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Archive for October, 2006

Not doing as well

October 10th, 2006 at 05:42 pm

I seem to go through major ups and downs when it comes to debt reduction. This is a particularly bad month. I am looking at one full month, possibly more, of paying very little down on debt. Christmas and other things are throwing a real wrench in my plan.

I need to do some no-spend days to get me back into the swing of things. I need to get DH on board with this too.

I don't know what is so different about summer vs. school year. But it seems the kids are always bringing home something I need to buy! And they're making it hard to say "no"! (The school, I mean.) For instance, I have every book I have ever owned plus the many we have purchased for our kids. We have a massive collection of children's books, so many that even though we read very nearly every night, we still have not read every book we own. The kids are always finding new ones. So I chose NOT to buy any books at the bookfair. Well, the teachers take the kids to the bookfair as a class and pair them up with older children. They write out a wish list, take it home, and then go a second time to purchase books with the older child! How do you say "no" to that?! I told my son it was fine if he wanted to purchase a book, but he'd have to use his own money. He did. He got two books for $15.00. What a rip off.

If it's not books it's t-shirts or Market Day food or some other fund raiser. A few days ago it was pictures. And now, not only do they hit you up for $50 in the Fall, they come back for more in the Spring!! I'm sorry, but I don't care to spend money on pictures TWICE per year! Once per year is enough!

I fall prey to keeping up appearances. I don't want people to know how much we are struggleing. Now, I'm not going to go buy a hot-tub because the "Joneses" have one, but I do buy just about everything at the school. I haven't participated in Market Day yet this year, but everything else is hard to say "no" to.

Life is catching up with my wallet

October 7th, 2006 at 02:00 pm

I knew it was too good to be true! I need to slow down on our debt repayment, at least temporarily. We just have expenses lately! I made a list yesterday of what those are.

We still owe DH's parents $473 from a loan several years ago. We steadily made payments for 5 years and then paid all but $473 off in one lump sum in August. We were short $473, and since we had just given them $2000, they were fine with it. The original loan was to be paid in full by October, and here we are in October, so we need to pay it.

Ring bearer tux: $47
Parental loan: $473
College course: $400
Birthday gifts: $75
Camera: $300

The camera is a Christmas gift to DH and me from each other. My step-sister is getting married at the end of October and I'd really like to have the camera before then for that and Halloween. Our current camera doesn't take good pictures at night or inside. It takes beautiful outside/daylight pictures, but inside/dark pictures all have ghosts! I'm tired of it and want a new camera! We keep wasting our money on disposables whenever we want inside/dark pictures!

I think we can recover on all these expenses by the end of October, but only if I slow down on our repayment. Happily, as of right now we are only $600 shy of our goal for the month, so we won't be terribly far off. In fact, $200 still has to go out as our minimum payment on our CC.

Paid off CC1!

October 6th, 2006 at 01:43 pm

It's official! I just paid off CC1! Only $20,000 left to go! Big Grin Obviously, it doesn't take much to amuse me. *sigh* No, really that is a big accomplishment, especially since now, I can move forward with part 2 of my plan.

From here on out, I will make just over the minimum payment on my one and only credit card at 0% interest. Everything else gets transferred to my ING account where it accrues interest. This is a good plan!

Even better, technically I owe only $19,723. My ING account already has $275 in it. As soon as that number matches my CC balance, I will send it all at once. I have until October 2007 to accomplish this. (Really September. I don't want to cut it too close.) But I think this is manageable. Furthermore, I think we can do it by summer.

I'm struggleing with wanting to take another college course. I've now taken and paid for 2 classes. I need to take just 4 more by October to bump me up the pay scale. I really want to take one now because I've have some down time at work coming up and more down time over the holidays. It's a video course...super easy. I finished the last one in four days! I'm just not sure how to pay for it. The funds aren't there. After Christmas, the funds will be there. Right now, Christmas is tieing up all of our funds.

I could relax my CC payments. I am hitting the payments really, really hard. I just want this gone!