Day 9: Make Time to Manage Your Finances

Day 7: Make Time to Manage Your Finances

The one thing that I need to do is make time to manage my finances. I am trying to sit down and finish the whole budget thing, but it is taking longer than I thought. The other thing I really need to work on is our emergency fund. I had to take my car in twice this month to get work done for about $350. I had planned to put about that much into our emergency fund, since we made a little more last month. So much for that. The one thing I am glad we did was pay off about $200 on the lowest credit card, but we put it right back on with the second car problem. So no momentum so far in getting this first card paid off. We only have about $400 on it, so it should get paid off within the next 3-6 months depending on how much we can make then. That will be a good day!

So to finish this thing off, I think I will commit to trying to sit down every sunday night for at least a few minutes to try and rectify our budget.

Back to work: busy work and Day 8 - Stop using your credit card!

Day 8: Stop using your credit cards

OK, I am finally sitting down and getting through some of the stuff. It has still been kinda crazy around here, with the short vacations and getting ready for school and starting soccer and.. and.. and...I could go on. Anyway, I have been pretty good about not using our credit card these last two months. I did have to use it to get some gas right before I got paid this last week, but I made a payment to the card the day I was paid, so I feel OK about it. I think if I know I can repay the card within the week, I will feel good if I have to use it. Since we had only $10 in our bank account, and I have to drive about an hour each way to work, well, you get the idea. Gas is not cheap! Although I am thankful that it has gone down lately.
I think I had a belief in my head that using my credit card made me seem important. I would use it to go out for dinner, take clients to lunch, buy gifts, etc. These things are nice if I could have afforded them on my own, but I never paid it back. Even if I expense the lunch, when I got the check from work I would have to pay bills with it instead of pay back the money I borrowed. I still realize that we have to be able to pay our bills, but we are trying our hardest not to use those pesky cards.
I do believe I have to analyze my spending some more. I know there are things that we buy at the grocery store or on the go that we really don;t need. We also have a budget that we made, but we need to sit down and go over it for this last month so we can find out if it is working. The good news is I did receive a decent commission this month, but next month is not looking so good, so we may be back to trying to struggle to make the payments. I am hoping we can put more down toward our emergency fund with that extra money. All is in God's hands, and I am trying to be wise with what he has given me!

Starting the emergency fund and budgeting

I made my first extra payment to the my smallest debt this last Wednesday! I think it is kind of rewarding to pay off a debt and then move to the next one. Frugal dad - one of my blogs on the right did some math that showed paying off the smallest one didn't always save the most money. He also made the point, though, that paying off an entire credit card could motivate you to get through the process faster. I believe that to be true as I try to pay off my debt. It feels good to work toward a simple goal of paying off the smallest one first and then address the bigger and more difficult ones as you have achieve bigger debt payoffs. Anyway, we are on our way.

We also have the budget in place to go forward. We sold off a mutual fund this last month in order to help pay for our mortgage, but I think it should also be enough to fund our emergency fund for now. That will help us not to use any credit cards as we try and get rid of the debt.

There is also one last thing, we are coming up on the start of school and obviously we need to buy new clothes and school supplies, etc. We have been able to save a little bit by getting some uniform hand-me-downs from a neighbor, and my wife ran across a killer sale where she only spent 6 dollars and bought a ton of supplies(my mom also helped us out)! We will see how far that goes, and hopefully it will be enough so we can continue to try and decrease our spending.