October 2012 Getting Out of Debt Update

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Spending budget: $400/mo.
Total spent in October:  $308.31

Right now we have a total of $958 in the Disney fund:
$85 from a yard sale and selling some toys
$18 part of my November splurge money

Our $400 spending budget has to cover all groceries, household
supplies, personal care products, gifts, clothes and other shopping
purchases, as well as home improvement and entertainment.  It’s about a
30% reduction to our spending budget.  My goal is to save enough to cover a trip to Disney World in the spring
(essentially we only have to pay for airfare and 1 child’s ticket).
Airfare is covered, now I just need to save enough for Turkey’s admission ticket.  It’s the best time for our family to go educationally and financially,
but I only feel comfortable doing it if we can make significant
progress on the mortgages too.

This month I did a lot better.  I bought a lot of groceries, but at fabulous prices.  I really didn’t allow myself to do much browsing to be tempted by other purchases.  Now, November was a different story with those after Halloween and pre-Christmas sales 😀  Of the extra money from our spending budget, half went to our mortgages and the other half was split between my hubby and I for splurge money.  In October we only put an extra half payment on the houses since my husband was on forced vacation for most of September.  I’m happy to report that he’s been back at work with extra overtime since the 2nd week of October. 

We’ll be closing soon on the refinance of our current home at an incredibly low rate, so we’ll be dipping into our savings to cover the closing costs.  That’s a bummer, but it will only take about 16 months to save our money back from the reduced interest rate! 

If you haven’t been following our story to pay off both houses and be 100% debt free, you can catch up here. 

Getting Out of Debt Step 1: Know how much debt you have and the associated interest rates.
Getting Out of Debt Step 2: Build an Emergency Fund
Getting Out of Debt Step 3 (Budgeting Step 1): Know how much money you have to spend and make sure your tax withholdings are correct.
Getting Out of Debt Step 4: Create a Budget
Budgeting Step 2: Track your current expenses– preferably 1 year’s worth – to see where you’re spending money.
Budgeting Step 3: Make a plan for all your money, taking into account one time expenses.
Budgeting Step 4: Check up weekly  
Budgeting Step 5: Reassess monthly
June Update
July Update
August Update
September Update

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Comments

  1. Wow!!! A $400 monthly budget toward all of that is awesome! Definitely need to take lessons from you now that we’re going to be on a SUPER tight “going to college” budget! :)