonderful husband, a beautiful home, and three dogs that make me crazy on a daily basis.  I would love to be more patient, quicker with an encouragement, and ready to handle anything.  I have been working on some of my "resolutions" for months but wanted to write them all down together to keep myself accountable. And that accountability is to you, dear internet strangers.

Last night, Hubs and I laid in bed way before midnight and whispered to each other what we thought this year would look like for us.  Our finances will be settled hopefully by my 26^th birthday in May.  After that, we are going to see what life looks like as responsible adults for a few months and then see about trying our hand at being parents.  Our plan has been to be debt free before we started trying to expand our family and we are nearly there.  It seemed to be a much longer trek on the other side of paying everything off but now that we are on the downhill slide, it does not seem that far away.  It does not seem as scary as I expected either. 

Even though we are not there yet, I am excited.

Happy 2013 Everyone.  I hope you get everything you are wanting, find everything you are looking for, and be the person you want to become.

Project Life 365 #Resolution

·         Be debt free (except the house)

·         Have 3 months of expenses saved

·         Go to the gym twice a week.  Quit focusing on the number on the scale and go for myself.

·         Read.

·         Answer emails within 24 hours.

·         Go see a movie with Corey every month.

·         Write even if it’s not very good. Especially if it's not very good.

·         Be a better version of myself.

Another One Bites The Dust

The theme of this year in our house is sacrifice like crazy so we don't ever need to again.  We're living entirely on one salary and the other goes straight to paying off debt.  We don't have any crazy debt story or anything.  I lived the crap out of the time that I was in college and had no idea what a budget was.  I'll take a year of super frugality in exchange for being in the right mindset to find my husband when I came home from a student loan funded study abroad trip in Italy.  But it sucks to pay off later.

But small victory!  We paid off Hubs' truck yesterday.  I called him to say, "Hey guess what?!"  He answered with a "Guess what" of his own.  Within the same hour that I sent the payment off, he realized that he had a gaping hole in one of his tires and was extremely lucky that he happened to have his air compressor in the truck so he could make it home.  Such is life.

They may not be new, but they're paid for.

Our Debt Snowball:

Discover Card

Best Buy Card

Bank of America Zeta Card

Hubs' Student Loan

Hubs' Truck

My Student Loan 

And then there was one.

Wish him luck

Hubs has been having an identity struggle where his job is concerned lately.  He works really hard.  Goodness knows that he works hard.  He feels like he's being taken advantage of at work and the stories that he brings home makes me wonder if they're churning out gossipers more than product at his company.

He found an electrical lineman apprenticeship program that really has gotten his attention.  A lady that he works with has a husband in an apprenticeship and he loves it.  My sweet husband who would barely call to order a pizza because he was too shy when we started dating has been reaching out to anyone that he can get a hold of.  He's taken his coworker's husband out to talk to him, reached out to bloggers, and buried himself in forums to try to give himself everything he would need to try to get accepted into the program.

He officially applied last month.

Off it went!

He got a letter in the mail within a week scheduling an interview.  He tells me that he's read that this program only does interviews every 4 months so we are waiting very patiently until January to see if this is a road that we're going to go down for the next years of our life.  

He's so excited.  And it makes me so happy to see him get so excited.  He's a dang good husband.

Adventures in Sewing

In college, I was a technical theater major and I absolutely loved my costume design classes.  When we were getting started, our professor would give us patterns to sew to get everybody on the same page.  I remember blowing through that pattern like it was timed.  Hands in the air and all.

My grandmother loved to sew and even had a part of her basement partitioned off for her work area.  Since she baby sat my cousin and I before we were in school, one of my earliest memories was crawling underneath the table where she would cut fabric amidst all of the scraps thrown in the box under the table and try to find two pieces that were cut exactly alike.  Every item in that room smelled like dust and old cigarettes.  My grandma quit smoking when she found out I had asthma but some smells don't disappear even over time.  

When she died, the sewing machines and whatnot were divided up and I got this one.  I don't honestly think I've even opened the case.  It was brought home from Kansas City and it was immediately put into the attic.  Corey's brought it down a few times for me and discreetly put it back when I didn't use it.  I found a pattern for a cash wallet with envelopes that I've been thinking about making.  The pattern was hopelessly difficult to follow so I cut the pieces to size and decided to wing it.  I hoisted the suitcase up on the counter and hit the buckles.  Guess what?  It smelled just like dust and old cigarettes.  Normally, I can't stand the smell of cigarettes but it took me straight back to being there with her and doing something she loved.

I've decided to name her Helga because she's a temperamental old broad.  The whole project took around two hours because I had to relearn how to sew. 

The sizes I cut from the pattern looked pretty good and were easy to put together.  I decided that I would like to have three envelopes and somewhere for my checkbook to go.  I'm going to have to figure out something to do with my cards because while we don't have credit cards anymore, there are still quite a few that I'd like to have with me on a daily basis.  License, insurance card, PetSmart card, etc.

I didn't want to add zippers to the envelopes so I just sewed about two inches on either side of the opening where you would stick the cash in so it was able to lay flat but not easily slip out.    I did it while it was inside out of your couldn't see the majority of the thread.  Another thing I changed was that the cover felt super flimsy so I improvised.  A box of cereal was exactly the length of the insert that I wanted to add some substance.

The almost finished project!  The checkbook fits perfectly and since I went with zipper-less pouches for cash it was a snug fit which is exactly what I wanted.

It is obviously blow money day because I had cash to throw in here. :)

Since I haven't figured out the card thing yet, I'm going to solve it with a ribbon for now.  It holds all of my envelopes closed and I even shook it and my cards didn't move.

I haven't had a chance to use it out in the world yet but so far I'm really happy with it.  Next time I need to sew something, I doubt it will take as long as this project did because of the learning curve.

Total cost?  Around $4 for the fabric.  I already had the thread and ribbon from my St. Patrick's Day wreath.

25% of the Way

We ran the numbers and we are officially 25% of the way through our debt snowball.  Woo!  Corey is thinking about getting a second job because he is determined to knock this thing out as fast as possible.  I'm so proud of him for jumping into this with both feet.  Having him on the same page is incredible and we'll get this knocked out that much faster.  Since we've only been doing this for three months, at this current pace I think that we'll definitely be on track to be done in February/March of 2013.

Out of State Wedding

One of Corey's track friends from college got married last weekend and we decided to make the trek down to Conway to see him get married.  Since we're on a budget, we wanted to stay as close to our goal of $150 as possible.

Corey likes to look up Man vs. Food locations whenever we head somewhere new and ended up falling in love with this place called Cotham Mercantile.  It was down some random highway and our GPS got very confused.  If we hadn't seen the front of the building in the MVF episode, we would probably still be out there looking for it.  They're known for their Hubcap burgers.  It's basically a burger the size of your entire plate.  Or your husband's head.  He was very happy.

We booked it back to Conway to get ready and on the way to the wedding.  Their processional music was an instrumental version of Skinny Love. My heart was a little broken to find out that Bon Iver would be performing at the Little Rock River Walk on Sunday evening and we had to head home to get me back to work on Monday.  Sigh.  We were so close.

As their slideshow was going on before the wedding, it was wonderful to see them grow up together essentially through their photos.  Nine years together is astonishing.  Corey and I are exactly one month shy of our first married anniversary in this photo.  Why yes, I am drinking out of a mason jar in Arkansas too.

The happy couples.  Check out my sweet ankle brace accessory.  I'm just about done with that piece of healing from last week's tumble.

Ok, back to the budget portion.  The hotel that they had the group rate at was $110 a night.  We went ahead and used our AAA discount to stay in a hotel that was less than half of that rate.We decided to  not buy anything new to wear for the wedding.  I found a dress that I had worn to my graduation in 2009 hanging in a suit bag in our spare closet.  Win!  We homemade a gift and gassed up the car.  We could have cut corners on the eating out by not going to the Man vs. Food restaurant but we have no plans to go back to Little Rock in the future.  We just considered it in our normal restaurant visit for the month so we're not upset with ourselves budget wise.

Our final total was $185.65.  By my calculations, we saved $134 from what we would have done if we weren't keeping a huge eye on our finances.  I'm proud of us.  This is the first time we've gone out and done something big since we started getting super serious on our budget.  It just shows that we can still enjoy ourselves and win.

Car Trouble

 

We've been working ourselves into the ground to get money earned to start to pay Corey's student loan off next.  Something got into Corey's head and he decided that we were going to find a way to pay the entire thing off this month.  That's something like $2,650 in one month.  Since that's more than our normal income this month, I've been keeping my hopes up but the numbers weren't adding up.  We made much more than expected at the garage sale, dipping our toes into the waters of Ebay was paying off, and I had a boudoir party and a wedding this month for the studio.  We actually got up over half of the balance of his loan waiting in the bank account and then we realized that we had a decent expense coming up.  Twice.

Both of our cars have been having issues lately, Corey's tires and my brakes have been making us anxious.  My car is 8 years old and Corey's is 11 so it's not a surprise that we're going to have car maintenance.  The tires that have been on Corey's truck are over 10 years old and have spent years sitting in a drive way.  Brakes break and need to be replaced.  We did some price comparisons and headed out to get new tires.  

It feels different to not scramble to figure out how you're going to pay for something and get groceries out of the same paycheck.  It's pretty nice.  Even when the total is pretty lame.

We headed up to Kansas City and dropped my truck off at the dealership that my dad works at to get looked at.  We had to replace sway bars, realign tires, replace brake pads, and other car mumbo jumbo that means that my car is in better shape now.  When I heard how much it was going to be, I was thrilled.  I mean not to pay that much but that it wasn't twice that.  We didn't have to touch our emergency fund and still have money left over to pay on his loan this month.

If we're lucky, we'll be able to get his loan below the $2000 mark by the end of the month and I think I'm still floored by that.  Maybe next month.

We'll pay in cash, thanks.

Right around my birthday, we were able to knock out another credit card!  We don't have a credit card any longer.  It was one of the best feelings when I was able to delete all three of them off of the mint.com app since they all had a zero balance and were cancelled.  It shows that we have cash in the bank and our credit card debt is zero.  I was 19 the last time I had a zero balance on my credit cards.  It was definitely a wonderful way to celebrate my birthday.  Two more student loans and a truck payment to go and we're done!  We're really hoping to see our meager little bank account grow and grow once we don't have to pay so much every month for money that we spent years ago.  

Our Debt Snowball:

Discover Card
Best Buy Card
Bank of America Zeta Card
Corey's Student Loan
Corey's Truck
Dani's Student Loan

City-wide Garage Sale

Corey and I are still working on our house item declutterathon and the city wide garage sale had some really wicked timing.  We just wanted to get as many things out of the house as possible and a little extra money would be nice.  We have had this old couch, loveseat, and chair that have been a major part of my home decor for years.  They had moved with me four different times since I've been on my own.  It's really hard to pretend to be grown ups with your main pieces of furniture in your house are futons.  Granted, they were really nice futons, but still.  It was time to say goodbye.  We were able to send the couch off on Craigslist but the last two pieces just wouldn't leave.  We hoped for the best and got them ready for our garage sale.  We decided that it was going to be their day.  It totally was.

I'll admit it was a little bittersweet to see them go.  When I was in college, all three of my roommates and I curled up on the couch to watch a movie and talk about what type of theme party we wanted to throw in the name of sorority recruitment.  The man who would be my husband got ambush kissed by me the first time on that loveseat.  A few years later, that same fella blew my mind with a ring and a question when I was curled up on it with sweatpants and glasses on.

We have totally respectable married people couches now and I hope the fella that bought them has some good memories with these futons too.  

Homemade Hand Soap

I saw this recipe for homemade hand soap on Pinterest and decided to give it a shot.  Even when on sale, I feel like hand soap is such a rip off.  Since we're already making our own laundry detergent for only a few dollars and love it, I felt pretty confident in this one too.  This recipe was simple enough:

Ingredients: 1 cup of finely grated soap, 10 cups water, and 1 tablespoon liquid glycerin

You'll need a: cheese grater, large pot, measuring cup and spoons, a container for the extras, a liquid measuring cup/something with a spout.  I find those are the easiest for me to use since we don't own a funnel.

Once you have your soap grated, you'll only use one cup of it so find something to store the rest in.  I used a zip lock bag.  Add 10 cups of water into your large pot on medium-low and stir until everything is melted.  Let it cool completely and you're done!  Easy enough, right?

Total cost?  $0.08 per bottle with a whole lot to spare.  That definitely helps keep us way below our budget for household items.

Major thanks to Savvy Housekeeping for putting up the post.  I think it's going to be one used a lot in our house!

Dave Ramsey Got Us

For years, I've been hearing about this Dave Ramsey guy and his method of how to get out of debt.  I would click through the Facebook page and see comments about how people paid off huge amounts of debt.  I made excuses like, "well, they make a lot more than I do so of course they have money to pay toward their debt".  I would never actually 'like' the page because I didn't want people to know that we had debt either.  I would get distracted by someone's new baby on Facebook and move on.

I've been carrying a credit card since my first semester in college.  It was my college sorority's Mastercard and my first card ever so I was too emotionally invested to actually pay it off and get rid of it.  The balance on the card was like a bad diet.  It would lose a little bit and then gain twice as much.  Someone suggested I pay off the balance with my student loan so I would have only one balance to worry about after I graduated so I did that too.  I didn't get rid of the card though so, lo and behold, I had two balances to worry about again.

There wasn't a super high limit on the card but when you're shrugging your cap and gown off to walk into a mediocre first job after college, it was pretty intimidating.  My student loans would start asking for money someday, but not today, so we weren't going to worry about them yet.  Corey still had two years of school left and I had most of the living expense bills.  He got a credit card after a realtor told us that we would never be able to buy a house if one of the signers didn't have any credit.  I picked up a Best Buy card and my student loans started asking for payment.  Someday was here.  Oh yeah, we also got engaged and bought a house.

Now don't get me wrong.  This paints a pretty lame picture but we never felt broke.  Sure, we definitely were, but we never bounced checks, always kept a balance of at least a few hundred in checking and hopefully the same in savings. Corey finally graduated in May of 2011 and was able to get a good job. We live in my dream house.  I would be fine staying here forever.

Tired of all of this owing money junk, I planned to have our entire wedding paid for in cash.  I think that was the turning moment for me at least.  I was standing in my wedding gown in our venue and people were talking about how relaxed I looked.  I got to marry my best friend in a few minutes and none of the cost was going to follow us out the door.  Of course I was relaxed!

Corey's a pretty easy going guy and does a dang good job of answering most things with a "sure, honey."  We were able to get our hands on a Financial Peace University home study.  I watched the first two segments by myself to see if just how much I would have to work on Corey to sit through them.  I liked the information but if he wouldn't pay attention, how much good would they do?

I asked him to not pull out his phone and tactfully ignored his grumbling as I mentioned that I would like to start our FPU thing that evening.  I kept an eye on him for the first few minutes as he was pouting.  My whole body relaxed the first time he let out a chuckle and then a belly laugh at Dave Ramsey.  We watched the whole thing in a week.  He's on board!

We set a budget for the first time and we were absolutely stunned at how much money we would blow a month.  It was somewhere around $700.  Since both of us aren't huge shoppers, we don't really have much to show for it.  We blew some categories completely and fell short in others.  It wasn't a bad first try.

We were able to put $4,850 toward debt since March 1, 2012.  We paid off two credit cards completely.  I'm still not 100% on how on earth we were able to come up with that much money.

Our Debt Snowball:

Discover Card
Best Buy Card
Bank of America Zeta Card
Corey's Student Loan
Corey's Truck
Dani's Student Loan

The cancelled cards are now filling an empty frame on our dining room gallery wall.  We have one more to add and it will be my beloved Bank of America card and I've already got a spot for it the first paycheck of May.  That is if I can find the card.  I've hidden it in our house and I haven't seen it for the better part of a year.

I'm tired of our debt and we'll be out sooner rather than later.  Hardly anyone we know will talk openly about money and debt so here's my contribution.  We made stupid mistakes and listened to people that we really shouldn't have about money.  We shouldn't have even listened to ourselves for a big handful of them.  If I could meet my 19 year old self, I'd shake her.  She has so much to learn.