May 2010 is a realistic date for being credit card debt free. As of April, we will have racked back up to 20k (paying no interest but still). *Sigh*

I am glad we have the house, but all the repairs will have set us back a whole year. It doesn't help that everyone is running deals right now in order to get business or that I have no patience.

The only remaining projects in the house are the roof and the furnace. Everything else (and I do mean everything that isn't a gut and rebuild) has been dealt with now. The roof and the furnace both should last at least 4 more years but I will be keeping an eye on them.

I want to get to the point where we are saving up the money and then spending it instead of doing the 0% deals but I suppose I will at least celebrate the victory of not having paid interest on debt in the past year or even in the future year.

At least I don't spend as frivolously as in the past.

That said, here are my goals. I want to get credit card debt free, I want to be maxing out our retirement accounts (at least this has been improving over time), I want to save at least 10% in our emergency fund/long term savings and I want to save 10% for our short term savings (vacations, things or projects that come up, etc).

I think I have a much better chance of reaching these goals from this point forward because I finally have a handle on the splurge money and the house repairs (both of which kept us running over, though to be fair, the house was the biggest issue). That May 2010 date will be reached with full employment and full splurge and house repair levels so it seems highly likely though not guaranteed.

For the EF, I am thinking a year of expenses keeping in mind the potential for needing to fix things should be good but I will have to mull that over. That would be ~41k. So probably 2 years to build that but probably 4 instead so that we can max the retirement at the same time. Definitely something I will be replanning when the debt is gone.

I would like to be extremely cheap for the month of February. No purchases and very little on food. I think it will help me become conscious again about spending money which I seemed to have lost thanks to the house purchase.

Here is where you realize how pathetic I am. I need a reward to be this good for a month. Something to give me a good reason for doing it. So, I am thinking a new kitchen countertop, just a laminate premade piece like what we have but less atrocious.

The kitchen will NOT be remodeled for at least ten years and the lime green countertop with bleach stains while functional is hideous. It will cost about $100 for this piece. I only get this if I do no purchases AND get the food under $500. Its not a need, what we have is functional but it would be nice to not have to flinch when we walk into the kitchen.

Originally I wanted to replace the sink in the bathroom with this decent $200 18 inch wide vanity that actually has storage space but realized by the time I added in the vessal and a new faucet, that would defeat the whole exercise.

This is something far more economical and while we would eventually be replacing this as well (and everything I have done so far has been avoiding any need for redoing), its also a cheap luxury. It also would be a reward for my dear husband so that he didn't have to look at the lime green countertop when he does dishes or cooks. So maybe he will help me with the challenge.

I figure I can even start this challenge next week for the food portion.

Buying the house really messed up our cooking schedule. So we are currently trying to get back in the habit. I seem to have mostly cured myself of eating out at work but supper still needs some work. Good news is that more salad and homemade artisan bread has been making it into the rotation (I really only like artisan bread and that is because its crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside).

We have a new porch light to put up to replace the one they left us that has a nice large burned out hole in it (too high of a wattage bulb is not a good thing). It hangs down instead of standing up which is good because the current one nearly touches the roof (aka, doesn't really fit in that spot).

We still need to clean the old apartment and I think that may be a project for the upcoming weekend. Fortunately this weekend I did manage to sort our clothes. 1 bag to throw away, 1 bag to goodwill. Yikes that is alot. Other than the cords sitting next to the TV (still haven't hooked the Wii up), the new house is mostly cleaned up and organized. Finally.

I dragged my DH out this weekend for a beginning run (think mostly walking with some running) and figure we will do that 2x per week to avoid giving myself stress fractures (again). I am also going to push for us to do weight training 2x per week as well. The lack of exercise for the past 2 1/2 months is killing me (no walking a 1/2 hour per day every day doesn't count) and may be contributing to my wanting to eat out all the time (both act as stress relievers). Since neither of these activities require new equipment (well, we did by non-summer workout clothes but that is multi-use and needed), we can just do it and not have to worry about the money for it.

The items that were required were shoes for him (since he hadn't bought any in the past year) and some workout clothes that weren't shorts and tank tops, lol. I was able to get my stuff at Ross but we had to pay a little more for his since Ross didn't have anything in his size (a normal problem, small is a very popular size for the guys).

Its a good thing I restart my budget every month because January was again over budget. Not, surprisingly, for out to eat food or groceries though, just house stuff and clothes. That has got to be a first for me, food under budget and household stuff over budget.

The original one I wanted was $1400 (6 sones) but I finally found one that is only 11 sones and $470. Previously, everything I found in that price range was 30 sones which is the equivalent of a helicopter in your house.

We have the guy who does tuck pointing coming over the 19th (I think, still waiting to hear when) to do the estimate so at least that is under way. He does historical matching so this way our bricks won't be damaged by new mortar.

Now we just need to find someone to do roof vents. I was told by the home inspector that we should be able to get that done for about $400 so we will probably get that done soon so we can install bathroom ventilation using one of the vents.

This weekends accomplishments need to include the sorting of clothing (get rid of old stuff and organize current stuff), the painting of trim in the library and finishing hooking up my wii and organizing the cords on my home entertainment set up. If I manage to accomplish that, I will be very happy.

I would also like to start planning out our front garden because March 23 begins our planting season here and that front yard is a bit rough at the moment. Wayside Gardens has me drooling :P Such beautiful drought resistant plants.

January 15 is the tight point and all the finances are set up for it. That's what I get for buying a car with cash and using the credit card I pay in full for every home improvement shopping trip in the month of December. The good news is that starting February 6th I can start paying off all of those 0% interest debts I have accumulated for the house.

CC#1 676 (couch) can be paid off in February

CC#2 4061 (old debt) can be paid off in March plus in March we will buy the ventilation for the kitchen and bath and pay for DH's class that he wants.

CC#3 2900 (appliances) can be paid off in May

CC#4 2434 (old debt) can be paid off in June (final card)

And January 2010 we can afford to either remodel our bathroom or replace our windows. (Probably will replace windows since that will help with the heat bill).

On a more personal note, the 2 long weekends have helped me recover from my stress freak out and I feel ready to face my life again.

As to my budget, because of the car making temptation more easily accessible, I will probably have to wait a couple of months to see what the eating out budget becomes. My goal is to get us eating all meals during the week at home and to eat out once per weekend day. We will see how that goes.

I want to get all the clothing arranged. We went from 2 large closets to 3 little closets. I have bought an extender rod so I have 2 rows of rods in one of the closets so shirts can go there.

I also would like to sort all of the electronic cords and get my home network set up this weekend. This could range from simple to complex. At least I know the settings for my game consoles but I am not sure about the dsl modem's settings (used to have cable).

After that, I should be able to relax and just tidy up a little. So glad we have the majority of the work done now. Still need to paint the hallway, paint the bedroom and finish a doorway but that can wait till later in January when DH will have a week off to work on things.

I swear I am going to take some time this weekend and relax. It will be good for me.

Which is good because I have a lot of things left to do.

Weekend to do list

Get Emissions Certificate for new car
Get Bill of Sale from seller of car
Fax Bill of Sale to insurance
Wait for internet repairman
Get 8'-10' washing machine hoses
Do laundry
Finish unpacking
Move 125g down narrow stairs into basement
Move headboard down narrow stairs into basement
Do dishes
Finish bringing stuff over from apartment
Paint ceiling in library
Hang ceiling fan in library
Rip out door frame in library
Nail in painted trim in library
Finish spackling library
Buy curtains for kitchen
Buy microwave
Take trash out of the house
Buy a couch that fits through a 35" door

Theoretically I can get this done in one weekend. In reality, given how things have been going, I will consider myself well pleased if I get through half of it.

The must haves are the microwave, trash, washing machine hoses and unpacking.

but fortunately my realtor was willing to do whatever it takes to close such as begging her husband to get out of bed early this morning and go into the cold and cut bars of my windows.

Backing up a little, last night we got the all clear on the loan, 20 minutes later we were told we weren't going to be able to close until the security bars on the windows were removed. With a mere 5 days before the drop dead date, that wasn't good.

A flurry of phone calls and the sellers claim they will take care of the bars that night. I am in shock. These are the people who couldn't even sign the first contract on time. But hey, if they say they will....they didn't.

Realtor does a flurry of calls this morning, no one knows anything. She yanks her loving and very tolerant husband out of bed and has him accompany her to the house. The bars are still on. They begin work, more calls and emails ensue as people search desperately for the appraiser to confirm their removal and fortunately all is cleared with a mere 1 1/2 hours before closing.

All said and done, closing was the easiest and least stressful part of the day.

Both realtors saw the value of not trying to wait till the drop dead date. This is why I am always early and always prepare for potential complications. Life is less stressful if complications have time to be worked out.

Needless to say, we made sure to grab a thank you card and some gift certificates to a restaurant we know they go to alot. Funny part was, she had a card ready for us with a gift certificate to home depot. She takes very good care of her clients.

My net worth is down 5k thanks to the purchase but its worth it to have a place of our own. Hurray!

Oh boy. So bid is in. We will end up with this house if the following go well:

Sellers accept the contract
Bank approves the bid (this is a short sale)
House appraises for the bid amount
Home inspection goes well

Yuck.

There are no real comparables for this house. Fully remodeled, it would go for a lot more (add another 100k+ even in a down market and they go in less than 5 days at that price). Big issue, its not remodeled. It needs lots of work. It also has a basement and the cheaper homes in the area do not. So our Realtor isn't sure it will appraise high enough. Not that she thinks it will appraise low, she just doesn't know what they will appraise it for since this neighborhood doesn't sell homes very frequently.

Bank approval of the short sale should go well, the other agent just had a contract fail at that number due to down payment assistance disappearing as of Oct 1. Incidentally that's why we made the offer there. It is a discount of 8k and if it doesn't appraise there, it will quicker to have an appraisal come back too low then to have the bank reject our first offer and then go through the whole process anyways.

I am really not too worried about the home inspection. This house is valued so low and has so much potential that its a steal even in this market. But the missing water heater will need to make it back there before inspection. This was a rent to family while we buy a new house deal that went very wrong. On a positive note, that means that the sellers are in a better position to help out and the utilities aren't way behind as a result.

Wow. This is going to be a major project. But definitely worth it if we can manage to get the deal to go through...

So got the preapproval, looks like they did it just off of my DH's income since we are asking for so little. We have an FHA 15 year at 5.5%. As of this Monday, we will have all the money to close and this Saturday we are meeting with a Realtor that I know from work. (She has a sense of humor, always takes good care of her contacts and seems to have enough time to get things done right despite being very busy).

So tonight DH and I get to put together a list of houses, a list of wants and needs, and a list of questions for the Realtor. Not only that, if we are closing before December and maybe sooner, I need to start packing.

So basically, all we are missing is the house :P

Have to say, I was more than a little surprised by the not so subtle desperation in her voice. I know the industry is in bad shape but I didn't expect a bank based mortgage counselor to sound so desperate. After all, local banks tend to be stricter about qualifying for mortgages so they shouldn't be as bad as the mortgage brokers.

I was more than a little surprised when she offered to come to our home if we wanted rather than having to come to her office (we told her the office was fine). We did claim evening was best for contacting though so she is probably the one who works nights and weekends alot.

I figure meeting with the mortgage counselor is my last minute sanity check before starting this whole process. That and I know this bank does renovation loans which may be a nice way to go depending on what we get.

We meet on Monday(our day off) so will let you know how it goes!

August was an extra paycheck month for my DH so our savings got an extra boost. I was about $200 overbudget for this month but despite that, we are $400 ahead of our savings budget. Between overtime and having a skimpy base budget, we had room for the overrun.

I am still trying to figure out how much to set aside for travelling and festivals. I know that $25 per month is definitely not enough so once we settle into a home I may have to take a look back through the year and attempt to figure out what I need. I suspect it will be trial and error for awhile. Currently I only separate out a little bit and then take the rest from the monthly free money.

Since I only use a credit card that I pay in full each month, when we start travelling again I will need to do a better job of saving out that money. Currently, the small trips have worked pretty well in the monthly budget so I just need to really save out for the big items (plane tickets, reservations, etc).

Here is the background info. I have two remaining credit card debts, one at 0% apr, and one at 1.87% apr as of this month. They will remain that way til Feb 2009. My lease on my current place is up in February. I guarantee our rent will go up, if we rent for less than a year, it will go up by at least $300 per month (don't ask about month to month, the fee alone is 400 plus an increase in the rental rate itself and we will not sign a lease for one more year.)We want to buy something small and equivalent to our current rent or not much higher.

With the market changing dramatically, we will be in a better position if we have the ability to put 20% down and have closing costs covered. Our current plan of pay everything off then saving the money will make things tight and most likely won't allow 20% down. If instead we just pay the min payments on the last two cards, we will definitely have the cash on hand we need.

By keeping the debt we are keeping our options open. The increased debt will not affect our ratios because we want far less than they would willingly loan us.

So we are going to save like mad and start househunting in the fall. If we do go with a loan product that doesn't require all our cash or we get some assistance from the seller, we will use the remaining cash to pay on the credit cards. If not, we can pay the remaining debt with 3 months of our closing.

What you can't see from my ticker since I joined here after I paid the first part off is that we have actually paid off over 32,000 in debt over the past 2 years.

As much as I want the debt gone, I want a home far more, especially at those interest rates. There is only one other way of doing this that might be more financially reasonable and that is signing another year long lease (at a different place) and that is just not something we are willing to do.

That said, the plan could always change again as circumstances change but unless I am missing something, this is the best plan in the long run.

Okay, so lay into me. What do you think is wrong with my current plan and why? I am at least willing to listen.

Another $1000 payment has been made and I have a $1700 one scheduled two weeks from now. This will leave only $500 on this particular card so it will be paid off in the beginning of May.

We have decided to up our out to eat budget to $200 from $100. While the $100 let us get caught up last year, its no longer necessary and we really enjoy eating a variety of food (we tend to do vietnamese cuisine at the moment, something I definitely do not know how to cook at home). We also have room in our budget to do it without reducing anything else thanks to bonuses.

Oh and the highlight of this month is I will cross the 10k threshold.

Once I am finished with the debt, I think I will switch to doing the net worth thing. I will be in the negative for a little bit but as of this February it will be positive (and then it will go negative again because we will have bought a house, lol). It should be an interesting year with househunting and so on.

Hurray, time to start the pay off again. I am starting with $406 which isn't a lot but my big payoffs come at the end of the month.

Me, impatient, never!

So as some of you may have guessed, I change my mind alot.

My dh and I decided we are going to pay off the credit cards before buying a house. We hate to gamble on renewing our rental contract and it probably won't save us money in the long run if the rental company jacks up the price like we suspect they will BUT, we will both be happier to have the debt gone.

This means the last credit card will be gone in October if not sooner. The only reason we are doing it this way is because my dh got a promotion which gives us the ability to consider this option. It came with a big pay increase and the ability to accumulate bonuses as well.

Depending on how things go, there is still the potential of getting into a house before our current lease expires, we just won't count on that.

In a little over a year, my credit card debt will drop to $3k. Yes, you heard me right I am going to pay off over $14k in the next year (which sadly is what we paid off in cc debt last year and no we didn't accumulate any new on his side of the equation or mine. We really did start out with that much debt.)

Originally the plan was to pay off only 2 cards, pay min. payments on the last 2 and save the remaining amount of money for a downpayment. However, with more money coming in, we can now afford to have me focus on aggressively paying off my remaining credit cards and leave my dh to save the down payment.

Definitely feeling better about our progress.

So my dh has agreed that we will use my bonus, whatever it is, for Christmas. We are also going to limit the price tag on gifts in our house to $20 so we can have multiple things under the tree. I expect that dh will fudge a little but at least this way I know he won't buy me a $200 item.

Personally I think I have gotten enough toys lately that I should not be allowed to get Christmas gifts but then my dh wouldn't have any fun (or even listen to limits because he would just go spend what he wanted on me).

I actually think the $20 limit will be fun because we will have to figure out ways of getting lots of stuff for each other without spending lots of money on each item.

Well, just grabbed breakfast and lunch from downstairs. *Sigh* I now need to do 13 more days without eating out but I only made it through 5 this time...

Its a good thing I always have reserve money for when (not if) I blow through my out to eat lunch budget.

As a result of my willpower (or lack thereof), I am going to add a couple of things to my grocery shopping list come November in an attempt to cut out the constant out to eat lunch issue. Its definitely certain items that I am getting from downstairs and I am sure I can make them cheaper and/or buy them cheaper at the grocery store.

So I just got my entertainment book. It has $20 worth of coupons for the store I shop at so I will be able to use those and some of the restaurants we go to as well. My dh was really impressed on how useful it will be.

In the first two weeks of next month, we will probably have $30 of savings right off the bat so I am feeling pretty good about the purchase.

In other news, my dh will be getting about 12 hours of overtime this weekend which should pay for boarding our puppy at the vets for our Thanksgiving trip and pay for his kennel cough vaccine (which you have to get every 6 months, yeck).

Oh, and I am on day 5 of 18 with no out to eat. Course the weekends are my greatest threat but so far so good.

Currently for this month I am at $180 for groceries and paper products and at $90 for out to eat lunches. The goal is $200 for groceries and $100 for out to eat lunches.

As you can see, I need to be very very good for the next two and a half weeks.

The good news is that the groceries are pretty good. The reason its so high so fast is I did some stocking up using sales.

The bad news is $10 for lunches means only 1 more meal and that is going to be an extreme test of my will power.

So new goal, no eating out for 2 1/2 weeks. We don't need to spend dh's money either so if I can do this, we will be set for the month.

Its sad that I think of this as a major test of my willpower. Most people go this long all the time...

So recently I decided that I am all about experimenting to see if there are additional ways to save money. I had been looking at the Entertainment Book for Denver but decided to wait until I was offered a better deal.

Well, my inbox account offered $8 to sign up for one and Entertainment Book offered a $25 restaurant.com certificate. The book with shipping is $31. I figured if there is any time to try it, now is the time.

I was a little worried the restaurant certificate wouldn't be for a decent restaurant but I did get it for one that my dh and I had been planning to try, The Fresh Fish Company.

Now I get to wait and see if the coupons are as good as they promised. So I figure that once I can actually redeem things, I will track that while subtracting any money that I have to spend to use the coupon beyond what we would have spent.

Okay, so what am I currently doing to keep myself from spending too much? I have little goals that I am pursuing.

Goal 1: Get my groceries under $200 per month.

This was easy when our out to eat budget was ridiculous, a little bit harder now that we limit the out to eat to a couple of times per month. Despite my being lazy, I and my dh have been learning to cook from scratch. And I mean, totally from scratch.

Sadly, this is so easy now that its kind of sad that we thought it would take too much time. Currently my dh is finding a bread recipe that we like so we can stop buying bread. We work together to make sure there are leftovers and recipes waiting for us when we get home because coming up with the idea while starving is usually what results in me saying let's eat out.

Step 2 was really comparing prices. I thought I had been doing this before, but making the conscious effort to try to only buy really good deals (on sale or bulk) and really examining what a good deal is what got me from $400 a month to $250 along with the cooking from scratch.

Good example, we occasionally like snacks so I decided to get pudding cups. Normally I would grab a pack of 4 at the 10 for $10 sale and think I was getting a deal. So wrong. I went looking for the bulk 24 pack, it was $5.77. So it still beat out the sales price and in my house, we will eventually go through the 24 pack. You do this with 10 items everytime you go and pretty soon the costs drop.

Step 3 of this goal is developing a price book. For the longest time I had this running in my head and thought that was enough. It isn't. I am still working on this one but look forward to when I have it up and working.

The really big thing about this goal, is not that it saves me a tremendous amount of money but that it keeps me from spending money on other things by keeping me entertained.

Every month I get to start over on this goal, whether or not I did good the month before so I never get disheartened. For me, that is huge because we have some pretty big debt goals and they take a long time.