Money is a pretty private topic, so I'm going to do all that I can to not let the Hampe out of me on this post and to be as much of a Lanese as I can. I feel that this is something I really want to blog about so that Matt and I can really see how far we've come when it is time to buy a house one day. I am also hoping that it may help some people along the way :)
Beginning December 1st Matt and I decided enough is enough and it was time to buckle down and finally take in all his parents advice and to follow the example his brother has set to really budget!
We've tried this before. But, like all things, it wasn't in our time so we weren't motivated enough.
Touring some affordable and stunningly beautiful homes Maple Valley and Covington is what did it for me. We got home from those tours and I went nuts. For the first week Matt was super annoyed of me. I think it's actually starting to become a nice routine. Anywhere we would go I would question buying things. We never usually do that...terrible huh? I have not bought a Starbucks since the last time I post about not getting Starbucks anymore so that Matt and I could go on more dates...that was a month ago! I can't believe it! When my mom was here she bought me one and I enjoyed it, but my morning Folgers has been holding me over just fine :) Yes, it makes me a little sad because I am usually obsessed and was having 5 or 6 a week. Sometimes 2 in a day. It added up quickly.
Goodbye Starbucks...
Hello, Nissan Rogue!
I have a spreadsheet on my Mac and have been recording every single thing we buy. This month has been hard to stick to our $100.00/week spending limit because of Christmas. With this budget we should be able to save a LOT.
The thought that we have no savings really freaks me out. There are so many bad things that could happen. We've been there before. Not ever again will our brakes go out and get us in a crunch. Now if our brakes go out, we would be able to fix them and move on with life. Not freak out!
I'm super excited about this! I want our credit scores to go up, up, up. And our debt to go down, down, down. I took advice from my mom the other day and called every company on my credit report. I made deals with them to pay. I told them I wanted a letter sent to me stating that if I pay off everything that they will take the debts completely off my report. It worked! 2 of the three are sending me letters this week and you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be sending in some payments asap. I hate that it took us so long to do this. I honestly just don't think we were ever mature enough to follow through and be this disciplined.
Being that this is the first month with this new budget, we've been doing just okay. It's just so hard with Christmas. Christmas took us $200 over budget our spending budget. Which is okay because that dips into our savings budget, not overextending ourselves. There are a lot of people between our two families. I'm not even nearly done yet. Of the 16 people in our immediate families (not including me) I am only done with 8. Gahhh! Good thing I'm creative lol.
Mom
Dad
Mom
Dad
Clint
Cody
Caleb
Clare
This may be the most boring post I've ever written and I'm so so sorry LOL. I just really want to read these each month to see how far we've come. It's my blog so, deal :)
I never thought about calling companies before! Thanks for sharing that. We have been taking a good look at our budget too and we really need to buckle down. We have so many remodel projects we want and need to do on our house and that adds up really quickly.
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