Financial Goals Update...and a Splurge

Back in August, we set some financial goals in hopes to have them completed by July 1st; we base our goals around the school year as that's when our money comes in as Pete's a teacher and I babysit during the school months.

We met all of our goals in February and set some new ones.

Here's where we stand as of today:

#1: When the rest of our tax refund came in, take part of it and buy Shawna a new laptop

I got a laptop! It's pretty, and Pete was able to get an awesome deal on it. The screen doesn't shut off whenever I tilt it like the old one did, and although it also has some overheating issues, we got a cooling pad for it and that helps immensely.

#2: Have $17,000 in our savings account by July 1st.

This one is a no go.

If you remember back in March, we had some van issues and had to get a new one. This took our savings from about $12,000 down to just above $1,000. We were pretty depressed seeing all our money fly out the window, but knowing that we had a safer vehicle and we were able to pay cash for it was reassuring. We decided to change our goal from $17,000 to $5,000, figuring that was about how far we had to go to get to the $17,000 goal.

We met that $5,000 goal on Tuesday, almost 4 weeks away from our deadline.

We are in complete disbelief...with all the things we've had to buy or replace this year (a brand new water system for the house, dishwasher, mattress, heater for the basement, furnace repairs, and a van) and the debt we've had to pay off, we shouldn't be here financially. Seriously. The numbers don't add up.

All the credit goes to God. We could not have done this without Him.

Me, being the spender (or as Dave Ramsey says, the Free Spirit) is depressed with all this saving and responsibility. Yes, we've bought a lot of important things, but Pete and I have worked so hard this year and I feel like we have nothing to show for it. So totally not even close to being true, but I wanna see something fun and shiny and feel like the hard work was worth it. I want to CELEBRATE!!!! I feel so selfish thinking that, but if you're a spender, you probably know what I mean.

Pete, being the saver (or Nerd, according to Dave), is totally fine and content with what we've done.

So when we met our goal, I asked him what we should do next. He thought we could try for $6,000 by July 1st. I thought that was impossible, but hey, the rest of the year had been pretty impossible and surprising so far, so who was I to question it?

However, I asked if we could buy something fun. Pete was really hesitant, but he told me I could make a list of things I had in mind and we could discuss it.

I only put two things on my list. First thing on my list was patio furniture. If you know me, you know how badly I want patio furniture! I also put a new TV on the list. We had a really old TV (okay, so maybe not really old, but we've had it for almost 7 years, and it had been used when it was given to us), and it was starting to have issues with connections, so the screen wasn't always clear and the sound was getting muffled.

Pete told me I had to choose which one I wanted.

It was hard.

I really really really really really wanted patio furniture, but we'd use a TV more.

And he found a TV with a great deal: 37% off, plus an additional $50 rebate (a total savings of $270!). Because the sale ends tomorrow (Saturday), he ordered it Wednesday night.

And it got here this afternoon:

It's fun AND shiny!!!!

We were naughty and borrowed from the babysitting money I was earning the remainder of the week as well as the first couple days of next week. We really don't recommend putting big purchases on the credit card like that, but we knew we'd have the money and as we pay off our credit card in full on time every month, we decided to go for it.

It's also awesome because it makes our living room feel bigger. Having a big entertainment center took up a lot of space:

...I think I like the after better...

Watching a movie with the kids on the big TV was so much fun! It was nice having the TV on the wall because kids could stand in front of it and there was no yelling to get out of the way. It's the simple things in life :)

We've started talking about new goals for next year, but our list isn't complete yet. Here's what we have so far:

#1: Have a fully funded emergency fund by July 1st, 2014
We could probably get away with a $15,000 fund, but we'd feel better having $18,000.

#2: We'd like to not have to buy a vehicle in 2014
We've bought a vehicle every year since we got married. We're hoping that just for one year we can keep the car and van we have without accidents or major catastrophes that cause us to have to purchase new ones.

#3: Have our mortgage paid off by the time we turn 45
Okay, so this isn't for next year. But we really want to start chipping away at it. We're giving ourselves 15 years to do $92,000 of work.

Yikes.


What financial goals do you have right now?

Financial Goals Update

I've been debating whether or not to write this post. I know a lot of people, including some of my readers, are struggling financially right now. The last thing I want is for someone to think I'm rubbing it in as to our financial situation, that I'm bragging about where we are. If it comes across that way, I am so sorry, I don't mean for it to. I've had a couple people who read the blog ask how we're doing on our goals, and that's what prompted me to write this after all.

Here are the goals we set back in August, and where we stand with them:

#1: Have our car loan paid off by Thanksgiving
We accomplished this one with a week or so to spare. For awhile it wasn't looking like we'd be able to as we had to replace our whole water softener system. We weren't expecting that, so we had to take out a loan for about $3,000 in order to get one. We paid off both loans, and were debt free (minus the mortgage) by Thanksgiving.

#2: Save up and purchase (in cash) a new camera by December 31st
In November I wrote a post on why we weren't buying the camera. The need for a new mattress was a much higher priority, and we thought we'd push the camera purchase back until January. However, we were blessed and received our camera as a Christmas gift instead. So technically we didn't complete this one, but can still cross it off.

#3: Have $10,000 in our savings account by July 1st.
This was a huge goal that we were nervous about even trying to achieve. With all the things listed above that we had to purchase unexpectedly, then our dishwasher was dying and needed replacing, and then the space heater in the finished portion of our basement died, we were losing hope.

On Wednesday of this past week, not only were we able to complete this goal, but we surpassed it. Four and a half months early.

We are feeling completely and utterly blessed right now. When we look at our budget and how much money we've really brought in, the numbers do not make sense at all.

Wednesday night I was feeling a little lost; we've been working so hard to get these goals accomplished, that now that they were finished, I told Pete we had to set new goals. Here they are:

#1: When the rest of our tax refund came in, take part of it and buy Shawna a new laptop
My laptop has suffered a lot of abuse over the past 5 years by children. It overheats and shuts down every time to you try to upload, download, or watch a video. The screen blacks out every few minutes, it doesn't charge well, and when it does, it won't hold it longer than 10 minutes, and half of the USB ports no longer work.

We set this goal Wednesday, and the rest of our taxes came in this week. We just happened to find a great sale on a laptop this morning, ordered it, and it will be here in the next week or so.

#2: Have $17,000 in our savings account by July 1st.
I have little faith that this one can get accomplished; Pete thinks we can have it done early. He's so optimistic :)

The reason we want this amount is because our van is going to need to be replaced soon. It passed inspection just fine, but it's starting to rust/rot on the bottom, and it's getting very sluggish. We're planning on trading it in and getting a newer one (still used, not brand new!) this summer. Having that amount in our savings will allow us to pay cash for a nicer vehicle that will last us quite a few years, and still have a nice amount in our account.

Our ultimate goal is to have $15,000 in the account as an emergency fund; that amount is the approximate equivalent to 6 months living expenses for our family. Once that goal is accomplished, we'll move on to saving for retirement and the kids' college education.

For a refresher, check out my original post on the importance of having financial goals and how to stay on track with them here.


Have you accomplished any of your financial goals lately?

Thankfulness Days 14 - 20: Hello Busy Life!

Hi everyone :)

As always, it's been busy around here! But there have been many many reasons to be thankful...

Day 14: I have always lived in a village...moving to the country has been a big adjustment for me. I have to walk down the driveway to get the mail, there are no side walks, and we can only see 3 houses from our house. In fact, the neighbor to our left is a mile away!

But Wednesday I was glad we live where neighbors can't hear screaming. Paigey was supposed to be cleaning up her room, and after procrastinating for an hour, she came out and said her finger was bleeding. I bent down to look at it, and she pulled away and began screaming like she was being tortured because she was afraid it was going to hurt. Long story short, Pete had to pin her down and I had to try to cut her hang nail off. About ten minutes later, I ended up having to pull it off so I didn't cut her, and she didn't even notice...she just kept screaming that it would hurt!

I am thankful we live in the middle of nowhere; if we had been in a village, I'm sure the police or child protective services would have been called!!!

Day 15: A year ago we adopted a dog. I didn't want a dog, but my husband and children wore me down. He's a cute little thing, but after our carbon monoxide leak, he's been going through separation anxiety/post traumatic stress disorder. Whenever he thinks we're leaving, he starts having tremors. When we leave him in his crate (which he has never had a problem with), he starts shrieking and whining. He's destroyed his blanket, his bed, his blanket covering his crate, one of Pete's shirts, the cat's blanket, the plastic tray at the bottom of his crate, part of one of our bed sheets and our comforter all while he's been locked up. How did he do all of this? He's been able to actually move his crate around until he reaches something to shred up. We've done some research into it and are working with him, and we're seeing a little improvement, but it's still stressful.

I am thankful for my dog; I hate the dark, and whenever I hear weird noises in the middle of the night, I know Mason's the first one to check it out. He's also very protective of us, and whenever we have someone come to fix something and Pete's not here, he stays between his family and the repair man. He's also entertaining with his tricks :)

Day 16: Friday was very very long. I was exhausted as Ryan was awake for part of the night, I had a heavy babysitting day, all the kids wanted to do was fight, I had a migraine, and lots of cleaning and cooking to do as we were having friends over that night for movie night.

I am thankful for coffee! It helped my migraine go away, and then kept me awake for the extended version of Lord of the Rings: Two Towers with some great friends and good food (3 kinds of pizza and 4 flavors of popcorn!).

Day 17: Our friends left just before midnight, and Pete and I went to bed. As soon as our heads hit the pillow, Ryan started crying. Pete got up with him, got him back to sleep, and came back to bed. Ryan started crying again, so Pete checked him again. We took turns doing this for a while, and then I noticed the dreaded hand holding the belly pose Ryan was striking. We ended up giving him an enema around 1, and got him back to bed a little bit later. We finally got to bed around 1:30, tired, stressed, and completely worn out.

I am thankful for kids playing quietly on Saturday mornings. They let us sleep until 8 and didn't damage anything or create a big mess! Pete let me stay in bed until 10, and I even got breakfast in bed, too.

Day 18: I have a bazillion projects on my to-do list that haven't been getting done lately. I haven't had time to work on them, and whenever I had time to get things done, laundry, cleaning, and paying bills had to be more important. With Christmas coming, my list grew exponentially as I'm making a lot of gifts again this year. Finding time to get things done has been stressing me out.

I am thankful for kids taking long naps/rests, and a husband being on kid duty. I was able to finish Ryan's apron, pot holder and oven mitt and his cape, all things he'll be getting for Christmas. Pictures will be coming soon! The apron, pot holder, and oven mitt are all made out of this fabric:

via fabric.com

Day 19: So many things to be thankful for on this day: my in-laws came over to watch the kids as I had parent teacher conferences to go to, I had great conferences with the teachers, and I finished another Christmas gift, this one is for my niece! It was a long day as Pete was gone 6:45 am - 8:30 pm, but we made it through without major difficulties :)

Day 20: Today was my only day babysitting all week, and it was for our buddy J, who is Nate's best friend. Nate was a wreck this morning; Paige even commented that it was weird that he was the cranky one and she was the happy one! Pete came home a little after 11, and it was nice having that extra set of hands and eyes with four kids in the house. It was a good day, tiring, but good :)

I am thankful for to things today: pie (the new school Pete works for gave out pies to all the teachers, and we had it after dinner), aaaaand......

...*drum roll*...

the final check for Pete's car went out in the mail today! We paid it off!!!!

WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, except for the house...but we've completed Step 2 in Financial Peace University's baby steps, and after we buy a new mattress, we'll move on to Step 3 - 3-6 months living expenses saved up. We're aiming to have $10,000 saved by the end of June. I'm guessing we'll have about 3/4 of that (we have some saved already as our emergency fund), but who knows what the next few months will bring!


Thanksgiving is only a couple days away! What do you have to be thankful for?

Financial Fridays: Having Financial Goals

Hi everyone! I promise, next week I'll start having somewhat regular posts again! We're doing well, just really busy with summer things.

Pete and I were discussing earlier today about setting some financial goals for ourselves. We've noticed that when we have a goal, especially when in regards to financial things, we seem to handle our money better.

Why is it important to have financial goals? It helps you to stay focused, to keep your spending in line, and help you tell your money where to go.

What kind of time line should I have for my goals? Honestly, that may vary on a few things: what your budget allows you to do, what you're willing to sacrifice, and what how much money you need to accomplish said goal. Because Pete is a teacher and only gets paid during the school year, we've found that basing our goals around the school year rather than calendar year works better for our situation.

How can I stay motivated? I know that it can be hard when you have a goal that's not super fun, like paying off a loan. To me, it's much more fun saving for something like a vacation that you get something for all of your hard work! Having a chart where you can see the numbers go up (if it's a saving goal) or down (if it's a paying off debt goal) can help. Setting up mini-goals may help, too: if you're paying off a $5,000 loan, setting goals like paying off each thousand dollars and treating yourself to something small can be helpful and rewarding!

So what goals did we set today? These are all things really important to us for our family's security. I have them listed in chronological order, not order of importance.

#1: Have our car loan paid off by Thanksgiving
This hopefully won't be too much of a stress for us; if we worked really hard, we might be able to have it paid off by October, but Thanksgiving gives us a little bit of wiggle room. We were originally hoping for end of the year, but Thanksgiving means we have to work at it, but not too awful hard. We try to not have any debt, but as Pete's car was totalled in February of this year, we had to take out a loan. We're really excited that our 3 year loan will be paid off in less than a year's time!

#2: Save up and purchase a new camera (in cash) by December 31st
Our camera's flash died a couple months ago. Can I just say how hard it is to take pictures without a flash? We might consider looking into just replacing the flash part, but as it's a few years old, we think a new camera might pay off more. Any suggestions on what kind we should look for? We're looking mostly for a SLR that's budget friendly.

#3: Have $10,000 in our savings account by July 1st
This one is going to take a lot of work and some sacrifice. We have just over $2,000 in there now, but getting that $8,000 is going to be tough. We're really going to have to watch our spending in order to accomplish this one! However, having this money saved is part of Dave Ramsey's Step 3 in his Financial Peace University; Step 1 being save $1,000 in an emergency fund, and Step 2 being debt free (with the exception of mortgage, which we should have by Thanksgiving!!!). Step 3 is having 3 - 6 months of living expenses saved, creating a fully funded emergency fund; $10,000 is somewhere between 4 and 5 months for us. Please help keep us accountable with this goal!


Do you have any financial goals set? How do you stay motivated to accomplish your goals?

Financial Friday: Emergency funds

Financial Fridays: Emergency funds

What a response last week! I'm really excited that people are so interested in getting their finances in order. Just remember, it's not easy, but sooo worth it!

If your refrigerator was to die today, what would you do? Would you panic because you had no way to pay for it? Would you race to the store and buy the first one you see, and then use your credit card (or even open a new credit card account) to pay for it? Or would you be able to calmly go to the store, pick out a great fridge, and buy it in cash?

I'm sure many of us would either panic or use a credit card. This only leads to stress, buyer's remorse, and spending more money than you thought (due to interest on the credit card). But with an emergency fund in place, emergencies will seem a lot less stressful.

What is an emergency fund? Well, it is just that: money set aside for when emergencies happen, because I'm sure you all know that emergencies do happen!

Where do I keep an emergency fund? What we do (and Dave Ramsey recommends) is we have a money market account (ours is through Capital One). It makes more interest than a typical savings account, and we have a checkbook that goes with it, making emergencies much easier to deal with; there's no transferring of money or running to the bank involved. The interest we're getting right now is extremely low (less than 1%), but when we started, I think it was between 6 and 7%, and we were making quite a bit of money each month (and who doesn't love free money?).

How much should I have in an emergency fund? For right now, $1000, or $500 if your income is less than $20,000. Later, after all your debt (excluding mortgage) is paid off, it'll be increased to 3-6 months living expenses.

How am I supposed to find the money for an emergency fund? I can barely pay my bills! This is the hard part. Try saving a few dollars every month, even if it's only $5. Put any unexpected income into your fund, whether it be overtime you weren't expecting, a bonus from work, or that $20 you found in an old purse. Every little bit helps. It's not going to happen overnight (unless you have a fund already established or you have $1000 sitting around unused). But once it's there, you won't worry so much about a car breaking down or living without a stove as much.

A tool that will greatly help in saving, either for an emergency fund or for bigger purchases, is that dreaded B word we all love to hate: Budget. We'll talk about how to start setting one up next week!

And, as promised, some tips for saving money in unexpected places! I'm sure a lot of us know the usual tricks, like eat out less, make your own coffee in the mornings, and bring your own lunch to work. But what if you're already doing that, or it's not making a big difference in your budget? Here are some ways we save money on laundry:

Hang the clothes out to dry: I'm sure this is an obvious one! What's better than pulling bed sheets off the line and they smell all fresh from being outside? I love that smell! Granted, this is probably a seasonal thing for most of you, but even during the summer it can cut costs. And for a few dollars start up cost for line and clothes pins, it really pays for itself!

Use your machines at off peak times: Off peak times are apparently first thing in the morning and late at night. I've tried that and haven't seen a big enough change in my bill to warrant me only doing laundry at those times, but who knows, maybe it would work for you!

Make your own fabric softener: I was wary about trying this...but I'm soooo glad I did! My clothes are all softer and smell better. It's not as strong of a smell as fabric softener, but because I get to choose the scent I want it to be, I like it better. You could skip the conditioner and just use vinegar, but I like the smell of the conditioner added. I even used a little less than what was recommended and didn't notice enough of a difference to go back to adding more. We buy gallon jugs of vinegar (and they only cost .25 more than buying a quart jar!) and I use whatever cheap conditioner I find.

Make your own dryer sheets: I have yet to try this one; I had just bought a huge box of dryer sheets at BJ's when I discovered this. Instead of cutting up fabric like they suggest, I'm going to try some baby washcloths that have seen better days!

Make your own laundry detergent: I haven't tried this either as I tend to be a detergent snob. I've heard great things about those who have tried it, so it's something I may consider in the future......maybe.

All the principles regarding the emergency fund were based on Dave Ramsey's teachings from Financial Peace University. I only touched on the subject; for further information, you can check out his website! And as always, feel free to ask me questions about emergency funds or anything else :)

How would an emergency fund change your life? How do you save money when you do laundry?