Hey everyone - I hope you had a great weekend! We celebrated Scott's birthday today with homemade (by Payton) cake and Subway for supper. (2 for $9.99 footlongs on Sundays you know)
This week was a big week for our Total Money Makeover. We worked on our budget to see where our money is going and committed to track every penny we spend beginning Friday, July 1 since it is the beginning of a new month AND payday. Just by writing out the budget, we've identified the fact that we have a significant amount of money that we can't account for each month. It may be money well spent on things we need, or not. I guess we'll know in about 4 weeks, right?
We also took our first big step toward living a debt free life by paying off the balance of our loan on my van. We took out over half our savings account to pay the remaining balance. While it was an incredible feeling to know we just erased our first debt, it was also scary to "give up" that much of our savings. For our own peace of mind, we decided not to take anymore than we needed for one loan, even though Dave Ramsey's plan advocates to pull everything but $1000. Neither one of us was comfortable parting with that much of what we've managed to save. Fortunately, we only started with 3 big items on our debt list. The next debt on our hit list is the loan for Scott's vehicle. Using the debt snowball plan, we estimate that we will be able to pay that one down by February 2012. Truthfully, I'd love to get rid of it sooner, but we'll see how the budget tracking goes first.
That's all I have for this week. Don't forget to share your stories and tips on how you balance your family's budget. We love to hear about your successes!
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