Our Weekend...

We have had a BIG weekend this weekend. We used our "gazelle like intensity", as Dave would say, and we have accomplished step 1. YAY! We are so excited and VERY proud of ourselves as it has not been an easy journey. We have had to work hard and get rid of things that were sometimes hard to part with.

Kevin sold his mountain bike for $500 and we sold our dining room table and chairs for $550. Bam! Step one down!

Before we were even able to sell the stuff we already had a setback. Our heater stopped working with the weather down in 30's and lower. Ugh! $250 later (yikes) we were feeling a little down and we may have even had a little tiny pity party for ourselves. Just a little one though.

Luckily the guy that came out to fix it was extremely nice and very honest. We had three guys come out last year to try and fix our heating issue and NOT ONE ever truly fixed it. We thought it was just because we had a heat pump and not a gas heater. WRONG!!! Apparently when you have repair people come out, sometimes they will switch wires around so your AC works, but come winter time your heater will not and you will be forced to call them to come out. LAME! This guy showed Kevin what he meant and said that it looked like that was what had happened to us. The nerve of some people!!!

Ok, so fast forward to today. We are hanging out at home and I am trying to get some stuff done around the house and prepare the nursery. Super excited and ready to wash all of my little man's old clothes and start organizing them. I take the clothes I have in the dryer out and start to open the washing machine so I can switch those. Wellllllll, they were still SOAKING wet so I decide (genius that I am) to do a rinse and spin short cycle. Guess what??? Our washer is broken!!! REALLY!!!! Cursing and beating of objects probably would have taken place had my little man not been standing there. Ok, not really.

In a way, it is all kind of funny. This is the way I am choosing to look at it because otherwise I just might break down and cry. Things seem to keep happening JUST as we are starting to try and get our debt under control. I mean come on! January we had to pay for all sorts of doctor's visits and medications between the three of us since we all got sick at the same time. Now a broken heater in the middle of winter AND a broken washer? Sheesh!!!

Please do not get me wrong, I know that these are pretty trivial things and it could be much worse. MUCH, MUCH worse. It does not stop it from being frustrating since we are actually trying to get ourselves out of the predicament we are in. We may have to use the emergency fund the day it actually got fully funded, Oh well, such is life!!!

Free entertainment is hard to find

So another thing that we are trying to do is to cut back on how much we travel and use the car. This is hard because it keeps Mommy and little buddy cooped up in the house all week. We are used to it, but still, it is nice to get out of the house every once in a while. Kevin will not be using the car to go back and forth to work very much this week so the little man and I are going to take advantage this weekend and go do some fun stuff. Does anyone know of good, free things to do with children??? Right now we have decided on going to the Amon Carter museum. I would really like to take him to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History but that is $14 and, well, that is not in the budget. I looked on fortworthchild.com for free events but it does not seem like anything is really happening around town.

Out with the old...

Ok so it is out with the old and in with the new...eventually. We are downsizing our non-necessities right now and as hard as it was at first, it is kind of liberating now. In a weird way it feels really good. Granted, our house will look very bare but that is ok. We have all we need and if we had not gotten ourselves into this mess we wouldn't need to do it. We will have no table to eat at because we are selling both of them. That is right. No table. When I eat lunch I eat at my son's table with him in one of his tiny IKEA chairs. You can only imagine how comfortable it is for a lady that is 7 months pregnant. Haha. I am just thinking of it in terms of it being a bonding experience. = ) We also sold the kegerator which was also a sad day. I bought that as a Christmas gift for Kevin many years ago so it had some sentimental value but we figure we can always buy another one when the time is right. The thing that was very hard to let go were my Louis Vuitton bags and shoes. I did keep two of them but I am consigning two purses, a toiletry bag, luggage and my shoes. I figure it is going to a greater good...getting out of debt. I think a tear rolled down my cheek as I dropped them off at the post office. = ) It is all ok though because it is all just stuff and we can replace it later if we so choose once we are out of debt. We still have some other things we are going to sell and hopefully that will bring in some extra cash so we can get our Emergency Fund going and then start on our Debt Snowball. This is all very exciting. I will post some pictures as a memorial for the stuff we once had...

Triple Coupon Days

Ok, so I have determined that this is the way to go as far as grocery shopping. Although I am not completely sure how the triple coupon thing works. You can stock up on so many great things that are non-perishable. They had Annie's mac and cheese on sale for $.99. Combine that with my coupon for $.50 off and triple it and voila, free mac and cheese!!! Feels amazing. I was able to get many different things for next to nothing. It is a lot of work, I am not going to lie. You have to get all of the grocery stores ads and see what you would like, then go on line and look for coupons for the items you would like. We went and spent $25 but saved $27. That is what I call awesome!!! I am actually looking forward to next month because I think I can do really well now that I am getting on my feet with the whole coupon thing. In the end, grocery shopping is much cheaper at your local grocery store as long as they have double and triple coupon days.

The easiest way that I have found to organize my coupons is to get a small and compact filing system. I am posting pictures of mine so you can see what I mean. It will be easy to keep it in the bag or the car. I plan on keeping mine in the car so I have the coupons all of the time. That way if I go out to pick something up I don't forget anything. I made my own categories as you can see, but I already know that I need a few more but do not have the room in my filing system. Hopefully this helps someone else out there.

Grocery shopping

Not so fun when you are on a tight budget. Let me tell you, everyone in this family LOVES food. We like to eat and we like to eat well. We very much like to try and eat as healthy as possible but as we all know, the healthier the food, the more expensive. Bummer! So I have decided that Costco is my friend. They do have a lot of organic and free range food for sale at very decent prices. I went there the day that Kevin got paid and was very proud of myself as I stuck to our budget. I got only the necessities which is very hard for a pregnant lady to do. I am hungry all of the time and they had samples of things were so delicious! I resisted and ate my samples but did not purchase the items.

Obviously I tried not to spend too much money so I would have leftover cash for the rest of the month. I thought I did pretty well. I spent about $80 and I have budgeted $150. Pretty good I think. Well, that does not include me having to buy our little man diapers. It just so happens that he has extremely sensitive skin and we cannot use regular diapers on him. We have to use special organic diapers for him. I decided to go ahead and try this thing called G-diapers which is a cross between a cloth diaper and a disposable. Very neat concept and environmentally friendly. Did I mention we are a bunch of hippies at heart??? The only problem is that it is an expensive startup. It is around $30 for 2 pairs of the outer cloth diapers. YIKES! I figure that now would be as good of a time as any to try and buy them as they will hopefully save us money in the long term. Well, what I am getting at, is that with spending minimally on groceries I still have a week and a half until the month is over and I have no more money. Pair that with my son's trip to the doctor and his three prescriptions and I am technically over budget. DARN IT!!!! I am trying so hard!

Of course there are going to be things that we cannot foresee such as illness, but it is our first month to really try and stick to our budget and I failed. Big fail! Regardless, I am so proud of us. We are taking this very seriously and we even had our "budget meeting" last night to check on our progress. I am proud to say that we have literally cut our grocery bill in half. No kidding. Last month we spent over $600 on groceries. Now, just so everyone realizes, it was the holidays and we had people over so that was probably more than we normally would have spent but honestly, not by much. This is definitely a very trying experience, especially for a hungry pregnant lady, but it is very satisfying at the same time. Who knew I was capable of restraint??? Not me.

New beginnings!

So we are starting 2010 off with a bang. At least we are trying to. We have decided that enough is enough and we are putting our foot down on debt!!! We have had a very rough last few years financially and we cannot seem to recover. After hearing my mother tell me how great Dave Ramsey is and how I really need to read his book, I succumbed. Let me tell you, I do not regret it. He is fabulous and I am a convert. Curses! I totally hate it when I get sucked into things like this, but he makes sense.

Both my husband and I decided we were going to go forward with this and we sat down and set up our budget. Well, let me me tell you a little something about how we budget. We have always "budgeted" with the greatest intent of actually following through with our plan, but somehow we always failed. Call it what you will, but we have never been disciplined and that was our problem. We would always convince ourselves it was ok to spend a little extra here and there and that was what kept getting us in trouble. We would say, "Oh, but we totally deserve this" or "We never do anything for ourselves". This is all true, but not when you are trying to get out of debt.

Anywho, we have set up our budget and although we are only in the first month I am very proud of us. We have made many sacrifices already and we are sticking to our plan. I was driving by Sonic the other day and was telling myself, "I have one dollar in change, I could go get a hamburger off of there dollar menu and no one would ever notice." Well, I would notice and realized if I had to convince myself it was ok, it was not. I did not get the burger and instead bought my son bananas as we were out of them. Afterwards, I felt great. Granted I ate the same thing I had for the last three days, but you can't get ahead if you don't sacrifice.

I think one of the hardest things for us is that we are a younger couple with a 19 month old and one baby due in March. We want so much to give everything to our kids, but we cannot at this point in our lives. Do not get me wrong, our kids have everything they need, they just do not have everything we would love to give them. We have one car between me and my husband so most days I am at home alone with the kids. This is not a bad thing, but sometimes I feel very guilty that I cannot take him to the park or to a class where he can socialize with other kids. Does he realize what he is missing out on??? Absolutely not, but that does not take away from the guilt that we have as parents.

We want more for our kids and that is why we are doing what we are doing. It is going to be a long hard journey, but I am actually very excited about it. I have become the queen of coupon clipping. I have always been a bargain shopper so not much has changed in that respect, but now I am hardcore about using coupons and not buying things unless I have a coupon for it. Only time will tell, but I think this is going to be a very positive year for us!!!!