Bad

So I haven't put anything into our budget, probably since I last blogged. So two weeks! Its the 6th and I haven't created this month's budget. I am slacking again. I need to be better. If I don't keep track for an entire month, how am I ever going to know what we spend our money on?

Its only 9:58 am

Its early on payday, and I'm finished paying bills. Its a really nice feeling, this whole keeping track of finances thing. I mean the more I do it, the easier it will be. We got our property tax bill in the mail and I'm not freaking out. I always hate that they are due in December, right before Christmas, taking any extra money that we have. This year that is not the case. Yes, its due in December, but its not a big deal. It will get paid in November, and I already have the majority of our Christmas shopping done!
I really want to start setting up most of our bills to come out automatically, but I probably won't do that for a few months still. I like to have absolute control over when I'm paying them. I know I can do that if they are set up automatically, but I won't pay attention. So, we will wait until I feel like everything is under control more. Do you see a focus on control? I do.
This week, I also got all of our tithing records and everything is on track. Tithing is something I'm really bad at keeping track of, but our new budgeting program will really help with this.
Anyway, this is a good feeling. Keeping track, knowing where everything is going, even if its not going to the places I thought it would, is nice. I've just got to keep up with it.
Next thing on my list today, grocery shopping-extreme couponing style!

CVS awesome trip

Okay, I made my CVS run on Friday and got the following for 1.77 oop and still have $9 of ECBs!

It was the first time I did two seperate transactions, cause if I hadn't I would have spent $14.xx out of pocket.

Here is a picture from a kroger run for $30.xx!

Can I just say again, that I love extreme couponing! It makes me feel like I am beating the system, when in fact, I'm just using it the most efficient way possible. It makes me feel smart. I guess that's why I like it.

Oh, here are my shelves I had Brett put in the garage so I can fill them with all my free and really cheap short term food storage stuff! I plan on taking pictures of them as they get more and more full!

I'm actually doing an okay job

I have successfully kept up with entering all of our receipts into pear budget! I'm really proud of myself, because this is usually where our budgeting ends. I set one up, add a couple of things, and then never look at it again. I mean it still hasn't been a month, but the odds are better this time. Even Brett has been good and has actually been giving me his receipts.
All of this being said, we have really not stuck to our budget. I feel okay about this though, because everything I've read says that the first few months are all about keeping track and then adjusting accordingly. Eventually, we will know what are budget needs to be and where we can make cuts. Right now I know that I need to have a "family fun" category. We need money budgeted for our pumpkin patch expeditions, swimming lessons, instead of just shoving stuff into a Ashley/Brett play category in which I only allotted $15!
Anyway, I am still doing things with our finances, which is always a good start. This week I finished setting up our ING savings account and linked my student loan to Upromise. I've been meaning to check out upromise for awhile, and I finally did last night. I love that CVS, Kroger, and Martin's all participate. I love that the things I spend money on anyway will slowly help me to pay off our debt. I was able to link our debit card (and the credit cards we don't use) to the account too. I am interested to see how fast or slowly the rewards add up. I figure any some of money is better than none. Even if we are only talking $25 a year, that is still better than zero! We will see how it goes. I may recruit my mother and possibly my in-laws to start saving for my kiddos. If every time they use their debit cards to buy something, that qualifies, earns 1%, its still worth it. We will see what really happens with this.
So that's its for now, I'm just keeping track of our expenditures for the month, and Friday will bring another payday, which means bill paying, which will result in blogging. till then...

Dave Ramsey

My mom has been a fan of Dave Ramsey for a long time, so I've heard his stuff repeatedly while growing up. Now, I guess, I've actually started paying attention. So here are his baby steps to financial peace, as found on www.daveramsey.com.

DAVE RAMSEY’S
SEVEN BABY STEPS

Getting out of debt will not happen overnight; it takes time.
Here are the Baby Steps that will get you started:

1. $1,000 In An Emergency Fund
2. Pay Off All Debt With The Debt Snowball (order debt by lowest to highest balance, pay off lowest first, then when that is paid off, apply whatever you were paying on that to the next and so on...)
3. 3 To 6 Months Expenses (not income, but that wouldn't hurt either) In Savings
4. Invest 15% Of Income Into Roth IRAs And Pre-Tax Retirement Plans
5. College Funding
6. Pay Off Your Home Early
7. Build Wealth And Give!
   

We are working on these steps, some a little out of order. For example, we are working towards paying off our home early, but don't yet have 3 to 6 months of expenses saved. I'm not going to change our automatic mortgage payment though. We will, however, focus on paying off our little bit of debt first, then work on savings, then on my Van fund, which should probably be after we are saving something every months for the boys college/missions instead of sporadically like we do now.

Oh, another good book, The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I'll talk about it later, but its naptime and I need to organize some things (like my CVS shopping list).

Actually, Not to Bad

So today was not nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be. You see, I missed paying bills two weeks ago, which would have covered everything due the end of September. We went on vacation instead. See we have problems. Anyway, today was really not bad. We will still be tight for the next two weeks, but we are caught up with all of our bills, and now the only thing we are playing catch up with is tithing from weeks we were out of town, and checks never got mailed. I wish I could set tithing up to automatically come out and be deposited to the church. They probably won't ever do that though, cause someone might pay tithing with a credit card. I think now that I've paid all our bills (including those due before we get paid again, so some of October's) and entered everything into Pear Budget, I will go set up our ING direct accounts. After lots of reading, I've decided to move our primary banking to ING. I like the idea that I can create as many savings accounts as I want (and name them things like van fund, tithing, rockband-see I do love Brett), plus I can move money freely between them, and the interest rate is pretty good. Anyway, I am feeling much more positive about our finances today. Actually paying attention to them is a good thing!

Scary

Paydays always bring me anxiety, hence why we need to change! Paydays are bill paying days for me. The time I actually sit down and "do finances". Once we have budgeted for a few months, this should really not be a "scary" day. I also want to make all our bill paying automatic, so that I don't have a "sit down and pay way to many bills" day every two weeks. I will just make sure everything is entered into our budget (we are trying out www. pearbudget.com, more later) and see that the correct amounts have been distributed appropriately and be done with it. To bad this all won't happen tomorrow.

I've been doing some thinking...

Somehow, even though I am a basically a shorter version of my mother, I failed to inherit the good financial skills that she has worked so hard to teach me. My sister is a super budget-er and keeps track of everything. We on the other hand, are really bad at tracking expenses, keeping money in savings other than retirement accounts, and if I were to die tomorrow my husband would have a hard time figuring out where I keep everything and what bills would need to be paid when. But regardless of what we have been doing in the past, I am determined to make a change.
I recently delved into the world of extreme couponing and I love it. The more I read from the sites I really love, the more I am motivated to make a lasting change in how we keep track of expenses. I have been thinking about it for awhile, but now I am actually making a change. As of today, October 1, 2008, things are going to be different.
Brett makes decent money, enough that we should not be living paycheck to paycheck, but because we don't keep track of expenses the way we should, we often are left with very little and have to really think about where it all went. This needs to be different. We need to have a spending plan and stick to it. We need to have an emergency fund of 3-6 months worth of living expenses. We need to plan for trips we take, instead of just assuming we have enough money.
The one thing that we are pretty good at it staying out of debt. Our cars are paid for and we don't really do credit cards. The only thing besides our house is a small student loan. We would like this gone though. The other good thing we do is pay our half our mortgage every two weeks, making it so we actually end up paying an entire mortgage payment to principle every year. When you see the amortization schedule for our 30 year fixed rate loan, we will actually pay it off in 24 years (I think, or something close to that) and end up saving over $200,000 in interest over the life of the loan. One more thing that we have been doing is taking advantage of Target's 401K match program. I love seeing the quarterly reports that say we actually have some money saved for retirement.
I am hoping that I feel the same excitement as I watch our remaining debt fade and our emergency fund grow. I also hope to feel so much more security and freedom as we start knowing where our money is going and knowing that if Brett lost his job tomorrow we would have a cushion to on which to land.
Hopefully, these things will keep me motivated. Hopefully, by writing about it, I will feel more accountable. Hopefully, this time next year, I will be talking about how much we have saved towards a van.