So stoked!

As the day wore on yesterday, I more and more felt like NOT going to CardioSalsa class last night. I had promised myself that I would only skip class if I had a really good reason. Well, I convinced myself that watering the lawn, updating our budget for July, signing up for the 5k next weekend at the Sweet Corn Festival and walking the dogs was way more important than class. And yay for me for actually doing ALL of those things over the course of the evening! I watered the entire backyard which has been so thirsty. Got the budget done for July. Got the forms filled out for the 5k and put in the mail. Even walked the dogs for half an hour. (It was 9:45pm before we went for that walk, but hey, we still did it)

So what am I totally stoked about? Our budget! July was pretty darn crazy. John was in Brazil until a few days before we left for our vacation. Then we had vacation. Then John left for Brazil again just a week and a half after we got home. I don't think we had one completely normal week the entire month. So I was a little nervous to update our spreadsheet with July's results. After downloading our bank and credit cards statements, and making sure I entered in every last transaction, I was actually quite surprised by the results. Turns out we only spent $100 more than we took in during our crazy month of July...but that isn't even the truth. See...that's figuring in the entire $1200 we took out in cash for vacation. We still have about half of that left over in cash that I never put back in the bank because John took most of it to Brazil (but he gets reimbursed for that through work so it doesn't really count as being spent). So in reality, we probably spent about $500 LESS than what we brought in. After a super crazy month, I thought that was absolutely fantastic! We've had a surplus in our budget the past few months that I had yet to transfer to savings because I knew July would be crazy so I wanted it in checking "just in case", but after all was said and done, we have all of that surplus still left over! So that makes me really happy to know we didn't blow a whole bunch of extra money in one month!

Yeah, I know, it's not a particularly exciting post, but it was exciting to me so I just had to share! :o) Thanks for reading!

Budget update!

I was only about 2 weeks late, but I finally updated our budget spreadsheet last night. We did go over budget in the categories I was expecting, but at least we still had “extra” money left over after all was said and done. And (have I mentioned this yet??) since we PAID OFF THE CAR (!!!), we now had to decide where to put that money each month.

First, our plan was to put the old car payment towards the mortgage and save the rest of our “extra” money. Well, then I was talking to my mom about it and she was like, well, if you’re not going to stay in the house that much longer, why pay up the mortgage? Hmm…good question. And we really don’t plan on staying there for a whole lot longer. Maybe another 2 years at the most. We did decide that we would like to move between child #1 and child #2. And if we have 2+ years between children and have child #1 in the next year or so…

So then I thought about maybe just saving it all. We do want to save up for a nice big down payment on the next house…since we won’t have a ton of equity in our current house by the time we move.
Then I started thinking about all the projects that we have around the house that haven’t been getting done because we’re trying to save so much money. Hmm…we could get so much done on our house projects with $625 a month!! I talked to John about it last night and we’re in agreement. The car payment amount will now go towards getting all our house projects finished and once that’s all done, it will then just start going to savings. Our friends have been doing some remodeling at their house and John wants to talk to their contractor about coming to our house to install our laminate wood flooring in the dining room (that we’ve had for over a year and it’s still not installed!!) and also painting our (two story) entry, entry ceiling, and upstairs hallway. So an extra $625 a month will definitely help in covering that cost. And we can finish A LOT of projects on that kind of money. Woo hoo!!

Total Money Makeover

I heard of this book, Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I asked for it for Christmas. And after I got it, I spent and entire weekend reading the whole book. I was hooked. We HAD to do a total money makeover. We had gotten to the point where every month I was wondering, "Where did all our money go?" We were making way too much to have so little. And some of the stories in that book were so inspiring! So we started off 2009 with a money makeover. And it is so liberating! I finally feel like I am in control of our money...instead of the other way around like it had been. In the first month alone, we were able to spend a good $3000 LESS than in months prior. $3000!!!! And now, looking back, I can only wonder, "How in the world were we spending that much money?!? And on what??" So, with this makeover, we're going to pay off my car an entire year early. We're going to pay off our second mortgage 27 years early. I am so excited about it. It's a new way of thinking about money...a better way. And I hope we can continue with these principles for many many many years to come.