Big Changes!

Several months ago, my husband and I talked about selling our rental house.  This was our first home and was a great starter home when we first got married, but we outgrew it very quickly.  We currently rent to his aunt and she's getting a REALLY good deal, which means we are not making any money on it and may possibly be losing a tiny bit.  We hadn't made a final decision or even told anyone we were thinking about it and have had 3 people call about it, one of which was a Realtor!

We should know more by the end of this week, but right now it looks like a pretty well done deal :)   Once the bank is paid off we'll be making a few major home improvements, like new wiring :)  I'd really love to start with adding a master bathroom, but I suppose it would make much more sense to replace the 100+ year old wiring and finish replacing all the windows.  I am pretty excited that we are also planning to improve the insulation and put up new vinyl siding.  The best part of all these things is probably how much our gas and electric bills should improve!

Update...

Things were a little scary for a few weeks around the end of September.  My Dad was hospitalized for awhile, but things have been looking great the last few weeks and we are Thanking God everyday and praying everything continues to go well for a long time :)  During the time my Dad was hospitalized I was making lots of trips back and forth to Kansas City and started relying way too much on my credit card for gas and food.  I kept justifying it to myself because I have no interest on the card right now and it really was an emergency.  My 6 months of no interest is going to be up in January and now I've got some paying off to do!

Now that things seem to be settling back down, I plan to work on planning a budget again, especially since my husband is finally ready to work on a budget.

Why the FFEF is ESSENTIAL!

I've gotten a HUGE reminder over the last few weeks about just why the Fully Funded Emergency Fund is SOOOO important!  My Dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Melanoma, it is throughout his entire body, but fortunately has not metastasized into any organs at this point.  This was totally unexpected, he will be 54 in a couple weeks.

One of the worst things about having to deal with a disease like cancer is having to think about all the financial complications as if the stress of cancer wasn't enough!  I've learned over the last week that in order to receive a disability check you have to be disabled and unable to work for 6 months first.  So for that 6 months you don't have an income to pay your bills, while you're piling up huge amounts of medical bills and have possibly lost your insurance if insured through your employer.

I've always hated the saying, "You never think it could happen to you."  Honestly though I never thought it would happen to my Dad.  It's so hard to believe this is all happening and happening quickly with treatment scheduled to start on the 13th.    

Vacation Update

It turns out that after paying all that debt off, I really don't like having any!  The vacation charges on my credit card were really bothering me, so I paid it off this week :)  I still have nearly 5 months expenses in my Emergency fund, so I've just got a little bit of building back up to do there.  It's definitely way more money than I had last summer, when we went on vacation AND put all our hotel rooms on a credit card.  I don't plan to EVER do that again!

Debt Free Vacation, almost

I've been wanting to take the kids on a Disney Cruise for awhile now.  I was planning to save up the cash first before booking the cruise, BUT to get a Disney Cruise you need to book in advance! Yesterday I booked our January 2013 cruise.  The cost of the cruise plus insurance was a little of $2400.  We opted for an inside stateroom to save money and figuring we wouldn't spend much time in there.  I did use a Disney Visa card to book it, which means I'll get $50 on board credit and I have 6 months of no interest.  I plan to get it paid off within just a few months and if we don't get it paid off before the interest starts on it, then we'll take the money from the emergency fund.  I know it's not an emergency, BUT we have a little more than 6 months expenses in their now.  Baby Step 2.1, part of the expanded TMMO steps is take a vacation, if you can pay for it in cash.  This step actually comes before the fully funded emergency fund, so we're still doing pretty good if we do have to take money from the FFEF.

Payday!

Today was my first paycheck after increasing my pre-tax retirement contribution from 5 to 15%, which isn't near as scary as I thought it was gonna be.  It's also the first month I don't have to pay Verizon or Blue Cross.  The insurance company gave us some credit back on the car when we canceled the insurance, so that made a big difference in the bill this month!      

Baby Step #4

I just spoke with my Retirement financial adviser and upped my Contributions to my pension to 15%!  I also got information on college savings plans, which I will probably start putting money in next month when he returns.  College savings is one thing I have NO idea what amount to invest in.  It's also something my husband and I have very different views on.  He doesn't think we should save for college and make the kids pay their own way.  Can you guess which one of us actually went to college???  I do want them to work hard and help pay for their own college, but I also don't want them to graduate with a HUGE amount of debt when they're just starting out in the real world.  

Baby Step #3

We are now officially at Baby step #3 of the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover!!!  My car left over the weekend and we made a big deposit into the Emergency Fund.  6 months of expenses for us is approx. $10,000 and we're about 800 away from being there!  My husband already has some paintless dent repair jobs lined up, so by the end of the month our Emergency fund WILL be full funded AND our vacation account will be looking pretty good too :)

Gift Cards Redeemed!

I've posted before about using swagbucks to earn amazon gift cards, but I also use Bing Rewards!  Bing is probably easier but a little more limited in the amount you can earn per day.  The results aren't random like swagbucks.  You automatically earn 1 bing reward for every 2 searches up to a certain number.  My number has been 44 lately.  I make sure to do this every day and it adds up pretty quick.

Today I used my combination of gift cards from BING and Swagbucks and bought my son's 3rd bday gift.  It was 69.99 and I didn't pay a dime for it!  I even got free 2 day shipping!  He's getting a little tykes work bench that has a motor to work on attached to it.

GROCERY DEAL!

This week Knorr sides are on sale 10 for $10, I usually pick up 10 of these when there's a deal like this.  This week is even better and you get a FREE 3 lb back of best choice chicken with it!!!  Of course last night when I went to take advantage of the sale the chicken was already gone :(  They did give me a rain check for it though!

I do not NEED...

an IPHONE, but I really really really WANT one!  I almost ordered one once but didn't.  I'm not getting one because my verizon contract is over tomorrow!  I've been planning on canceling it once the contract is up and switching to straight talk.  It will save me about $55 a month on the cell phone bill!  Today while at the zoo my camera battery died, but my little sister happened to be with us and have her awesome IPhone 4, so I used it to take pics the rest the morning, which only made me want one even more!  Not only could I take great pics with it, I was able to upload them straight to shutterfly.  I was pretty impressed that I was able to type on the touchscreen pretty quick too!  I don't need it. I don't need it. I don't need it.  Just reminding myself!  That $55/month I'm gonna be saving will be great to add onto the mortgage or to save for a replacement vehicle, or some home remodeling projects, etc.!

FREE Lunch!

This week is Nurse's week, which at some point in time became hospital week.  I feel like making hospital week the same week as nurse's week minimizes the recognition of nurses, that's not the point of this post though.  We have had several activities at work this week.  Wednesday we had a "poker walk," which I won with a full house (8-8-8-4-4)!  I received a free lunch ticket today for it, 10 punches :)  That saves me $20 over the next couple weeks!

Second Job

I've thought about trying to find a second job to help pay off debt, something like waiterissing or bar tending maybe.  I do actually have a second job, I take call for the ambulance, doesn't pay a whole lot but I do enjoy it and I feel like I'm helping give something to my community by being part of the service.  We have a set amount of pay per call, but as of January we are actually getting paid $1/hour, doesn't sound like much but it adds up pretty quick!  I've been picking up lots of extra call time, especially the midnight to 6am shifts.  The extra shifts mean there's an increase chance of getting a call, so I've ended up with more calls too.  I had a $500 paycheck for the month of April.  Once we get rid of my car and only have the mortgage debt left I plan to start putting all these checks towards it!  

No Sale

No one showed up yesterday for my car or no one that we know of, if they showed up after noon the dealership was closed.  They had also been hard to get a hold of through the week and hadn't called since Monday.  My car did get cleaned up really good though and there are 2 other potential buyers interested in it, one of them is even local.

PAYDAY FRIDAY!

I'm not near as excited about payday as I am about selling my car tomorrow!  I've already paid a couple bills first thing this morning.

Cable/Internet/Landline- $140.00 - We thought about getting rid of the cable, but my sister is going to be babysitting in our home this summer, so I think we'll keep it.  The landline is because when my Grandma babysits I need to be able to get ahold of her.  (One time I had a bottle of Apple Juice that I used to mix some alcoholic apple pie drink in, I really needed to let Granny know that it was NOT apple juice b4 she gave it to the 4 y/o and I couldn't get ahold of her!  She didn't give it to her.)

Verizon- $136.00 - Our contract is up May 13th!  I plan to order 2 straight talk phones with the $45/month unlimited everything!

Blue Cross Blue Shield- $240.00 - This will be my last of these payments!  DH is getting insurance through work and his will be completely covered, then about $100 a month will be taken out for the kids to be on his plan.

DayCare- $272 (every 2 weeks)- no cutting here and this is really reasonable.  This summer I plan to pay my 16 y/o sister $150/week.  This will save us from driving about 12 miles every day, DH will start driving his moped to work everyday as soon as schools out for the summer and he doesn't have to take kids to daycare in the morning.

Car Payment - ZERO DOLLARS (instead of $645, but I was actually paying $800! I'm also gonna save about $100/month on insurance AND pay about $600 less this summer for tags!)

Clothing the Kids on a Budget!

My husband has a co-worker with a 3 or 4 y/o boy.  It just so happens that he is about one size bigger than my almost 3 year old boy.  She brought me 2 totes FULL of size 3T clothes to go through for him including both summer and winter.  I offered her $100 for both totes and she took it.  It's a good thing this kid has a big closet!  He's now got a complete summer AND winter wardrobe!  Hopefully we'll be able to keep doing this every year!  She was also checking to see if she had any size 6 girls clothes for my daughter :)

Sorta a Compromise

Today I met my husband at his work for lunch and right away he says, "hey come here, I wanna show you something."  So I immediately say, "We are NOT buying anything!"  My husband works at a car dealership, so we have this discussion every time a vehicle comes in that he can own for under $1,000 or about every month! I actually AGREED this time though, under the condition we get rid of his van, which is worth roughly $1000 and has 190,000 miles on it.  This weekend we will probably be trading in the challenger for a Volkswagon Psaat that has about 170,000 miles on it.  The only reason we are trading in the challenger instead of selling the challenger outright (since we already have a buyer) then buying the Psaat is so that we don't have to pay sales tax.

No more Loan!

For now anyways!  The dealership paid off the loan on my car yesterday, because the state of Kansas is going to be closed for a week after today and they wanted to get the title on the way here as soon as they could.  Saturday night the guy wanting to buy the car called and said he was coming here this Friday to get it!  Guess I'll be driving a couple last times this week :)

Patience....

Patience... Is something I don't have much of!  I HATE waiting :(  I can't wait to get my car sold, I just hope I didn't get too excited too early, counting my chicks before they hatched!  Haven't heard back yet from the potential buyer for a couple days now, hopefully they're just working out some fine print though!

WAAHOOOO!!!!

I received some pretty funny and exciting text messages from my husband today at work :)  He works for a Dodge dealer, one his mom happens to be a partner at and is a car dealer.  When we decided to sell my car we enlisted the help of the other dealer and he put it on autotrader.  We had some calls about it last week, this is the text conversation with my husband today!  

DH: One Chicken

DH: Two Chicken

DH: Three Chicken 

Me: ? Four

DH: I'm counting our chickens before they hatch

Me: OOOOOOOOO

DH: You might want to drive your car tonight........

Me: Please tell me that means Melissa won't have a pink get away car at her wedding! LOL. (my sister gets married in June, one of her colors is Fuchsia) 

DH:  Guy from Wisconsin.  Wife got a bunch of inheritance money.  Want pink with white seats.  They'll start making plans to get down here!  

The remaining balance on my car is $23,059.22.  Selling price of the car $32,500. Our only other debt is the mortgage.  That's gonna make for a nice deposit in the Emergency Fund!