Completely out of debt by the time my daughter turns 3

It’s time for another look at our finances. Our student loans have come out of deferment but since hubby is in school or at least will be in the fall, those will go back into deferment soon. It’s been a stressful, weird month so far. I feel behind on our debt repayment probably because I was hoping to send $800 to Best Buy and am no where near that goal.

3 months, 14 days til daughter’s third birthday

Student Loans - roughly $20,000(deferment)
Credit Card #1 - $13,247.35
Credit Card #2 - $1,832.71
Best Buy - $1,138.73
Care Credit - $0 (paid in full!!)

Total = $36,218.79

Debt Plan for the Week

June 20- Make another large payment to Best Buy
End of June - Have sent a total of $800 to Best Buy

We have been trying the envelope system the past few weeks. It’s where you pay cash for everything and put that money into an envelope that is marked for that part of your budget. The biggest pitfall we have currently is hubby’s lunches.

He’s in the middle of a big project and has been working late nights. So he’s been eating 2, sometimes 3, meals out. His budget of $40 just isn’t lasting as long as it would under normal circumstances. It’s been an adjustment especially since gas has went up a few cents. That’s what we’re using June and July for is to gauge just how much we really spend. Cash is helping to keep some things in check like household spending and entertainment.

Spending cash is a lot harder than just using the debit card. Hopefully we can cut our spending down plus I can make more money online. Then I can quit my part-time job to be at home again full-time. This is what the summer is all about - making sure that I can quit and we will be fine.

Here we are. Four days into our budget and it’s already failing. My husband went to pay his phone bill. Well he paid not only the late part but what is now due. I hadn’t planned on paying that until next pay check. So, that is extra money in an already tight budget for the first of the month.

The first of the month is always bad since the big credit card minimum payment is due. I’ve been thinking about paying half with the next check and then the other half at the first of the month to alleviate the weight of that one payment has on the budget.

I get paid Friday, so technically we should be fine money wise. It’s just that I was going to get my Mother’s Day gift this weekend, an Asus laptop. Now that is up in the air. I’ll just have to see how much money I can add to the budget if I get it.

Plus my husband has been working late everyday this week, so his lunch budget is also shot. I just noticed he got an extra $20 out this week from An ATM not associated with our bank. So you might as well call it $23.

My husband’s response when I tell him my worries about making it next week? That I will find a way because I’m really good at this sort of thing. No wonder I feel stressed all the time.

Next week should be better. His project will be done and he might come home early every day since he is working so much overtime. We’ll make it work. I just hope I can still get the Asus.

This month we are trying the envelope system where you use cash for everything. Each budget item has a separate envelope, so that you know exactly how much money you have left in each category.

We are starting out with an envelope for groceries, household, and hubby’s lunches. We’ve opted to leave the budget for gas in the bank since we can pay at the pump, which is so much easier and faster than having to go into the store. Our entertainment fund is also still in the bank, too.

I wanted to take a baby step to do the envelope system to make sure that we would stick to it before liquidating most of our money. Right now we just filled each envelope with the amount for this week. This whole month we will do this to get used to spending cash and having a set amount for each budget item.

Here is the budget:

Lunches $40($7 a day plus $5 for snacks/drinks)
Groceries $40
Household $15

So far, I’ve spent $32 of groceries and $11 of household. But I think I have everything needed for the week. We will probably run out of drinks, so I will need to buy those sometime soon and that might take the rest of the grocery money.

So far, so good. But it’s only Monday. I will have to report back on Friday how it this week went.

Today I had to take my daughter to the doctor. Turns out she has a kidney infection. After just one does of antibiotics, she seems to feel a lot better.

I, on the other hand, am feeling a bit run down. I know I feel overwhelmed with what I want to accomplish in any given day plus trying to get my house in order before we have company for the fourth of July (My home needs a lot of work!). So i just don’t have time to be sick. I already feel so behind on everything. I guess I will just have to either work through it or slow down enough to overcome it.

Tomorrow is my hubby’s payday and so begins our envelope system. You know, paying cash for everything. It’s a scary thought but I think once we get used to handling cash that this will be the best way to keep money in the bank and make our money go further. With today’s emergency visit to the doctor, it really threw my afternoon off.

Good news. I did sell the Dragon Con tickets this morning at a discount. But I was ready to get them taken care of. Heck, I might have just given them away if I knew somebody who wanted or was planning to go. It was just the thought of them not being used that bother me more than the money since I used money I won to pay for them. I will get some money back, so that’s nice. Plus two people will be thrilled that they got good deals on D*C tickets.

I’m not sure what the deal with Paypal is lately but their accounting is just plain hard to follow. How I wound up in the hole in my account is beyond me. Well, not totally but still it just seems not right.

I used my Paypal card to buy gas and ran it as debit. Two charges came through. One was $75 and the other $41. The second one was right. I have no idea where the $75 came from but since it is still pending, I can’t dispute it.

Paypal’s recently history is a little hard to follow, or at least for me. My account did have $13 and the next day it jumped to $101. I had thought the $75 fell off and maybe something else. Turns out that a debit purchase I had done had expired, so they credited my account with that amount. It would have been more but somehow I went from having $13 to a negative $25.

This whole ordeal has me questioning using Paypal anymore. I get paid from everything with Paypal, so I’m stuck with them but think I’ll be doing bank transfers from now on.

This weekend my husband mentioned not going to Dragon Con this year. He’s thinking of all the things we can do with that money plus the rising gas prices will just be more money on a long trip.

We have tried a few times before to make it to Dragon Con, a gaming/Sci Fi convention held Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. I should have known that we wouldn’t make it this year but to be prepared I went ahead and purchased tickets since they go up as the con gets closer.

Well, the tickets are non-refundable. I can sell them and the buyer will have to pay a $20 transfer fee. Right now tickets are only $15 more than I paid for. So if I sold them at face value, someone would be paying $5 more than they would if they just got them from the con.

I think the tickets go up in July, so I could try to sell them then. But as the date draws closer, shuffling back paperwork can become tricky.

The good news is that I use the money I ‘won.’ The bad news is that I probably want get all, if any, of it back.

One of my goals this week was to pay Care Credit. We’ve had a few bumps this week with car problems and a trip to the eye doctor and glasses. But since this debt is something I really wanted to see gone, I took the money from savings to finish paying it off.

It was down to $91 but then finance charges brought it up to $105.46. Another reason I didn’t want to wait any longer to get this one paid as I didn’t want to send any more money to them.

So, now it’s time to start cracking the Best Buy credit card. We’ll see how our Memorial Day trip goes and hopefully we can throw some money before the end of the month at it.

Right now I’m on cloud nine. It might a small accomplishment, but it really is progress in getting our debt paid.

Here is a look at our debt and where we stand. It’s been close to two weeks since I did the numbers even though I posted my first post just a few days ago.

4 months, 16 days til daughter’s third birthday

Student Loans - roughly $20,000(deferment)
Credit Card #1 - $13,352.16
Credit Card #2 - $1,811.49
Best Buy - $1,358.84
Care Credit - $105.46

Total = $36,627.95

Debt Plan for the Week

May 23 Pay off Care Credit
May 23 Roll the money from Care Credit into Best Buy

It seems to never fail. Murphy is always lurking around the corner to throw a wrench into our financial plans. Just when we think we have a plan, Murphy’s Law comes into play, usually in the form of a vehicle expense.

This week my truck died at a red light in town. Not just any red light either but the one in front of Wal-Mart, which means it’s super busy all the time. This happened as I was leaving after buying Mario Kart Wii with some of our rebate money. As if I wasn’t already feeling a tad bit guilty on spending that money instead of snowflaking it our debt.

I just knew the fix for the truck would be around $50, the cost of the game. Apparently it could be way less than that, so that is the good news. But this little incident is a good reminder to me to always keep in mind that unexpected expenses can happen at any given moment.

We are building our emergency fund and have it at a local bank. I would use ING since I do love their savings accounts but I wanted to have it where we could get to it fast. ING has about a four day transfer period. Now when we start to save for the 3-6 month expenses, then we will probably use ING since that will be more long-term emergencies.

For these unexpected emergencies, we really need to have our emergency fund readily available. Hopefully the truck fix won’t cause us to have to dip into it.