Family of 5

We have 3 boys now! Holy cow a lot has changed in the past few years.  Will is 6 in Kindergarten, Hudson is almost 3 and Joshua is 10 months old.  I have learned though, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Holiday Shopping

I have to admit that this is the first year EVER we have had a

Buying second hand...

Have you ever bought anything off of Craigslist, Ebay or from a consignment store or garage sale?  I think these places can bring amazing deals to those people willing to look and take a chance, but I'm noticing a growing stigma that buying second hand is "icky" or not classy or something.  Really? 

Lofty Debt-Free goals...

These past two weeks have been a little rough in our house.  I've told you about the car problems, some of them anyway seeing as how the Kia is in the shop AGAIN.

$100,000 house!

One of my "hobbies" is looking at pictures of homes on websites such as Trulia or Realtor just to see what is out there.  I came across a beautiful 2 story colonial style home the other day with hard wood floors, stained glass windows, a kitchen any body would be jealous of, all for just $100,000!!! I was so excited.  The problem came when I discovered I was looking at a...

Some Days!

There are some days where I just want to quit.  Quit budgeting, quit watching every.single.dollar,

Going to see family...

We are packing to leave right now to spend 4 days with my family.  They only live an hour away, so it "shouldn't" be a huge ordeal, but...

2 hours of sleep...

We have sick little one at home so none of us have been sleeping very much lately.  Two nights ago we spent 4 hours in the ER with a 105F fever and last night we spent the whole night up alternating tylenol and motrin, giving luke-warm baths and putting cold towels on Will's head because once again, he was spiking a fever, this time it only got to 104F.

I love SmartyPig!

I have been trying different ways to manage our sinking funds - money that is not used every month, but is still needed at random times throughout the year for specific things.  We started out with 1 savings account and I just kept track of how much money was set aside for each category in an excel spreadsheet.  That worked okay, but I was constantly having to manually update it and that just took too much time, in my opinion.  So, I have finally found the answer to our sinking fund storage problem...

Gazelle Intensity

Dave Ramsey, the man behind the baby steps, coined the phrase "gazelle intense" when talking about how you approach tackling your debt.

When a gazelle is being chased down by a lion they are laser focused on the task at hand; it is much the same way while you're working on getting out of debt.  Everything you do needs to be geared towards moving to a better financial life for you and your family.  Some people are more "gazelle" than others; you have to pick a level that works for you.  I just wanted to give some suggestions of things that you can do to help lower expenses to free up more money each month to get you out of debt faster.

Making our Budget

First thing we did was sit down and write out all of our average expenses over the past 3 months.  This was a little time consuming, but not too difficult because we always used credit/debit cards so there were paper trails for everything.  Let me just say, it was embarassing to see the amount of money we (a family of 2 up until this point) spent on food.  I figured we spent $250/mo at the grocery store; I was off by...

Eye Opening Moment

I had just brought my son home from the hospital; he was born 6 weeks early and had to stay in the NICU for 2 weeks before he got to come home, but as soon as I sat down on the couch holding him it hit me - I want to be a stay at home mom.  There is no way in the world I can leave my new little love, so my husband, Chris, and I sat down and looked at our income and expenses to see how possible this new idea was.  As we sat and looked at our finances all written out (for the first time in the whole 2 years we had been married) not only did we see that it would be impossible for me to quit my job without us living on the streets; we also realized we were spending more then we made.  It was an eye opening experience to say the least.  This moment in April, 2010 is where it all started for us.  This is where we declared war on debt.  This is where our debt free journey began.