and cashed in for $50 cashback award from Discover.
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. We’ve almost met our goal 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). 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.
The first 3 weeks of December we hardly shopped at all. I thought we would come in well under budget. Then Christmas happened. I don’t mean Christmas gifts – although we did some last minute purchases to make – I mean the after Christmas sales 
I’ve determined that I have a weakness for super low clearances. The 70% off sales at Target get me every time. I probably dropped $100 there easily. They were mostly decent purchases that have a purpose, but I may have to hold on to some for a couple of years (or 3 or 4) before they’re put to use.
As far as progress goes on our mortgages, we only applied an extra $35 to the mortgage on our house in Arkansas. The only reason we did that much was because I set up the draft to automatically pay $35 extra each month. (Just that small amount cuts about 4 years off the length of the loan!) Our accounts were tight from the refinance and paying the taxes on this house as well (they aren’t included in our mortgage payment) so I didn’t want to put us at risk for overdrawing an account. This month we have a CD coming up for renewal though and I’ll be able to pull that money out to put extra on the mortgages without any penalties. I’m hoping to get hired for some extra classes this year so we can shorten the length of our mortgages even more!
If you haven’t been following our quest 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
October Update
November Update
Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner
Speak Your Mind