February 2013 Getting Out of Debt Update

Spending budget: $400/mo.

We bought $366.24 and made $71 selling some items.

Total spent in February: $366.24 – $71 = $295.24

The Disney Fund has $1233 in it.

We had a fantastic trip last week and I’ll be posting about how we did it within a tight budget throughout the month of March. We do still need to save about $25 to equal the money we spent on the trip.

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. As a partial reward for buckling down and spending even less than with our previous shoe-string budget, we took a trip to Disney World last week with our savings. It was a great feeling to know that we had been intentional about making this trip happen through our diligence and not just because we happened to have extra money like 8 years ago when we went to Disney World!

In February we paid an extra 5 payments on our house in Arkansas (which unfortunately is up for rent for the 4th time in less than 3 years) We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get new renters quickly and that repairs won’t eat 6 months of rent like last time. Ideally I’d like to pay off another 5 months on the house from the proceeds of selling my husband’s unused truck this month, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the house.

Is your family being intentional to get debt paid off before it’s due? I’d love to hear your story,

and to even share it here as a guest post if you’re interested.

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
December Update
January 2013 Update

Estimated date to have both houses paid in full: November 2020! This puts us in a great position to help our kids with their first vehicle and pay state tuition for their college.

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February 2013 Getting Out of Debt Update

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