June 2013 Getting Out of Debt Update

July 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links.

Spending budget: $400/mo.
We bought $479.70 and made $81 selling misc items. We also made about $190 at a garage sale with friends.
Total spent in June : $479.70 – $81 – $190 = $208.70
If you’re wondering how in the world we are able to do this, you might want to read this post on cutting your household and grocery expenses.

Current splurge $$ from coming in under budget:  $244.90

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. If we come in under the $400, half will go towards the principal on our 2 homes and the other half will be split between us for splurge money. 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 in February with our savings. Our next goal for our splurge money  is to pay for a flat screen tv – it will be our first!
We were only able to pay $25 extra on the mortgages in June.  Only because that’s how much is built in to our scheduled payment every month.  We’re having to dip into our emergency funds in order to cover the repairs on the house in Arkansas so hopefully we’ll be able to get that fully funded again soon.   For now we’re ok, things are just tighter financially than they have been in quite some time.   Better to have that emergency fund that to be going into more debt right now though!
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 
February 2013 Update
March 2013 Update
April 2013 Update
May 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.

Filed Under: debt

Speak Your Mind

*