The grass is growing again. I think I could end my post there with all the pain that thought causes me. Don’t get me wrong. I love my gardening and my yard and all that…but the weekly maintenance is a pain. Last year, you all gave me a hard time about continuing to pay for […]
The post Yardwork – Ugh! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I think I could end my post there with all the pain that thought causes me. Don’t get me wrong. I love my gardening and my yard and all that…but the weekly maintenance is a pain. Last year, you all gave me a hard time about continuing to pay for yard service.
And I am trying to do better and take your advice. So I’m taking on my yardwork, and biting the bullet and going to purchase the lawn tools I need. And I dread it all the way around.
I do not look forward to:
I am just dreading it! (It is so worth the $50 every other week to have someone else handle this stuff.) But if I’m going to commit to it.
My grass already needs to be mowed. So when April payment gets here, I will find a lawn mower to start. But in the meantime, I have got to fix some issues with my yard.
If you have been around a while, you know I have had a flooding problem. Well, in February, my daughter’s boyfriend came over and helped me clean out the culvert in the back. That has REALLY helped. But I still have a few areas that are of on going concern and have to be address.
The larger hole is about 3 ft deep and almost 5 feet wide, and probably more than that. This same hole has reoccurred 3 times over the course of our almost 7 years here. The city has come out twice to “fix” it. And it just gets bigger and bigger. The other two are places where the cement piping below my side yard is separated and exposed. So last week, my daughter’s boyfriend (actually now ex) was home from spring break. And he graciously came to help me address these areas of concern.
He dug them out a big (pictures) and then we came up with a game plan. (My dad contributed to this plan with his expertise as well.)
For the two, concrete pipe areas, I bought some flashing which we covered with dirt to try to stop water and debris from filling the pipe that is already overflowing when it rains. I was able to find small sheets of the flashing for $8 each at Tractor Supply. Everywhere else required I buy a whole roll for $50-60 that would have also required a special tool to cut it.
Now the larger hole, we dug it out a big more, the filled it with larger “rocks” that he had access to, cost $0, then filled it with dirt. I’m hoping with the rocks in their, it won’t reoccur. So far so good, one rain down and it held.
I’ve got additional plans for the yard this year. And he has agreed to help me with them when he comes home from school for the summer. (And yes, I did confirm with my daughter that she is okay with this ask.) But I know I won’t have the budget for too much.
But first…a lawn mower. Ugh!
Sidenote: this is the text message I sent to my 3 sons…
The post Yardwork – Ugh! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>It’s been a long time since I was paid by a client to gain new skills. When you’re a freelancer, clients expect you to come in knowing how to do the job. But I’ve been lucky that my new client is willing to invest in training me to be a newsletter copywriter! This new assignment […]
The post Being Paid To Gain New Skills, Extra Money Coming In, And Therapy Progress appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>It’s been a long time since I was paid by a client to gain new skills. When you’re a freelancer, clients expect you to come in knowing how to do the job. But I’ve been lucky that my new client is willing to invest in training me to be a newsletter copywriter!
This new assignment has reignited my passion for writing. It’s so easy to get complacent when you keep doing the same type of assignments over and over. There’s not as much mental challenge anymore, which can cause things to feel stale. Plus, it’s bad for your resume to pigeonhole yourself into one type of writing or one niche. So it’s great that I’m being given the opportunity to step outside of my professional comfort zone while still earning the extra money I need.
This new gig is requiring me to be really creative. I’m writing about mental models and biases that can cause business owners to make bad decisions. But I’m explaining them using pop culture references and humor. I’m being encouraged to fully infuse my personality into my writing and think innovatively, which feels so good! I truly believe that this is an area of writing that ChatGPT won’t be able to replace anytime soon, so I’m grateful to be gaining these skills.
In addition to the extra money from this new gig, we’ve received our tax refund and a $900 escrow refund from our mortgage company. We also learned that our mortgage payment is going down $50 per month since our escrow account is nicely funded. Although escrow shortages and surpluses seem to be cyclical, it’s nice when you get a check in the mail to stash into savings and good news that your payment is going down for a while.
Plus, this month is an extra paycheck month for my partner.
Of course, all of this extra money is going into savings because we may have a few home and car maintenance expenses coming up. Our well seems to have some kind of slow leak because of the way the pump is running.
We had a technician come out to look at it, but he wasn’t able to figure out what’s going wrong. From my research, it seems like one of our underground pipes may be the cause of the leak. On the upper end, this type of repair could be $1,600 because they have to dig into the ground to access the pipes. We’re hoping it’s something simpler like a part that needs to be replaced, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Another more experienced technician is coming out to assess the situation soon, so we’ll have more answers then.
Our car’s solenoid needs to be replaced as well, which is going to be about $150. As they say, money comes, money goes! But it’s nice that we got some refunds and extra money to cover these expenses.
I believe I’m heading into my first full month back in therapy this week. So far it’s going really well and I’ve been able to make a lot of progress. Since my old therapist was not practicing anymore, I had to choose a new therapist. I think we click even better than I did with my last therapist.
We’re diving even deeper into self-regulation and emotional coping strategies. My therapist is helping me learn to master mindfulness and responding to my body’s emotional and physical needs before I reach a crisis point.
In the past, I don’t think I was open to mindfulness because it can be difficult to be truly present in my body. To deal with my chronic illness symptoms and push through them, I’ve been encouraged to ignore the feelings and sensations in my body, even by doctors.
This approach has helped me “muscle through” the day when I’m not feeling well. But the dangerous part of ignoring my body to that degree is that I’d never get around to addressing its needs, so I hit a burnout point way faster. Especially when I have other stressors going on in my life like my relative being ill.
My therapist is helping me learn that getting through the day doesn’t have to mean completely ignoring my body. Since I work from home, there are many ways big and small that I can check in with my body and take care of myself. Whether it’s stopping to stretch, making myself a cup of tea, or even taking a power nap, I can listen to my emotional and physical cues to make getting things done easier on my body. I’m not a student anymore, so I don’t have to stay chained to my desk!
I think this gentler approach to productivity could be a game-changer for my ability to sustainably work more. Plus, I believe my ADHD treatment is also making it easier to maintain a bigger workload. It feels like things are aligning in a way they never have before, so I’m feeling much more positive about my ability to meet my career and financial goals.
I hope that these updates aren’t boring to read and hopefully make it to the ears of people who are struggling. Through my financial anxiety, I’ve learned that sometimes financial worries and struggles can signal bigger problems in your life that you may need professional help to address. It takes time and work to find the right supports, medications, and therapy providers, but it’s worth the effort.
I know self-improvement (financially, emotionally, career-wise, etc.) will be a continuous process for me, so I’m not “done,” but I’m glad I’m at least feeling like I’m generally on the right path now. And I’m hopeful that I won’t need to be in therapy forever and can continue the journey myself within a few months. Of course there are still challenging moments here and there, that’s just life! But I’m not feeling “lost” like I was when I started writing on this blog. I think many of you discerned that from my initial posts even though I was in denial about it back then.
Read More
Landed More Work and Back in Therapy
Frugal Living Topic: Therapy???
The post Being Paid To Gain New Skills, Extra Money Coming In, And Therapy Progress appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Hope’s Debt Update – March, 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>This month I had to take care of some things ahead of focusing solely on debt:
I was able to pay off about half of the Sam’s card, but otherwise, no major movement on debts. I am feeling good about the progress I have made on all fronts. With ease! Hallelujah! (You can see last month’s debt update here.)
Debt Description | October, 2023 Total | Interest Rate | Minimum Payment | Current Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
CC - Sams | $1,106 | 29.99% | $40 | $679 |
CC - Wander | $1,630 | 29.24% | $75 | $1,701 |
Personal Loan #1 | $2,500 | 0% | $500 (beg April) | $2,500 |
Personal Loan #2 | $2,500 | 0% | $500 (beg April) | $2,500 |
CC - USAA | $5,000 | 19.15% | $135 | $4,941 |
CC - Frontier | $3,857 | 29.99% | $131 | $3,602 |
CC - Amazon | $1,497 | 29.99% | $53 | $1,457 |
Dad - New Furnace | $2,600 | 0% | $2,600 |
|
Car Loan | $19,581 | 12.69% | Gymnast Pays | $17,109 |
Student Loans | $22,121 | 2.875% | In Deferrment | $22,450 |
CC - Apple** | $500 | Paid off every month | $0 | |
CC - AMEX | $894 | 29.24% | $0 | $0 |
Total | $61,186 | $483 | $59,539 |
I did rearrange my debt table a bit with the goal of putting things in the order I hope to pay them off. And then also moving the paid off item to the bottom so that the beginning balance does reflect progress. (In the past I would remove the item when it was paid off and then I can’t really see the progress as easily.)
And I do plan to continue with bare bones spending through the Spring, well, really as long as I can. I am laser focused on getting back on my feet and getting out of debt!
Gymnast and I are exploring moving him off the insurance. We have scheduled some time together next Monday to file his taxes and get on the phone with some insurance companies to see what our options are. (His options.)
The post Hope’s Debt Update – March, 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Financial Responsibility from Work-Related Illness appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I saw this meme on a friend’s Facebook page (no original attribution was provided), and it struck a chord with me. It reads: “Everything is super important. Until you are sick. Then you realize there was only ever one thing that was important. Your health. But nonetheless we borrow from the bank of our health, taking loans on stress and sleepless nights to pay for something that doesn’t really matter.”
This probably stuck a chord with me because here I am, recovering from a strange illness that has sidelined me from normal “life” stuff for the time being (though hopefully not for long). But let’s back up a bit.
I typically travel domestically for work about once or twice per year. Over the past 3 years, though, I’ve also had one major international trip per year. I just returned from one such trip – a trip to Peru. While the travel was for work, I tacked on a personal weekend at the end of the week so I could see one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World: Machu Picchu!
The day I was to return home, I woke up to a full body rash. Odd. But I’d been extremely busy. Hadn’t been sleeping, had been traveling a ton (from Lima to Cusco to Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu and back again!). I thought my immune system was run down and IDK – I just kind of ignored it. NBD.
Got home on Sunday night. By Monday morning, I started feeling additional symptoms of being unwell. Upset stomach, bad headache, general fatigue and feeling of malaise. But I’d just been gone for a whole week and even though the trip was for work, I was drowning in emails from the time away from the office. I ignored my symptoms and got busy with work.
Tuesday morning I woke up to a nosebleed. This is very unusual for me. I haven’t had a nosebleed since childhood. But this was not your normal run-of-the-mill nosebleed. This was PROFUSE bleeding that could not be controlled. It continued unabated for over an hour. Finally it subsided….only to return less than two hours later. Both these bleeds were completely unprompted (nothing hit my nose, no nose picking, etc.). At this point, I was scared enough to call my doctor and get in ASAP.
One of my colleagues urged me to read about Dengue. There is an epidemic of dengue cases right now in Peru. It’s an infection transmitted from mosquito bites of infected mosquitos (it’s not contagious from person-to-person). While most cases are relatively mild, the more dangerous aspect of dengue is that it causes low platelet count. When that happens, bleeding can be an issue. It can cause internal bleeding (appearing as bruising or pinpoint red dots on the skin) and external bleeding (such as my nosebleed) that is difficult to control. It also causes a variety of other symptoms, many consistent with the strange symptoms I was personally experiencing (headache, stomach ache, fatigue, rash, etc.)
I had a blood draw to get labs run on Tuesday but was told I wouldn’t receive results for 3-4 days. Even though this still has not been officially confirmed, I am pretty positive I have dengue. While there’s no “cure” for dengue, one can treat and manage the symptoms. The most important thing to increase platelets is to have foods high in folic acid and collagen. I’ve been “self-medicating” by eating these foods, as well as taking supplements and vitamins. I also ordered a mobile IV to come give me fluids and additional vitamins like B-complex, zinc, magnesium, and more. I’ve continued to have symptoms of low platelets (like the pin point red dots on my skin), which is worrisome so I am eager to manage this, even in the absence of having the official diagnosis.
All of this stuff comes with costs. So far, I’m out almost $500 for medical care – this is spread between the doctor’s appointment, lab work, prescription medication, and mobile IV (which is not covered by insurance, but is HSA-eligible). But this begs the question….who is financially responsible for these costs? I am so grateful to have a healthy HSA so this isn’t coming out of my normal monthly budget, it’s coming from my HSA account. However, I think this would count as a “workplace injury”, no? There’s some ambiguity, though, given that I did add on the weekend Machu Picchu trip for fun at the end of the work trip. That said, I was only in Peru for work and would not have been exposed to Dengue otherwise. Is this something I should report for Workman’s Comp?
I’d love some advice from others who may have navigated workplace injuries or claims in the past. I would not pursue anything until I’ve received a formal diagnosis. And even then, assuming I continue to improve and get better and no additional medical expenses are incurred I might just leave it as-is to avoid the hassle of whatever is involved with workman’s compensation. I honestly don’t even know if this would qualify due to the odd nature of the illness, etc.
From what I’ve read, it sounds like my case is relatively mild (with the low platelet count being the only true thing of concern). Most cases resolve on their own within a week and I’m already feeling better today than I was 3 days ago, so I believe I’m moving in a positive trajectory. In the absence of anything crazy happening, I think I’ll be back to normal by this time next week.
Any thoughts from anyone out there with more experience than me in this arena? Should I try to talk to Workman’s Comp or just leave it as-is (paid from my HSA) and call it a day?
The post Financial Responsibility from Work-Related Illness appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Before you all come for me. Although, I imagine my last post triggered some of you and you’ve already let me have it in the comments. My budget in the last post was an IDEAL WORLD, not my reality and certainly not currently. Right now, it’s basics and debt. However, there are two things I […]
The post Saving for Christmas appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>However, there are two things I haven’t shared with you about my current finances. And based on the subject line, you can probably guess what one of them is.
I am saving for Christmas.
You will all remember that this past Christmas was a real struggle for me. But I ended up being really proud of what I was able to do with my $2.
Right after Christmas, I knew that I did not want to be in that position ever again if I could possibly help it. And I started interviewing for this new role right after the new year so I was pretty full of hope for this year.
I’ve written before about my Not Spending $5 Bills.
That is how I’m saving for Christmas this year – change and $5 bills. All go into a shoebox in my closet.
Again, I know this won’t sit well with the BAD Community. So I want to caveat this with two things:
We shall see how it turns out come the end of the year. But I wanted you to know that I am doing this. (This is one of those things that make personal finance, personal.)
I will share the other thing I haven’t shared yet in a week or two. I am hopeful it will make at least a few of you happy with me. But you never know.
The post Saving for Christmas appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>As I mentioned a few posts ago, my partner had a reduction in bonus income, which I’ve been trying to make up for by finding new clients. The first prospect that I found ended up only needing me to complete a one-off project. However, I’ve since landed a client who needs regular weekly newsletters. Plus, […]
The post Landed More Work and Back in Therapy appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>As I mentioned a few posts ago, my partner had a reduction in bonus income, which I’ve been trying to make up for by finding new clients. The first prospect that I found ended up only needing me to complete a one-off project.
However, I’ve since landed a client who needs regular weekly newsletters. Plus, one of my existing clients increased my workload. Between these two projects, I’m earning enough to make up for the decrease in bonus income. With the seemingly tenuous state of the economy, I didn’t think I’d be able to drum up extra work this quickly, so I’m very grateful.
Another change I’ve made recently is starting back up with therapy. One of my family members is sick, which has been taking a toll on me. In years past, I would’ve tried to struggle through this difficult period on my own to the detriment of my mental state. But now I realize that kind of grin-and-bear-it attitude isn’t healthy.
I only think I’ll need therapy for a few months as I adjust to this ongoing stress. I was lucky that this new work came through at the right time, giving me the ability to return to therapy without worrying too much about the cost.
I’m also planning to look for a free online caregiver support group. If I find a good one, I’m hoping that it may be able to take the place of therapy. Besides my ADHD medication, I don’t want to continue to pay for mental healthcare for the rest of my life. I want to find some other supports and resources so I no longer need a therapist.
My partner has also made progress on professional development at work and has found a mentor. The mentor is in the department that my partner wants to switch to, so this is a positive step in the right direction. They’re going to meet a few times in the upcoming months for shadowing and training. Hopefully this will help my partner be more prepared to interview for the role that will be opening in that department in the summer.
With my workload increasing, I don’t think I’ll have time to complete the financial coaching certificate that I want to get. However, upskilling has been on my mind recently because of the changes that are being made to the classification rules for independent contractors.
My understanding is that it will be much harder to prove that you’re a freelancer, and not an employee. This could make it more difficult for freelancers to get work. Clients may be more wary of hiring us due to the risk of incurring misclassification fines. These changes are similar to the AB 5 law that was passed in California and caused a 10% reduction in self-employment.
Although this is a bit concerning, I just plan to monitor the situation and keep my professional development plans in my back pocket. If these rules make it harder to get work, I can always pivot by getting new certificates to improve my skills and grow my career in new directions.
Are any of you freelancers as well? Are you worried about these new rules? Let me know in the comments.
Read More
The Bonus Changes Are Worse Than We Thought
The post Landed More Work and Back in Therapy appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post In an Ideal World appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I knew I wanted this job. But I also have finally learned my own worth. I have 20+ years experience in my field, extensive amounts of study, skills, certifications, and testimonials. I bring a lot to the table professionally.
But I have always SUCKED at figuring out what to charge for my services. And notoriously I have low balled because of my empath tendencies and lack of confidence, but I was determined not to do that this time. Or ever again.
So I started with a budget. In an ideal world, pie in the sky, what do I NEED to bring home and what do I WANT to bring home financially. Obviously, we all want to bring home a million dollars a year. Or even $200,000. However, this budget was based on my needs and then my wants. And being reasonable.
This is what I came up with.
Ongoing Expenses | |
---|---|
Payee | Monthly Amt |
Mortgage | $1,014 |
Utilities | $350 |
Internet | $77 |
Phone | $61 |
Gas | $80 |
Food | $400 |
Dog | $160 |
Netflix | $23 |
Pandora | $5 |
Cloud Storage | $6 |
Car Insurace | $500 |
Spending | $200 |
Quarterly | Monthly Amt |
Pest Control | $27 |
Car Maintenance | $100 |
Annual | Monthly Amt |
Siteground | $30 |
Domains | $12 |
Social Curator | $25 |
Elementor | $17 |
Microsoft Office | $9 |
Dog Health | $100 |
Ongoing Mo Expenses | $3,196 |
Debt Pymts | $2,744 |
Monthly Must Have | $5,940 |
Savings Goals | Monthly Amt |
Christmas | $167 |
Kid's Birthdays | $84 |
Travel | $417 |
New Car | $300 |
Move | $500 |
Savings Goal | $1,468 |
Monthly Want to Have | $7,408 |
This led me to the starting point of my salary negotiation.
I must make $3,196 for just day to day living expenses + $2,744 to keep making minimum+ payments on my debt (i.e. make progress to paying it off) = $5,940 per month take home pay.
I want to make an additional $1,468 per month to hit my savings goals, which equaled $7,408 per month in take home pay.
Knowing that I needed to leave room for negotiation and being a contractor which adds additional taxes to my income, I started my salary negotiation at $10,000 per month. And praying to hit $8,000.
As we talked hours, availability, job description, terms, we finally settled on the $6,000 figure for 20 hours per week per month for 6 months.
I was so freaking happy after this past year. And so immensely proud of myself.
I am now two weeks into my new role, and I LOVE it. My brain is being challenged again. I am getting to help build a team. And we are striving to hit BIG GOALS. And the owner/my boss is an amazing human to work for and someone I really admire professionally. (We worked together several years ago.)
I am praying that this role will continue, but it is certainly dependent on me meeting some lofty goals. I’m up for it though. But either way, I just know that this is the start of something new for me. And the mental health affect of this new job, challenge, especially after last year has been amazing. It’s so nice to be so motivated and hopeful again.
If you are an expert at salary negotiation, I would love your feedback. Because I am really bad at it. Really bad. But this was a really big step for me.
The post In an Ideal World appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I anticipate getting my first “big” paycheck towards the end of this week. Therefore, I am glad I asked about the credit card idea, mentioned my idea of prepaying my mortgage and so on. It will definitely be better for me to have a solid plan ahead of time versus deciding how to use it […]
The post Making the Plan Now appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>These are the decisions I have made thus far for March:
I have spoken with the two people who each loaned me $2,500 last fall. I will begin repaying them in April at $500 per month. They are both fine with that.
For the one that I hoped to pay off with a website project…To be clear, that is one of my brothers and he actually approached me a couple years ago about a complex web project. I did the research and gave him a quote for what he wants to do. It is a money making project for him. That quote was well above the loan amount. He mentioned the web project again when I asked about the loan. Fast forward to my call this week to let him know about my pay back plan; he does want to move forward with the web project, but he’s still not sure when. As a result, I am going to proceed with the payment plan and we will revisit his project when ready.
My dad understands that paying him back is not as high on the priority list with all my other debt, so for right now, I do not anticipate making any payments toward that loan.
I do not take these people or their generosity of loaning me the money for granted. I fully recognize how blessed I am to have had that resource. Not everyone does.
I hear the BAD Community loud and clear on the idea of paying down the credit card debt across the board.
The results: Do not do it. Focus on one credit card at a time. And I believe the consensus was pay the highest interest debt first.
Most of my credit cards have approximately the same interest rate. So I’m floundering a bit between two cards to focus on. Let me share my thoughts and you help me decide:
The good thing about paying off the Wander card is that I am not tempted to use it at all. Same with the one I paid off this month. I’ve already disposed of the cards, do not have them connected to Apple Pay, etc. Literally very easy to forget they exist and close them out.
The Sam’s card has not been used in almost a year, and it’s been over the limit most of that time. It would be easy to pay off and feel really good. But I fear I would be tempted to use it as I still shop at Sam’s Club pretty regularly for things I buy in bulk (food and paper products) and gas savings.
In writing this, I think I need to pay enough to the Sam’s card to get it under the limit. But then focus on paying off the Wander card. Do you agree?
The post Making the Plan Now appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Looking at Credit Card Debt Differently appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>And I thought I would try out her perspective on my existing credit card debt. Now she’s all about paying off the debt, but also takes into consideration the method and how it affects your credit score. (I used to be very concerned about my credit score, but since I have a house and a car and plenty of credit card debt, I don’t really think about it very often.)
I think her method fascinates me because it’s kind of like a game, and we all know I love money games and keeping this journey interesting.
Card | Limit | 89% | 69% | 49% | 29% | 9% | February, 2024 Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CC - Wander | $1,650 | $1,451 | $1.139 | $809 | $473 | $149 | $1,735 |
CC - USAA | $5,000 | $4,450 | $3,450 | $2,450 | $1,450 | $450 | $4,966 |
CC - Amazon | $1,500 | $1,335 | $1,035 | $735 | $435 | $135 | $1,481 |
CC - Sams | $1,000 | $890 | $690 | $490 | $290 | $90 | $1,133 |
CC - Frontier | $3,700 | $3,293 | $2,553 | $1,813 | $1,073 | $333 | $3,676 |
CC - Apple | $500 | Paid off every month | |||||
Total CC Debt | $11,419 | $8,867 | $6,297 | $3,721 | $1,157 | $11,971 |
My take away from this is that instead of focusing on paying off one card at a time. Perhaps I should focus on paying down every one of my credit cards to each percentage level. Focus on one, then another until they are all at the next lowest level, and then start the cycle again.
I guess the question I have to ask myself is would that be as motivating as just paying one off at a time? Seeing them all go down pretty steadily versus just one at a time? And does one way versus the other make much financial difference?
What are your thoughts?
The post Looking at Credit Card Debt Differently appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Well, my goal of Two No Spend Months kind of flopped when my heat went out, my glasses broke, and so forth and so on. I didn’t exactly no spend. But I didn’t spend anything I didn’t HAVE TO! Our Neighbors I don’t know if I have written much about my neighbors here. When we […]
The post Unexpected Blessing appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I don’t know if I have written much about my neighbors here. When we first moved into our house, 4 of the 8 houses closest to us were rentals. Over the last, almost 7 years, there have been some changes. Now only 3 of them are rentals. But most of our neighbors are pretty up there in age. In fact, of the 5 non-rentals, 4 of them have been there longer than us. And we LOVE our long term neighbors and some of our newer neighbors as well.
However, the drawback to everyone having been here forever is that many of our neighbors are quite old. In fact, in the days between starting this post and now finishing it, one of them has died. His daughter called me today. (He’s the one who had run over my mailbox. I shared that, right?!?)
Anyways, as his health worsened we did what we could to help. We grocery shopped for him, answered his calls for help on whatever. I even got to climb through his bedroom window one day to let the EMTs in when they couldn’t find a house key. For the last couple of years, Gymnast worked on his yard. And we spent hours listening to him reminisce about the “olden” days up in Illinois where he was from and raised his 5 children.
All that is to give some back story on how our cupboards and freezer got re-stocked. When he was admitted to the hospital for the last time and told that the end was imminent (heart issues,) he knew he would never come home again.
And he graciously had his grand-daughter clean out his food and give it to us and another neighbor. We received a freezer full of food – bread, meat, frozen meals, along with eggs, bread, and a few other canned items. Oh, and I failed to mention that he was Italian so this food is really good. I didn’t have to spend a dime on food for the previous two months.
I’m also confident that with a small re-stock in the next week or so, we can go another two No Spend months.
So this post is a gratitude post to our neighbor Mark. May he rest in peace.
The post Unexpected Blessing appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Hope’s Debt Update – February, 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>As soon as it hit my bank…I scheduled to pay off one of my credit cards. Woot, woot! My lowest balance card is at $0! And I am going to cancel the card to avoid any temptation in the future.
Debt Description | October, 2023 Total | Interest Rate | Minimum Payment | Current Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
Personal Loan #1 | $2,500 | 0% | $2,500 | |
Personal Loan #2 | $2,500 | 0% | $2,500 | |
Dad - New Furnace | $2,600 | 0% | $2,600 |
|
CC - AMEX | $894 | 29.24% | $0 | $0 |
CC - Wander | $1,630 | 29.24% | $124 | $1,735 |
CC - USAA | $5,000 | 19.15% | $135 | $4,966 |
CC - Amazon | $1,497 | 29.99% | $53 | $1,481 |
CC - Sams | $1,106 | 29.99% | $40 | $1,133 |
CC - Frontier | $3,857 | 29.99% | $131 | $3,676 |
Car Loan | $19,581 | 12.69% | Gymnast Pays | $17,635 |
Student Loans | $22,121 | 2.875% | In Deferrment | $22,186 |
CC - Apple** | $500 | Paid off every month | $0 | |
Total | $61,186 | $60,412 |
I was a little disappointed to see that my overall total has not really gone down since October. But I did add the $2,600 that I now owe my dad; otherwise, it would have showed some movement. I am playing around with my forecast spreadsheet to see how I can balance paying off debt along with getting ahead on some things.
Since this is only a 6 month contract, I am being pretty conservative. My financial goals as of right now for these 6 months are:
None of my part time income is in my forecast as it’s not steady. (Made less than $200 in January.) So for now, that money will just dump into savings to help rebuild my cushion.
The post Hope’s Debt Update – February, 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The last week of December, I heard from a past client asking if I was available for a big role. I was so excited to hear from him. Not only was he one of my favorite clients, but, of course, I wanted more work. But I was also immediately torn as I felt a loyalty […]
The post Four Weeks of Interviews appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>He and I scheduled a call for the second week of January to touch base. And the day before that call…I was laid off.
So while I was devastated in one sense, my availability opened up and need for work became urgent.
The first call went great. The role he described was a dream role. And we left that call with some things to think about. But no real plan.
The second call was a couple of weeks later due to some pre-scheduled travel on his part. And we were both prepared. It went great. And I came in confident that I could not only succeed in the role, but with a firm grasp of what I was willing to offer to get it. Firm boundaries.
By the third call we had come to terms as far as time commitment and finances. It was a compromise on both our parts, but for the first time, probably ever, I stuck to my guns. And came away feeling really good about the deal we had tentatively struck.
Fourth and fifth calls nailed down the details and introduced me to the leadership team. And as of the writing of this post, we have a signed 6 month contract. I will start next week.
The future looks bright.
I will be bringing in $6,000 per month as a part time independent contractor. We will re-evaluate at the 90 day mark and 6 month mark to discuss expanding the role and possible increase in rate. As a contractor, I am wholly responsible for all my taxes, FICA, etc. so I can’t just go budget $6K. But this is a huge step in the right direction. And I am so pleased!
The post Four Weeks of Interviews appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>In my last update, I talked about the bonus changes at my partner’s work being worse than expected. I was feeling kind of down about it, but now we have more reasons to be hopeful. It seems like there will be a new internal role opening up at my partner’s company this summer. It would […]
The post Still Looking for More Work appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>In my last update, I talked about the bonus changes at my partner’s work being worse than expected. I was feeling kind of down about it, but now we have more reasons to be hopeful. It seems like there will be a new internal role opening up at my partner’s company this summer. It would be a move into a different department that has much higher base salaries because they don’t really have a bonus program.
My partner has spoken to the hiring manager and some other employees in that department and the response has seemed really positive. A few people have even offered their personal recommendations/references when the time comes. Just the fact that there may be an opportunity for my partner to stay at this company without reducing our income has made me feel more positive and hopeful about the situation.
I’ve also been looking at job listings on Indeed and LinkedIn to see what other opportunities might be out there in case the internal role falls through. It seems like customer success roles would be the right fit based on my partner’s account management skills. I saw salaries in the $80-$100K range, so it seems like it would be a good role to pivot to. If the internal role in the summer doesn’t work out, my partner will definitely start applying for these types of jobs.
I also want my partner to start arranging some informational interviews with customer success agents. I’m in a few remote work networking groups on Facebook that have been helpful. So I’m going to get my partner to join them and start putting feelers out to see if anyone would be willing to chat about their job and how they got into the customer success field. From my research, it seems like a lot of software companies are hiring customer success agents, so it may be a more tech-oriented job. For that reason, I’m wondering if some hard technical skills like coding knowledge are preferred by employers. If my partner has to do some upskilling via Google certificates or other means, we want to find out now while there’s time to prepare.
Unfortunately, my own search for more work hasn’t been going as well. I landed one new client who I thought would need content from me on a weekly basis. But after completing one assignment and getting paid, it’s been crickets. I plan to follow up one more time and then probably cut my losses with this client. I’m still scanning Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other job sites for opportunities and applying. If I keep coming up empty, I may start doing some cold email outreach via email.
My partner always wants to get our taxes out of the way early, so we just finished working on those and have our estimated refund. It looks like we should be getting $750 back, which will go to savings. Although it doesn’t replace all the lost income from bonuses, it’s still nice to get some extra money we weren’t expecting in our pocket.
As a freelancer, I’m always worried that I’ve done my something wrong and will owe the government money. It’s a somewhat irrational fear because I’m careful about calculating and paying my quarterly taxes. But it’s always a relief to learn that I did everything right and am even getting money back!
If you have any job-searching tips, let me know! We’re both looking for work so we could use them.
Read More
How’s the Part Time Job Going?
The post Still Looking for More Work appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Outside of the calamities, ie emergencies that popped up, I still think I’m doing pretty good at sticking to my No Spend Months. I mentioned that in addition to my heat failing, my glasses broke. And I cannot function without them. There is no waiting for new glasses because I can’t see without them. They […]
The post Must Be Able to See appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>They literally just fell apart a couple of days after I was let go from my part time accounting job. I tried to stay hopeful that I could super glue them or the eye place could reattach one of the “stems” (I don’t know if that’s the right term but it seems to fit) with a screw. And I walked into the eye glass place with that hope.
She took one look and said, there is no way to fix these. I about broke into tears. Because I knew that I couldn’t afford new ones.
On top of that, my last eye exam was more than 2 years ago. Even if I could afford new glasses, I would also have to get an exam because they cannot use a prescription that old. And, of course, with no full time job for a year, I have no benefits to help.
She saw my distress. And jumped to help.
She found the same frames that I currently had on the “try on” wall, albeit a different color, and said that I could just buy the frame. They would then take my lenses and just put them in that demo frame. I broke out in tears.
For $150, I got new glasses. They had to keep them overnight because she had to heat them up or something to get the lenses in. But the next morning, I was able to pick them up. And could see the world again…
Once I have income again, I am going to make it a priority to get a new eye exam. I know you used to be able to get one at Walmart for $67. I imagine it has gone up a bit.
The post Must Be Able to See appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Back in December, I was hired on at a local fast food restaurant as their Catering Coordinator. But after I was offered the position, it kind of stagnated. I was actually kind of grateful as I was worried that it would take away from my time with the kids over the holidays. So while I […]
The post How’s the Part Time Job Going? appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>January 2nd, I had my orientation with the owner and store manager. And a week later, I had my training with the Director of Sales. And then I hit the ground running. They just kind of let me lose to figure it out. Not complaining at all. This was a role for them and it immediately felt like a perfect fit for me.
I am loving it. However, the income is not really worth mentioning. Yes, I know every bit counts. To date of this publication, I have worked a little over 16 hours and made about $150. They are also reimbursing me for my mileage when I take catering deliveries but I am not counting that as income.
I get to make my own schedule based on catering orders. Work with a fantastic group of adults and teens. And really enjoy the work. It’s really the perfect “add-on” job. I do a lot of planning, prepare what I can in advance, and when I am available (which is currently always) work in store helping when they are busy or delivering catering orders.
As hard as losing my part time job was, I am so grateful to have this opportunity. Who knew that returning to where I first started working would be so fulfilling!
Because this is a new role, the management team has been really open to my suggestions on how I want to operate. And it’s nice to hear “job well done” on a regular basis after such a challenging year with job loss.
(At the time of writing, I preparing to work a big catering event for the Tim Tebow “Night to Shine” event. Super excited!)
The post How’s the Part Time Job Going? appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Tax Time – Arizona Tax Credit appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>‘Tis the time of year for thinking about and planning for tax time. As I’m planning to put together our taxes, I’ve prepared by making a tax-credit-eligible donation to my kids’ school.
Not all states offer tax credits. This is a dollar-for-dollar “credit” toward the money you owe the state in taxes. Compare this to a tax deduction, which lowers the amount you’ll pay in taxes by lowering your taxable income. But due to the way a tax credit works, it’s much more advantageous financially. Imagine if you had a $400 tax credit. It means your state tax liability would be reduced by exactly $400. In comparison, if you had a $400 deduction, it would reduce your taxable income by $400. This would likely have some minimal impact on lowering your taxes, but it would not be as advantageous as a dollar-for-dollar credit.
From what I understand, different states offer tax credits for different things. Some offer child tax credits similar to what is offered federally. But at least in Arizona, you can also earn a tax credit by donating to a variety of non-profit organizations, including K-12 schools. I love this option because it means I can directly contribute to my kids’ school and that money is deducted (dollar-for-dollar!) from what I owe in state taxes. There are some rules for how the money must be earmarked and spent. But, in general, the money can be used to benefit extra-curricular opportunities including field trips! My kids’ school often asks parents to invest this way, and it helps the kids have great experiences outside the classroom.
It’s important to note that there are contribution limits in place. You can’t just donate thousands of dollars and receive thousands back in refunds for donating over and above your state tax liability. But I love that I can support local organizations (like schools, foster care organizations, and more) and it doesn’t cost me a penny extra. It’s money I would be paying to the state for taxes anyway!
The only tax credits my family has historically been able to take advantage of are through our donations to local schools and other charitable organizations. However, Arizona allows a variety of tax credits, including those for small business owners and those who invest in renewable energy. When we bought our house, it already had solar installed on it (we just inherited it). The initial owners, however, were able to claim the investment in solar on their taxes and receive the tax credit for installation. This is an incentive Arizona offers to promote renewable energy sources. Different states likely offer different types of credits, so you’ll have to do a little research to figure out if you have tax credits for which you might qualify.
I’m trying to get an early start on taxes this year so it’s not hanging over my head. Although I never really enjoyed the process, I think we’ve gotten pretty good at reducing our tax liability and coming pretty close to breaking even (or receiving a small refund) at the end of the year. This is exactly where I want to be! I used to enjoy receiving BIG refunds when I was a teenager and a young adult. But now I realize that just means I’d been overpaying the government all year long for an interest-free loan! I’d rather just break even and have no refund, which means I’ve been in more control of my money throughout the year. Here’s to hoping this year works out the same! Fingers crossed!
Do you live in a state that offers tax credits?
The post Tax Time – Arizona Tax Credit appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>After the heat going out right before Christmas and then again at the beginning of January, the first thing I had to address was getting heat in the house. I was able to immediately borrow some space heaters from Sunday school friends and we were able to live comfortably in our rooms while I figured […]
The post Addressing the Issue of Heat appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I felt like I had few options and even less considering my job loss and dire financial situation. Therefore, I was just going to stick with using the space heaters and suck it up until something changes. But there was something that I hadn’t considered…the pipes in my house. Heat is used not only to keep us warm, but keep our pipes from bursting and it has already been the coldest winter since I’ve been in Georgia.
I just hadn’t though of it from this perspective. But my dad quickly pointed this out.
Thankfully, my dad graciously offered to loan me the money for the new furnace. The total was $2,600. And the contractor was able to do it that week. So within two weeks, I had heat in my home again. And my dad, knowing my situation said that I can pay him back when I can.
Unfortunately, I did add this to my debt load. But I really couldn’t find any other way to deal with it and avoid even further expenses should my pipes burst, etc. I realize how fortunate I am to have a father who was willing to loan me that amount with no interest and timeline for repayment.
Thankfully this was the first major “emergency” I’ve had with my home since I purchased it. And hopefully with a new roof, new electric, new appliances, major work done to A/C at purchase and now a new furnace, I can avoid any additional costly issues for a little while.
The post Addressing the Issue of Heat appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>On February 23, 2024, it will be an entire year since I had a full time job. And over a year and a half since I had a full time job with benefits. I walked into work on January 9th ready to go heads down on tax work and anticipated getting fully caught up over […]
The post An Entire Year appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I walked into work on January 9th ready to go heads down on tax work and anticipated getting fully caught up over the next couple of months.
And then the other shoe dropped. My boss let me go.
Her reasoning was that she was cutting down her accounting practice so she could handle it independently and she was no longer going to need me. She was kind enough to give me 2 months severance. But all my thoughts of catching up, out the door with no notice whatsoever.
I was shook again!
And with that, it has now been an entire year that I have less than full time income. A whole year of not having enough money to even cover my basic bills.
I had a whole slew of posts planned talking about how my No Spend Month was going and what debts I was going to pay with the extra income I was making…But all I could do was turn inward again and start holding my breathe. I had literally just caught up. I came into the year so full of hope.
And then the cycle started all over again. I mean, seriously, how many times do I have to go through this. And why me?
And while I do not tend to be superstitious, I have definitely found that the hard things do come in three’s. First my heat went out, then I lost my job…
And within a couple of days, my glasses broke. Just fell to pieces. And no, I cannot function without them. I literally cannot see. It was a rough week.
Typical me, I turned inward and went silent. Licking my wounds and trying to figure out the reasoning behind this.
The post An Entire Year appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>A few weeks ago I wrote about the changes happening at my partner’s work. We learned that the bonus structure was changing in a way that would negatively affect bonuses. Well, unfortunately the situation is worse than we thought. My partner is now receiving no bonus at all in this new system and likely won’t […]
The post The Bonus Changes Are Worse Than We Thought appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>A few weeks ago I wrote about the changes happening at my partner’s work. We learned that the bonus structure was changing in a way that would negatively affect bonuses. Well, unfortunately the situation is worse than we thought. My partner is now receiving no bonus at all in this new system and likely won’t throughout the rest of the winter and spring.
We used to receive a couple hundred dollars per month in bonus income through the slower part of the year (which starts in late fall and ends in early summer). When business picked up in the summer, bonuses were $1,000 per month, sometimes more if things were going really well. Under this new structure, we think that summer bonuses will get a haircut too and will only be a couple hundred dollars instead of the $1,000 we’re used to.
I didn’t think this change would reduce my partner’s bonus income so drastically overnight. I’m grateful that I never budgeted based on bonuses. I would simply decide where to allocate the money when it hit our bank account and put it toward savings or debt repayment. My dad also works in sales and has had inconsistent income throughout his career. Watching him struggle with money management made me wary of counting bonuses as part of our expected income and financial plans.
Because we don’t budget or plan based on bonuses, we’ll still be able to pay our bills and make progress on our financial goals despite this setback. However, this change in bonus structure is still disappointing because it means losing thousands of dollars of extra income each year. The bonuses accelerated our debt payoff and enabled us to reach goals faster. Although we would love to replace that income by side hustling, my partner has been pretty tired lately due to having a bigger territory size and more accounts. It’s sad that the workload increased and the financial payoff decreased, but it seems to be happening to a lot of people. I’m seeing lots of posts online about layoffs and decreased wages, so it seems like the economy in general is a bit shaky.
I can probably pick up the slack by taking on additional clients. However, one of my immediate family members is having significant health problems, so it may not be the right moment to load up my schedule. We may just continue to monitor the situation and see what happens. My partner is also planning to ask for a raise due to the increased workload at the next annual performance review, which is in late summer. When the economy improves, my partner may consider looking for a new (likely remote) job to get a pay bump.
What would you do in this situation? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, as this sudden change has kind of thrown me for a loop.
Read More
Affordable Holiday Festivities and Changes at Work
The post The Bonus Changes Are Worse Than We Thought appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Newest Student Loan Forgiveness Plan appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The White House recently announced its latest student loan forgiveness plan. I’m currently enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), but hearing about this latest plan definitely piqued my interest.
One major factor is that folks must be enrolled in the SAVE repayment plan (Saving on a Valuable Education). This is different than my current income-contingent repayment plan. For those enrolled in SAVE, folks must have borrowed less than $12,000 and have made 10 years of payments.
For many, the SAVE repayment plan lowers monthly payments and it can shorten the length of time until loans are forgiven. For me, it would actually increase my monthly payment quite substantially (by several hundred dollars/month).
Unfortunately, little information is available about the SAVE program. I’ve already made over ten years of payments – the threshold at which loans are supposed to be forgiven under this new plan, as well as with PSLF. However, several months of my payments “don’t count” toward the 120 payment threshold. I have no idea if those same rules and stipulations would apply with the SAVE program (though I suspect they would).
Similarly, one of the stipulations with this new forgiveness program is that less than $12,000 was borrowed. Across time, I borrowed significantly more than $12,000. But each individual loan was below that threshold. Would these individual loans still qualify for forgiveness? Or would I not qualify since the total amount of loans exceeds $12,000? I couldn’t find information about this.
I’m planning to give Mohela a call (when I have a spare hour or two…) to ask a few questions. My guess is that I’ll be advised to remain put with the PSLF program and wait for my forgiveness to be approved in the next couple of years. I recertified my employment in December and am still waiting for it to be processed so all my payments for the last year-or-so can be counted toward the 120 payments required.
Do you know if you qualify for forgiveness with the latest student loan forgiveness program?
Other posts I’ve written recently about my student loans:
The post Newest Student Loan Forgiveness Plan appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>At the start of a new year, I always find myself reflecting on my financial goals. Recently I’ve been focused on retirement and making sure we’re on the right track. I’ve been playing around with various retirement calculators to measure our progress. I’ve been surprised to find out how unhelpful many of the free retirement […]
The post Retirement Calculators and Using What I Have appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>At the start of a new year, I always find myself reflecting on my financial goals. Recently I’ve been focused on retirement and making sure we’re on the right track. I’ve been playing around with various retirement calculators to measure our progress.
I’ve been surprised to find out how unhelpful many of the free retirement planning tools available online are. Many of them don’t tell you whether they’re showing you numbers in today’s dollars or future dollars, so it’s hard to contextualize their results. Some also do a poor job of explaining the assumptions they’re using such as inflation and rate of return. Has anyone else noticed this and been frustrated by it?
After several hours of searching, I finally managed to find a tool I like. Just to be clear, I don’t have any kind of affiliation with this tool or company. I just thought I’d share it in case you’re looking for a good retirement planning tool as well. It’s called NewRetirement, and although they offer a paid subscription, the free tool suited my needs.
However, I should mention that the tool is very conservative. As I understand it, the rate of return that it uses for its “average” confidence level is 3.5%. For pessimistic, it uses a 2% return. Personally, I use 5% in my retirement planning. So I chose the “optimistic” confidence level, which is equivalent to a 5% return. There’s also a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using the tool. But luckily there’s a NewRetirement forum on Reddit where you can go to ask questions.
I liked the feature that allows you to estimate how increasing your contributions will affect your retirement income. You can also change the general and medical inflation rate, which was helpful for me as future medical costs are a big concern of mine.
Luckily it seems like we’re on the right track. Right now we’re contributing about 21% of our income to retirement including employer matching. We’re planning to increase our retirement contributions once we’re done building cash reserves in about a year. But even without bumping up our contributions, my estimates show that we would have surplus income in retirement.
I know that life can often throw curveballs though, so we’re not planning to rest on our laurels in this area. I want to make sure we’re always contributing as much as we can. That way if something bad happens like extended job loss, we won’t be short in retirement if we can’t contribute for a while.
Another area I’m focused on right now is extracting more value from the things I already own. I saw a comment in a minimalism forum I’m a member of that resonated with me. There’s a lot of useful life in the things we own that we may not be using. For example, a book you only read once that just sits on the shelf has a lot more entertainment value in it that you can tap.
Seeing the books on my shelf as a form of waste has changed my perspective. I usually think about wasting money in terms of food spoilage or buying unnecessary items. However, viewing the board games that aren’t being played or clothes that aren’t being worn as a form of waste has motivated me to extract more value from my belongings.
My partner and I have a lot of board games from our childhoods. So this month we’re challenging ourselves to play through all of them at least once. Instead of going out to coffee shops to occupy ourselves during the weekend, we’re going to stay home and enjoy the entertainment we have.
What are your financial goals for the new year? Are you doing any savings challenges in January?
Read More
The post Retirement Calculators and Using What I Have appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post 2024 Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I wish everyone a healthy and happy 2024!
‘Tis the season for new year resolutions or intentions. In the spirit of planning the coming year, I wanted to share my 2024 goals. For a look back on 2023, make sure to check out my review of my 2023 financial goals.
Just like last year, I’ve set my financial goals in 4 broad categories: short-term savings, investments, debt, and travel.
I started 2023 with loooots of different short-term savings that I kept in many different Capital One 360 savings accounts.
In my budget I still have many of my same short-term savings goal categories (e.g., car repair fund, semi-annual fees, etc.). However, I’ve removed my savings for student loan payments and replaced it with a new short-term savings category strictly for home repairs. And then I’ve opened a new brokerage account and am going to start investing money there.
Which brings me to my next category of longer-term investments:
In this post I talked about some new financial goals as I was mulling over open enrollment options.
Here’s what I’ve done:
2023 |
New for 2024 |
HSA: $5500/year | HSA: $6860/year |
FSA: $700/year | FSA: $1000/year |
403B: $125/check = $3250/year | 403B: $215/check = $5590/year |
529: $50/month/child = $1200/year | 529: $60/month/child = $1440/year |
Total: $10,650/year |
Total: $14,890/year |
This is slightly different than what I’d originally said in the post above. That’s because I was planning initially to increase my HSA contributions to $7750/year. However, I neglected to take into consideration the fact that my employer provides $1440/year for family HSA plans as part of employee benefits. That means I’m at the max contribution level at $6860.
My HSA contributions will now be lower than I’d originally planned, but I wanted to still be at a similar threshold for investments overall. So, I increased my 403B contributions by a comparable amount.
And, as mentioned above, I opened a brokerage account as a longer-term savings vehicle that I have outside of my normal retirement accounts. I haven’t included it in this table because I’m not going to be making recurring contributions. It will be more like here and there, stashing extra money away if/when we have it.
I’m really proud of this level of investment, as it represents a sizeable proportion of salary. I should mention this is on top of the 7% that is automatically deposited into my “normal” retirement account (and my employer matches a full 7%, so 14% of my salary is invested in retirement).
These increases WILL make my paychecks smaller (obviously), but I’ve already adjusted my budget accordingly. It doesn’t hurt that I’m also expecting another raise on the near(ish) horizon.
In my Review of 2023 post, the big thing was that I paid off my car in October and officially entered 2024 consumer debt-free. My only remaining debts are my student loans and my mortgage.
The debt plan for 2024 is to basically continue with how things were going in the past. We will continue to pay double mortgage payments twice/year and make the minimum payments on my student loans, riding them out the next two years until they’re forgiven through PSLF.
Travel continues to be a big priority for us. In 2024 we have one big trip planned (husband and I going to Italy in summer!). In the Fall I’ll have a sabbatical from work so I hope to do a couple of quick weekend trips during that time, too. I’m tentatively planning one with just me and the kids, and then one with me and my mom. No destinations in mind yet, but it’s fun to start thinking about (and saving up for) our upcoming adventures.
The post 2024 Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>There have been lots of writers here on BAD who have utilized a No Spend Month to make progress in their debt payoff journey. Here are just a few of them: Parents Coming to Visit and No Spend Challenge Doing it again – No Spend September How the “No Spend Challenge” Can Help You Get […]
The post No Spend Month(s) appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Parents Coming to Visit and No Spend Challenge
Doing it again – No Spend September
How the “No Spend Challenge” Can Help You Get out of Debt
Preparing for a No Spend Month
I have decided to try for 2 months of no spending. Of course, I had decided to try this and then my heat went out. But I do plan to move forward.
I prepared for this by reviewing my pantry to see if I have the food to last. (And my dad sent me a package from Omaha Steaks as a Christmas gift.)
Reviewed events and needs to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary on the horizon.
And committed to NOT SPENDING for the next two months.
I believe that starting the year with this mindset accompanied by starting my new part time job are setting myself up for success on the financial front. Between my now 3 part time jobs + any additional project work I can pick up, I should be quite busy. Hopefully.
I am going to take a BAD commenter’s advice and do a weekly post about all spending which should be all bills. This will help hold me accountable.
In addition to the heat debacle, I am facing, there has been one additional setback. The project I was to complete this over the new year holiday was put on hold…again! So the payment, a large payment I expected to receive around mid-month has been delayed again. (This has been a constant issue with this client/project that was originally contracted in August, 2023.) The timetable is once again up in the air. Which means, that the bills I anticipated covering easily for the next month-ish may be more challenging than I planned. However, there is another iron in the fire for more work that I am quite hopeful about. I will keep you posted.
The post No Spend Month(s) appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I can’t remember if I wrote about my heat going out on 12/22, the morning after History Buff arrived for Christmas. Thankfully things worked out in my favor and we had heat for Christmas. First, I had been in touch with my trusted HVAC person in the fall to have him check out my AC. […]
The post The First Opportunity of 2024 – Heat appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Thankfully things worked out in my favor and we had heat for Christmas.
First, I had been in touch with my trusted HVAC person in the fall to have him check out my AC. He tested it out for me and let me know that he was shutting down his business. Thankfully, I asked them for a referral to a new service. Although, I had yet to contact them.
So when I awoke to no heat, I called them immediately. And gratefully, he came out that day AND I received a check from a client that day.
$180 and we had heat for Christmas.
He did warn me that he wasn’t sure how long it would last. It lasted almost 2 weeks, until this morning. We woke up to 59 degrees in the house and 28 degrees outside.
My first thought was panic. I have $100 in savings and about $50 cash. No money for a new furnace, let alone another repair bill.
But this is a new year and I’m determined to have a new attitude and outlook. So we are looking at this as an opportunity. Not sure what for, but there’s going to be a lesson and a blessing from this. I just have to watch for them!
I’ve contacted the new HVAC contractor again. (And have gotten additional recommendations for him since I used him last month, so I’m feeling good about being in the right hands.) And they are going to go take a look while I’m at work today. We will see what they have to say.
One of my Not Going to Happens for 2024 is no new debt. What do I do here?
I have a soft estimate for a new furnace at $2,600. Waiting on a firm quote from the contractor. Needless to say, I do not have that.
Here are the options I think I have. I’m happy to hear if you have other thoughts:
I am leaning toward option #1 and plan to start making some calls this afternoon. If we weren’t at the very beginning of winter, we would just make it through, and I would have the year to save for a new one. But this winter is supposed to be a cold one. And nights are in the 20-30’s and days in 40-50’s for the foreseeable future.
But I am grateful…I sleep for 4 big dogs. I am plenty warm at night. And Beauty has a new heated blanked on her bed so she’s cozy as well. Grateful for little things in the face of this.
The post The First Opportunity of 2024 – Heat appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Whoo, boy. I don’t even want to do a recap of 2023. So much loss. So much heartache. And so many struggles. So that’s it, that’s all I’m going to say about 2023. We are no longer looking back. Just looking forward. I feel confident that 2024 is going to bring so much change, so […]
The post The Joy Coming in 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>So that’s it, that’s all I’m going to say about 2023. We are no longer looking back. Just looking forward.
I feel confident that 2024 is going to bring so much change, so much growth, and so much joy!
In the past, I have made lists upon lists of things that I am going to accomplish in the coming year. That is not happening for 2024. If anything the past years have taught me just how true the old adage of “We plan and God laughs” is.
So instead I have a few “not going to happen” items. And then one big mindset goal…
I realize that experts would say to state my goals as a positive, but that has never worked for me in the past. I’m trying something new. These are things I will not tolerate and will not let happen this coming year.
As I previously mentioned, I have been in purge mode for quite a while now. And sorting through my stacks and stacks of book has been a big one. I’ve sorted them by category, priority to read, etc. And this book gave me the motivation for this coming year’s mindset.
It’s not the only one, but the title just speaks to me in so many ways. I read this book several years ago and have been skimming through the passages I underlined and highlighted over the past couple of days.
Here are some things I am specifically looking forward to in January.
I hope you have a wonderful and safe New Years! I will be snuggled up with a stack of library books and my dogs…reading in the New Year and definitely asleep before the clock strikes midnight.
Here’s to the most glorious coming year that we can not even imagine! A year of YES for me!
The post The Joy Coming in 2024 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I wanted to settle the great debate that has been raging in my head for the last, almost year, since my devastating job loss. I have no plans to sell my home. Holding on to this home is what I want to do. You all have given me some fantastic advice as I struggled with […]
The post Decision Made – I’m Not Selling appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>You all have given me some fantastic advice as I struggled with this thought the last several months as things became so hard financially.
I currently live in and own a 1100 square foot, brick home in a tiny little town in Northeast Georgia at the base of the Smokey Mountains. I love tiny town living. And I have poured tons of blood, sweat, and tears into remodeling this home to make it perfect for me (and my dogs.) This is the first home I ever bought completely on my own.
When I lost a really great and loved corporate job a year and a half ago, I hoped to jump right into a similar role. To date, I have not even come close to finding a new full time job despite 100s of applications. But I have been blessed with several part time jobs and some project work. But things have gotten really, really tight and scary at times.
I am just now getting back on my feet after about 4 months of almost losing everything. And selling my home and moving to a larger market became a true debate.
But I have decided to no longer entertain the thought of selling the house. There are lots of reasons but here are the highlights that tipped the scale.
Having this decision made ahead of the new year gives me an immense sense of peace and contentment. One less thing to distract me as I work my way back and forward to a new life.
Also, good news, that I will share more of in the new year, as of today, my mortgage is paid through February 1 (so I am one month ahead now) and I have paid over 1/2 of the payment due then! Woot, woot!
The post Decision Made – I’m Not Selling appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Happy holidays! I hope everyone enjoyed their celebrations this week. My partner and I did things differently this year to keep our holiday festivities affordable and low-effort. Instead of doing a big Christmas dinner spread with a roast and sides, we decided to make fondue. All we had to buy were some vegetables for dipping […]
The post Affordable Holiday Festivities and Changes at Work appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Happy holidays! I hope everyone enjoyed their celebrations this week. My partner and I did things differently this year to keep our holiday festivities affordable and low-effort. Instead of doing a big Christmas dinner spread with a roast and sides, we decided to make fondue.
All we had to buy were some vegetables for dipping and a block of fontina cheese, which was about $20 altogether. It probably wasn’t the healthiest dinner, but it was a nice treat for Christmas. Fondue felt special enough to to be an affordable alternative to the traditional, expensive holiday feast. Plus, we were happy to avoid spending hours in the kitchen. We used the time we regained to play board games and watch movies, so we had a very relaxing holiday.
For New Year’s Eve, we typically make finger foods and watch the ball drop at home. I just went to the store today to restock a few staples and grab ingredients for our NYE appetizers. I only spent $30 because I had a $15 gift card from a recent promotion at my grocery store. Plus, I used two $6 off coupons that Cabot kindly sent us because we didn’t enjoy one of their products. I highly suggest emailing or writing to companies to let them know about your experience with their brand (whether positive or negative), because they’ll often send you coupons in return.
Because of my Cabot coupons and a BOGO50 sale, I was able to get some fancy horseradish and herb cheddar cheeses for $1 each. We’re planning to do a cheese board with those and make some vegetable burger sliders, potato skins, and corn blini with avocado for NYE.
I’m allergic to alcohol, so we don’t get any bubbly or ovepriced sparkling juices. We also avoid the cheesy disposable hats and glasses that will just end up in the landfill after the holiday. We don’t really do anything for New Year’s Day besides watching the Rose Parade, which helps us save money as well.
What did you do for Christmas this year and what are your New Year’s plans? Have you been able to stick to your holiday budget and find ways to cut costs?
My partner has recently learned about some changes at work that might affect our financial plans in 2024. In the sales industry, promotions are often based on factors like how much you’ve grown your territory, increased your sales and profitability, and similar metrics. My partner gained a lot of new customers this year, so we thought there may be a promotion coming, but it looks like that probably won’t happen this year. There’s a new metric that the sales team is being judged on for promotions that’s really hard to hit, so very few people are getting promoted according to my partner’s boss.
Plus, there are going to be some changes to the bonus structure that will make it harder for my partner to get good bonuses. We don’t budget based off of that money and weren’t counting on it. However, it’s always nice to be able to put extra money in savings or pay off some mortgage principal with bonus payments. Although these changes are a bit disappointing, my partner is still happy at work overall and not looking for a new role any time soon.
Finance experts often recommend job hopping for raises and promotions, but there aren’t a ton of good employment options in our area because it’s pretty rural. Many employees at my partner’s company has been there for decades because it’s generally a good place to work. They get solid benefits and annual cost of living increases, which seems rare these days. My partner might be able to get higher pay by looking for a remote role, but it’s not something we’re planning on exploring any time soon. Right now we’re just grateful that we have stable employment in this uncertain economy.
Have you experienced any financial changes recently that could affect your plans and goals in the new year?
Read More
No Ideas for Christmas & Got an Interview
Home for the Holidays – Christmas Plans
The post Affordable Holiday Festivities and Changes at Work appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I stressed ALOT about Christmas and what I could and could not do as far as gifts go. And I definitely waffled between making terrible decisions and staying strong. But I’m happy to report, that I spent less than $2 per child for Christmas. Each of my children received 2 gifts from me: As I’ve […]
The post A $2 Christmas appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Each of my children received 2 gifts from me:
I wrote a couple of personal notes in each binder, that they will find someday as they work through them. (At least I hope. But I thought that would be a nice personal touch.) And I plan to create a custom cover for each binder and have them printed down the road. I also retyped the note my mom put in my recipe binder back in 2002 and added an image of her signature to make it a little more personal. Overall, I was happy with the gift, and they all seemed excited about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I did still spend some money. I purchased all the food for our Christmas Eve meal. There were 11 of us fed – 6 of us, 3 significant others, and two elderly neighbors we provided meals for. (We are still eating leftovers, and Princess was able to take food home for the rest of the week for her as well.) And the items needed for Christmas Eve games. But overall, this was the most frugal Christmas for me EVER. And it was magnificent!
I pray you and yours had a wonderful Christmas.
The post A $2 Christmas appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Reporting on 2023 Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Before the start of 2023, I set financial goals belonging to 4 broad categories: short-term savings, investments, debt, and travel. With the end of the year rapidly approaching, I want to report back on the progress I’ve made on my goals. If you’d like, you can refer back to my 2023 Financial Goals post.
I hit most of these goals and modified one. I brought my Emergency Fund up to $5,000, my car repair fund up to $3,000, and my semi-annual fee fund is fully funded at $1,000. At the start of 2023, I was also planning to pay off one of my student loans (approx. $4700). I instead diverted that money when I needed to buy a new computer, and also raided that fund to pay for some legal fees. My student loans are supposed to be in repayment status now, so I’m not actively saving toward them at this time (but…see my last post about issues with my student loan service provider, MOHELA).
I’m continuing to save toward traditional retirement, 403(b), an HAS, an FSA, and a 529, and taking advantage of Arizona’s tax credit by donating to my kids’ school in exchange for a dollar-for-dollar credit toward AZ state taxes. The other investment is in relation to our house.
Historically, we’ve paid double payments twice/year. In November, I wrote a post about weighing options between continuing to pay aggressively toward our house versus using that same money to invest elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of commenters were in favor of investing the money elsewhere. It’s hard to argue with numbers. By paying off the house early, we are only saving the APR (2.625%). Or, we could invest the money and stand to make 10% or more in ROI.
That said, my husband is very fond of the idea of having a paid-off home when he retires. The security of that feels good to him. I mentioned what some commenters had pointed out – that we could invest the money and use it when he retires to pay off the house at that time. He’s still not crazy about it.
At this moment in time, we’re continuing to make double house payments. As we’ve been blessed with a series of raises over time, we may try to re-do our budget to invest some additional funds (over and above the double house payment 2/year). We’re still talking about 2024 financial goals, so I’ll report more soon.
I’m officially consumer debt-free, as of October when I paid off my car! Although that was a big win, I also made the decision to pull back on aggressively paying off my student loans. Instead, I’m riding them out until they are forgiven through PSLF (approx. 2 years to go). That leaves me with only student loans and a mortgage as my remaining debts.
I hit my two travel goals for 2023 (Disney with our immediate family; and a summer cruise with my extended family). In addition, I mentioned that one of my 2023 goals was to save for another big vacation on the horizon. In the summer of 2024, my husband and I will be going to Italy (as a couple/no kids). We’ve been planning this out and saving for it for over a year. My original budget was $6,000, but as we’ve been booking flights and such it’s looking like it’ll be closer to $7500. It’s okay – like I said, we’ve been planning and saving for over a year already!
I know this is a HUGE expense. I don’t take it lightly. This is a once-in-a-lifetime type of trip for us (literally, I don’t expect that we’ll ever return to Italy). I know this is a bit sideways for a get-out-of-debt blog, but I’ve been pretty transparent about my goals and the need to find balance in my life. This is happening. We’re doing it. But we’re doing it responsibly. It has not been a spur-of-the-moment decision. We’ve spent tons of time doing research and finding deals and figuring out how to make this work. And we’ve been savings all along so we have the funds to pay in cash and not take on any debt for the trip.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with the way 2023 has shaped up! I hit the vast majority of my goals and, for those where I didn’t, it was more of a conscious decision to re-allocate funds and shift priorities versus a complete failure to hit a goal. I have lots of thoughts and plans for 2024, too, so stay tuned for a forthcoming post with 2024 financial goals.
The post Reporting on 2023 Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>A few months ago a reader commented that my partner and I should set a deadline for making some big decisions in our life, such as deciding if we should move. That comment really stuck with me and was something I worked on in therapy and with my spouse. That’s part of why we were […]
The post Feeling Like We’ve Figured Out Our Priorities appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>A few months ago a reader commented that my partner and I should set a deadline for making some big decisions in our life, such as deciding if we should move. That comment really stuck with me and was something I worked on in therapy and with my spouse. That’s part of why we were able to come to the decision that moving doesn’t make sense to us—we’ve actively been having conversations to figure out what our priorities are. Of course, life can throw curveballs, but we feel pretty confident about the direction that we’ve decided to steer ourselves in.
I think a lot of you could tell that I’ve struggled with decision-making, but over the past few months of therapy I’ve had some “aha” moments. The big one is that you need to have good reasons for everything that you do. Especially when it comes to major decisions that can alter the course of your life and cost you a lot of money, such as moving or having kids.
I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I didn’t know that intuitively! But I think I was letting anxiety and outside expectations from various influences like society and family drive my decision-making. My emotions were determining the direction I decided to head in instead of logic and sound reasoning. I’ve also realized that my family has a pretty impulsive decision-making style, which may be part of why I’ve struggled in this area.
Although not everyone has to agree with your decisions, it’s probably a red flag if lots of people in your life tell you something is a bad idea. I’m trying to listen to this feedback more and hold myself to higher decision-making standards.
After this “aha” moment, I resolved to hold myself to higher decision-making standards, which has helped me sort out my goals and priorities. During this process my partner and I have been discussing what our shared goals are. And we’ve realized that having children actually isn’t as high up on our list as we thought.
As of yet, we haven’t felt a strong enough pull to have children. It doesn’t seem like either of us would regret not expanding our family. And if you’re going to take on the $250,000+ expense of having a child, you need to feel a deep longing for family life to justify going down that path.
Through therapy I realized that I might have been planning for kids because it’s the next step on the “traditional” life path. I’m not sure why I’ve clung so tightly to the traditional path, but it’s something that came up over and over again in therapy. Holding ourselves to higher decision-making standards is helping my partner and I understand what we really want versus what we were taught to want, or “supposed” to want.
There are also many barriers in the way of having kids. Every doctor I’ve spoken to said I would have trouble conceiving due to my medical history. Fertility treatments would greatly add to the already high cost of having a child. And after watching videos of IVF journeys on YouTube, I don’t think that’s something I’m interested in pursuing.
Plus, I’m not sure what caused my various medical issues. One of my specialists thought I may have some kind of genetic abnormality that led to all my health problems, and I would absolutely hate to pass that on to a child knowing how much I’ve struggled.
If we ever feel the pull to have children, we haven’t completely ruled out the idea of fostering kids someday, although we’re still leaning no on that. We’ve also discussed other ways to help the next generation besides raising new humans. We’re both interested in the idea of being a Big Sibling through the Boys and Girls Club in our area.
Paying off our home is still one of our life goals, which we’re going to continue to do. But we’ve also realized we want to save and invest more heavily and make that a bigger chunk of our financial pie. That’s caused us to reroute some of our mortgage overpayments to savings in the past couple of months, as I mentioned in the last post. Then after we feel like we’ve gotten a handle on liquid savings, we’re going to shift those funds to investing, probably in a Roth IRA.
We’re both homebodies who don’t enjoy traveling in the traditional sense. But during our conversations we’ve realized how much we both value nature. Someday we’d love to see natural sights that are a bit further away from us, such as the Grand Canyon and the Badlands. But right now we want to explore our own area more and maybe try our hand at camping this year as an affordable way to vacation and enjoy nature.
I’m also trying to apply better decision-making to everyday situations and purchases. If I don’t have a good enough reason for buying something, it needs to go back on the shelf. Small, habitual purchases can add up to be bigger expenses. Left unchecked, little budget leaks can derail you.
I’m not perfect, but I can definitely see now that every time I buy something not strictly necessary, it’s a detour that distracts from the main goals I’m trying to pursue. So I need to have a very good reason for deviating from the budget I’ve set in service of the goals my spouse and I have agreed upon. And most of the justifications my brain comes up with to try and get me to buy something are BS! I’m getting better at identifying good reasons versus BS justifications and am going to keep working on it.
How do you go about making good decisions and setting goals and priorities in your life? I’d love to hear your tips.
Read More
The post Feeling Like We’ve Figured Out Our Priorities appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Hope’s December Debt Update appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>So without further ado, here is how my debt stands currently:
Debt Description | October, 2023 Total | Interest Rate | Minimum Payment | Paid This Month | Current Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Personal Loan #1 | $2,500 | 0% | 6 months to pay | $2,500 | |
Personal Loan #2 | $2,500 | 0% | 6 months to pay | $2,500 | |
CC - AMEX | $894 | 29.24% | $93 | $100 | $916 |
CC - Wander | $1,630 | 29.24% | $124 | $1,899 | |
CC - USAA | $5,000 | 19.15% | $135 | $200 | $5,072 |
CC - Amazon | $1,497 | 29.99% | $53 | $53 | $1,495 |
CC - Sams | $1,106 | *29.99% | *$40 | $39 | |
CC - Frontier | $3,857 | 29.99% | $338 | $170 | $3,788 |
Car Loan | $19,581 | 12.69% | $500 | $563 | $17,922 |
Student Loans | $22,121 | 2.875% | $306 | Deferred until Dec, 2023 | $22,186 |
CC - Apple** | $500 | $500 | $421 | ||
Total | $61,186 | $61,868 |
My student loan payments were slated to resume this month, but I have applied for an income based repayment schedule based on my steady income and anticipate that will be approved. Just a waiting game for right now.
While I have officially accepted the new part time job, it’s going to be a slow start. They are figuring out how to onboard me, etc. and so I don’t believe I will be hitting the goal hours every week for at least another month-ish. But again, just a waiting game to see how it plays out and then ramps up. Grateful to have it though.
Going forward, I will refer to this job as my Coordinator job vs my Accounting job.
My contracted work should wrap up for the most part by the first or second week of January. That’s the work that will cover bills through January. I am hoping I will be able to negotiate some on-going work, even if it’s just a few hours a week. It has been a really fun and challenging project. I implemented a new POS system for their two locations – Commerce7, implemented and integrated a new inventory and production software with their production site – EKOS, and am currently finalizing their new website that integrates both with Commerce 7 and VinoShipper. In doing all this, I wrote new SOPs, replaced two other software applications that were using, got to choose and set up all new hardware, and learned a whole lot about wine making.
Praying I can get more projects like this as I have really enjoyed it. Know anyone who needs some help with their tech stack?
The post Hope’s December Debt Update appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Money is a scarce commodity, and this means that some people may be willing to do whatever it takes to get some, including stealing. This is one of the greatest reasons why it’s a good idea for you to protect your property, especially if you live in an apartment complex. There are a number of […]
The post How to Protect Your Property if You Live in an Apartment Complex appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Keep in mind that every 23 seconds, there’s a fire in the United States. This makes it important for you to keep your home safe from fire, in addition to burglary. To this end, make sure that you have a reliable fire detection system with batteries in it. You should also take things a step further and buy a fireproof safe. This is the perfect place to hide your valuables and avoid keeping them in obvious places like the closet, under your mattress, or even in an empty coffee can. With a fireproof safe that’s bolted to the floor or wall of your apartment, your important documents and valuables will be a lot safer.
Another important safety measure to take is to make it a point to know your neighbors. You don’t have to be the most social person in the world to do this, since a little observation and small talk can help you know who your neighbors are, even in passing. As a result of this, you’ll find it easier to tell if something is out of place, such as having a strange person or vehicle near your apartment at odd hours or for too long. This can save you considerable trouble, given the fact that there are over 100,000 motorcycles registered in Kentucky alone, according to a report that was shared by the Kentucky State Police. Similarly, if you know each other as neighbors, it will be easier for each one of you to be on the lookout for any suspicious faces or occurrences.
The doors and windows are literally the most common possible entries into the house that burglars can use to access your home. With this in mind, it’s best that you make sure the doors and windows of your home are secured properly by installing robust locks on them. This is likely to be an affordable project to do since good locks don’t normally cost too much. They may not even cost enough to be counted as part of the $472 billion that, according to Architectural Digest, was spent on home renovations in 2022. That said, you can also take measures like placing a bar in the track of a sliding door and installing peepholes and quality deadbolts in entry doors.
Last but not least, spare some time and take inventory of your entire apartment. This is going to prove beneficial for you if a robbery does occur since you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what’s missing. You can do this by either noting down the most important items or taking a video or pictures to make the process faster and easier. Remember to especially take note of serial numbers as well as the values of the items so that if you need to file a claim, it’s a lot easier to do so, and do so accurately.
You no doubt work hard for your money so that you can get the items that you want for yourself. With this in mind, it’s important for you to take proper care of your valuables and make sure that you don’t lose them easily. The effort that you make is going to prove well worth it for you. Learn other measures and practice them, and you’ll avoid a number of possible issues.
The post How to Protect Your Property if You Live in an Apartment Complex appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Preparation – Week 1 Results appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Here’s how it went…
What a good and eye opening exercise! Although I found is near impossible to get down to the goal of $2,500.
I loved watching the conversations on Ashley’s recent post about paying off her mortgage vs buying an income generating property. The idea of having a paid off house going into retirement age is certainly appealing. I know it is an emotional thing, but there also is some sense of security with having what is typically one of your largest bills paid for going into that age when you work less or not at all and live off a fixed income.
I know I am nowhere near there, but definitely a conversation I am following.
I relisted a bunch of jewelry and items on Facebook Marketplace that I have collected over the last few weeks as I have been going through all the nooks and crannies in my house. I took the time to take better pictures and am opening to make a couple of hundred dollars this month as much of what I am selling would be great Christmas gifts. My motivation for the purge has been twofold. One, I am more and more inclined to own less so believe that after the holidays I will do another big purge of primarily furniture type things. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve given the kids time to give me feedback on anything that is important to them. So after the crowd leaves, I anticipate I will be ready to do a purge on a much larger scale.
It’s not that I don’t love my stuff. Most of them are inherited from grandparents and even great grandparents, but I find myself less and less inclined to spend time dusting. Can anyone relate to that? So I want to live in a far more simple setting.
The second reason, is that as I consider renting out or selling my home…I realize that much of the “stuff” I have does not bring me joy anymore. So less to care for, less to potentially store or move. And I’d rather purge now, then have to have a “fire sale” down the road. I am being very thoughtful and intentional as I sort through things. Handling them, remembering where they came from, and deciding if they are worth keeping to me.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this research. And it’s been coupled with a lot of questions about what is next for me. I believe I’m pretty clear on the process and what will need to happen to set it up, all within my skillset. The question now is, what direction do I want to go in…still working on that.
As of this morning, I have accepted a new part time role as a Catering Coordinator that I had two interviews for last week. The details that I know are as follows:
This is a new role for them so it’s kind of a grow and evolve as it makes sense. I’m super excited.
And I did speak with my current boss at the accounting firm and she fully supports the flexible hours I will need to make both jobs work. Woot, woot!
The post Preparation – Week 1 Results appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Student Loan Servicers Are At It Again! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I have a long history of issues related to my student loans, even across several student loan service providers. I think my loans have been sold 3 times over the course of time that I’ve been blogging here. Most recently, my loans were sold to Mohela at the same time I applied for public service loan forgiveness. I don’t actually qualify for forgiveness yet (I still have approx. 2 years to go), but I just applied to the program during the pandemic timeframe.
As folks with student loans are aware, student loan payments were paused for about 3 years during the pandemic. After all this time, interest started accruing again in September, and payments resumed in October. But….did they, though?
You may have seen one of the numerous articles written in October about Mohela (my current loan provider). Apparently, Mohela made a big mishap and did not actually get their borrowers into repayment status, causing over 800,000 borrowers to be considered delinquent.
Alternatively, there were also borrowers whose debt had already been forgiven who received past-due bills from Mohela. Sounds like their process to resume payments was a big old mess.
I counted my lucky stars that I was not among one of the botched repayment jobs. My payments resumed as normal and everything was fine for the months of September and October.
That changed quickly. In November, I received an email that the status of one of my loans had changed. If you recall, to qualify for PSLF, I had to consolidate two of my student loans into one. That consolidated loan, all a sudden, was showing up as being in forbearance. The problem is, I never requested this! And, in fact, I couldn’t figure out a way to get it OUT of forbearance.
I started googling, “Why is my student loan in forbearance when I never requested it?” Guess what, friends. I’m not alone. Looks like LOTS of student loan borrowers had a similar problem with Mohela in November.
From reading articles written about this random forbearance, it sounds like Mohela has done this automatically to cover their own butts while they figure out some issues in their loan processing system. That said, they don’t relay this information to borrowers. So others, like myself, are left scratching our heads as to why our loans are suddenly in forbearance when it was never requested.
In my case, my assumption is that this occurred due to my loan consolidation throwing things off. I consolidated my loans and made a single payment toward the new consolidated loan, and then suddenly received a forbearance processing message the same month. In fact, my payment was submitted on 11/9, and the forbearance suddenly appeared on 11/28.
The one bright side of this conundrum is that, while Mohela struggles to figure their “ish” out, they’ve paused the capitalizing of any interest. In the letter I personally received, it says this is the case until the end of February.
Even so, I prefer not to be in forbearance. And it does not appear that I can change my loans to be in normal repayment right now, even if I try!
When I log into the Mohela website, I receive a big alert at the top of the screen that it has high call volume and to expect long wait times. Sigh. Hard to get much done with them when you have to set aside a 2-hour chunk of time for a simple phone call.
Rather than try to chase down this issue at what is one of the busiest times of year personally (kid’s holiday parties, performances, and weekend activities) and professionally (semester wrapping up, final exams, excessive grading!)… I’ve decided to just follow a “wait and watch” approach.
I’ll continue monitoring any happenings with my loans through the Mohela site. But I’m not planning to sit for 2 hours for a phone call to the loan servicer anytime this week (or month for that matter!).
My hope is that they straighten up their stuff and my payments will automatically resume as I’ve been promised. I can revisit this sometime in the New Year to ensure that’s happened.
The post Student Loan Servicers Are At It Again! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Preparing for interview #1 at the fast food restaurant made me realize just how much I have changed. I was excited. But not nervous. And felt no shame at the possibility of working fast food again. (In fact, it’s full circle, I interviewed with the chain where I had my first job at 15 years […]
The post Interview Update appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I approached this interview as I would any professional job interview and considered it my responsibility to interview them as much as they were interviewing me. It went great and the job is exactly what I hoped it would be. Yeah!
And today, I have a second and final interview with them.
It’s a new role they are creating. It will not require me to be behind a register in a busy restaurant. And no, I am not opposed to that because of my pride or any other reason. But with my hearing loss, I really struggle to hear in loud, noisy places. And it continues to get worse. I would not do well working a register in a busy, loud environment. Just facts. I did mention that to them so that all my cards were laid on the table.
The pay is $13 per hour, no uniform required (although I was not opposed to that to save the frustration of figuring out how to dress,) and the hours while not flexible per se, they will be determined by the jobs that come in so I will control my own schedule in a sense versus having set hours I have to be in the store. Seriously couldn’t ask for a better fit to accommodate everything else I currently have going. And it will put me around people for a change.
I will know better after today’s interview if I might expect an offer, but I am excited about the possibility, and think this would be a great addition to my current “jobs.” He says he is looking for someone to start within the next month so it doesn’t look like it will interfere with my family time at Christmas, and if I do start before then, the intrusion would be minimal so I’m open to it.
The post Interview Update appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Hope’s $2,500 Budget appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Spending Category | Monthly Amount |
---|---|
Mortgage | 1013 |
Utilities - Water, Gas, Electric, Trash | 350 |
Auto - Gas | 80 |
Auto Insurance | 650 |
Groceries | 100 |
Pet Food | 140 |
Internet | 70 |
Cell Phone | 55 |
Health | 100 |
Annual/Quarterly Payments | |
Life Insurance (Qtr) | 67 |
Total | 2,581 |
This budget doesn’t include everything. I kept eliminating line items and reducing budgeted amounts. But ugh, I can’t. I have to make more money.
And this does not include a single dollar of debt payments. This is terrible.
It’s a great exercise, I get that. But not realistic at all.
You will notice that my mortgage is higher. I signed the paperwork for a modification I applied for back in early November yesterday. It was to increase my payments beginning in January. I had applied back in early November when I wasn’t sure how I was going to make October, November or December payments. And I got approved after I paid the $1,300 to cover October and part of November. I’m not sure yet how that is going to play out. It may apply the payment I made in the between time to January or ? So I’m in a waiting period to see how the modification affects future payments.
You will see a new line item for health. Over the last few months, I have put this last and let the things I had begun doing for my health over the last couple of years slide. This primarily consists of daily 10K steps and an assortment of supplements. As a result, my mental and physical health has suffered greatly. And I have realized that even in the worst of times, I have to prioritize my health. So this is now a non-negotiable to me, I have to be able to purchase the supplements that have greatly improved my health and over all well-being. While I have come off all but one prescription, I do take a variety of holistic supplements. And I can’t just skip them. I’ve tried that on a few of them over the last couple of months in an effort to save money and it is not good.
My biggest concern outside of just covering minimum payments is that my car is about to hit 100,000 in miles and needs an assortment of maintenance. For sure, it needs new front brakes. The dealership gave me a list of things and prices when I last got my oil changed along with pricing so I could plan. In total, it needs about $1,600 in work. I believe the brakes are the most urgent. But I’m going to have to find someone to review the list and advise on what to prioritize. And, of course, none of that cost is even kind of reflected in this budget. Nor is the cost of registration, which although nominal in the state of Georgia, is due this month.
When the kids are here at Christmas, we are going to sit down and compare costs for getting Princess and Gymnast onto their own plans. I think that will end up being higher, but we need to do the research and they are struggling to do it on their own. Beauty shares my car so no reason for her to be on her own plan, but starting in the new year, I will be asking her to contribute more.
The post Hope’s $2,500 Budget appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The holidays are here, and there’s a good chance that you already have a series of events planned. This means that you need to get your home presentable and ensure that it reflects the holiday spirit. This isn’t something that has to break the bank. Read on to see some practical ways in which you […]
The post Ways to Revamp Your Living Room For the Holidays Without Breaking the Bank appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>One of the best projects to tackle at any point in time is repainting a space. That’s because this project is fast, easy, and affordable, but it makes a massive change to the space. You can repaint the walls for the holidays, picking calm and warm colors that are going to set the perfect backdrop for the rest of the projects and decorations. Remember that living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms should all be repainted roughly once every three to five years, according to House Digest. This means that if these years have already elapsed without you having repainted the living room, it’s high time you did so.
Next, you need to make sure that your living room is in the best possible shape in terms of cleanliness. The best route to take in terms of this is to call a team of reliable professional cleaners and ask them to deep clean your entire home for the best outcome. With their assistance, your home’s interior is going to look and smell amazing, ensuring that the holiday mood is not interrupted by coughs and sneezes among your guests when they arrive. A clean living room is also going to have a low likelihood of making it easier for germs to spread. It’s important to keep this in mind, knowing that your hands spread around 80% of germs that cause illnesses.
Once your home has been cleaned thoroughly, it will be quite easy for you to move the furniture around. This is because you won’t have to be scared about stains and other issues like this, concealing them with the furniture. A clean house will be the best canvas for a new organization of the living room, so take full advantage of this fact. While re-arranging the furniture, remember to make room for any decor, including massive Christmas trees that you may put up.
The holidays are synonymous with decoration, so it’s a good idea for you to get creative. Check online to see if you can find practical ideas for holiday decor that you can DIY successfully and add to your living room. This is a step that can help you save a considerable amount of money because holiday decor can be quite expensive to get.
Art and decor are generally expensive, especially if you get them in large quantities. This is based on the fact that the global art market had a value of $65.1 billion in 2021, an amount that has probably gone up since then. The worst part is that most holiday decor may only ever be useful for Christmas, making it a very singular expense.
Finally, you can capitalize on the cozy and relaxing holiday spirit by installing warm, relaxing lights strategically around the house. Simply changing bulbs that have cool tones to those with a yellow hue can make a big difference. Some fairy lights or string lights can add to the effect, and you may already have these somewhere in your house from some other use.
Clearly, getting your living room ready for the holidays does not have to be an intensive and expensive project. By making use of these tips, you can end up with a beautiful space to which you’re proud to invite friends and family and share the holiday cheer. Whatever amount of money you can save this time, you may be able to double it by making use of more cost-effective tips over future holidays.
The post Ways to Revamp Your Living Room For the Holidays Without Breaking the Bank appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The number of theft arrests is alarming. In Pennsylvania, for instance, there were almost 35,000 theft-related arrests in 2019. Nationally, in 2020, police reported over 4.6 million larceny theft cases. These figures highlight the concerning likelihood of becoming a theft victim. Leaving your home unattended during a long holiday opens up possibilities for burglaries. Thieves […]
The post How to Protect Your Home From Theft This Holiday Season appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Leaving your home unattended during a long holiday opens up possibilities for burglaries. Thieves might break in and take valuable belongings since there’s no one around to stop them. How can you ensure your safety while vacationing in the Bahamas? We’ve crafted this article to offer you some tips for safeguarding your home from theft this holiday season. Here’s how you can protect your home from theft this holiday season.
First up, think about getting a front door camera. It keeps an eye on your porch and alerts you if someone’s around or trying to get in. Having surveillance like this can scare off burglars and crooks. Plus, if they swipe your packages or break-in, it’ll help the police catch them in a snap. While installing cameras will cost you money, investing in them helps you to protect your valuables as well.
A clear signal that you’re away is when mail piles up or packages sit untouched on your porch. Thieves keep an eye out for these signs to know nobody’s home. That gives them the green light to break in and leisurely search for valuables to steal. When you’re heading out for a holiday, it’s smart to reroute your packages to a different address instead of your home. Many companies offer online options to switch delivery spots. You also can simply pause deliveries while you’re away and arrange for them to resume when you’re back home safe and sound. According to Statista, there were more than 4.6 million cases of larceny-theft reported in 2020. Don’t be a part of that statistic. Plan deliveries ahead of time!
Ever heard of deadbolts? They’re budget-friendly locks perfect for beefing up your door security. When paired with other locks, they provide an extra layer of defense for your home. Intruders will have a tough time cracking them open. Plus, you’ve got choices—mechanical or digital deadbolts—both great at keeping unwanted guests out.
When you’re away for a while, it’s smart to avoid signaling to intruders that your house is empty. Keeping lights on at night can help, but leaving them constantly lit might look suspicious during the day. That’s where timers come in handy—they’re automatic and can give a more realistic feel to your home’s activity. For those with Nest home security, connecting TP-Link Kasa products is a nifty option. With Kasa’s smart plug system, manageable through your Nest app, you can control your lights remotely.
Before you head off on your holiday, do a thorough check and ensure all your doors are securely locked. If you spot any faulty locks, get them fixed before you leave. It’s crucial to replace any non-functioning locks with new ones. Keep in mind that burglars sometimes use universal garage door openers to break in. According to Bob Vila, a well-insulated garage door can keep your garage 10 to 12 degrees warmer. Not only this, but a well-secured garage can prevent the likelihood of intruders. Set your alarm system to keep them from simply strolling into your garage and taking what they please.
Securing your home costs money, but it’s a worthwhile investment compared to the potential losses from theft. Unfortunately, theft remains a significant issue in the United States, and it’s likely to persist for some time. Thieves tend to go to homes that are easily accessible and without anyone around to stop them. Especially during the holiday season, while we plan our festivities, thieves are also scheming their next burglaries. Taking steps to safeguard your house is crucial, as it could prevent it from becoming their next target.
The post How to Protect Your Home From Theft This Holiday Season appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I am wracking my brain on how to make Christmas special without presents. Don’t get me wrong, I know presents are not the reason for the season. But giving gifts is definitely one of my main ways of expressing love. I’ve been considering using one of those scrapbook sites and creating some sort of family/recipe […]
The post No Ideas for Christmas & Got an Interview appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Does anyone else have any ideas? I’m really struggling with this. I am focused on spending the money I do have on something meaningful or nothing at all.
But also stockings…I think that’s one of our favorite traditions. What can I put in stockings that is meaningful, cost effective, and fun?
I have come up with an agenda for the 36 hours that all the kids are here. And a menu for the 6ish days at least one or two kids are here. The kids are all excited some homecooked meals and have all put in requests for favorites they’ve been missing…from mac n cheese to Zuppa Toscana soup, roast to ham. It’s been so nice to hear their excitement when we talk and hear what they have missed about home. Fill’s this mama heart up!
We are going to do a full almost traditional holiday meal for Christmas Eve along with our traditional game night. Game night is everyone’s favorite. We play fun games, different ones every year, and the kids are welcome to invite friends. In the past, we’ve done a charcuterie board and snack foods. But since we haven’t been together is so long, I thought a real home cooked meal was the way to go. (And I don’t want to cook on my birthday We will wrap up Christmas Eve with a birthday celebration for the four of us that are fall/winter babies.
Christmas Day will just be the family and a couple of their significant others. I do cook breakfast, but the rest of the day will be left overs and a couple of snack food type things that I will prepare in advance. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been doing Chinese, but leftovers and finger foods seems to be the right fit for our time together and our budget this year. I’ve already begun comparison shopping for my grocery items.
We will do presents on Christmas, and then we typically chill out in the afternoon with the kids catering to me for my birthday. This year will be different because we have to get History Buff to the airport to fly out that evening, a two hour drive. We’ve talked about going to a movie down toward Atlanta in the afternoon and then someone finishing the drive to take History Buff. It would allow us all to be together longer and prevent anyone from having to spend 4 hours driving to and from the airport. It’s still a plan in progress.
And the good news…I’ve got an interview next week. A local fast food restaurant, part time, and $13 per hour. I had to submit a video interview where I disclosed my other part time jobs and that my schedule was flexible. I’m hopeful.
The post No Ideas for Christmas & Got an Interview appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post December – The Month of Preparation appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>And it has been a rough climb out of that all year. But I’m back.
My heart is mostly healed. I have reconnected some very special people from my high school years which has been very empowering. And I have grown accustomed to the new reality of being a mostly empty nester.
The world, this new year is all mine. So I will be using December to make plans and lists and setting goals for 2024.
I have decided the best way to keep me on track is to make a list of weekly goals and post it here. This way, the BAD community can keep me accountable. I know you all will be excellent at that. Last week, I made a list of things I needed to or wanted to get done before Christmas.
Then I added all of them to my Task List that syncs with my calendar. I won’t bog down this post with everything, but the finance/work related tasks, here they are. (Let me know if I’ve missed anything.)
Note: Short week since the kids start arriving on December 21st so don’t want to over commit.
Note: Another short week since the kids will be in town until December 27th so don’t want to over commit.
Throughout all of this, I will continue to apply for local work and apply to corporate jobs with the different revisions to my resume that I’ve been working on. These goals are outside of those ongoing tasks that I work on pretty much daily in one form or another.
The post December – The Month of Preparation appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>As you have seen from my Tough Decisions and Selling the House posts and the comments, the way forward is not so cut and dry as looking at the numbers. I sincerely appreciate all the constructive feedback and ideas. The BAD community has given me lots to think about. And I will think about all […]
The post So Much to Consider appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>And I will think about all of it, I promise.
I do have to say that one commentor said “give up your dreams” and that started a fire in me. I will never give up my dreams. Even though I’m not quite sure what my dreams are right now. But giving up on them, once I figure them out is not going to happen.
I realize I need to focus on my more practical decisions right now. But giving up on my dreams…nope. I will never do that and I would never say that to anyone. Is life really worth living without a dream, a purpose, something to strive for? I think not.
The post So Much to Consider appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Soliciting Advice: Setting Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>As of last month, my only remaining debts are for my student loans and my mortgage. I’ve written before about how I’ve decided to put the student loans on the backburner – paying only the minimum payment each month. They’re set to be forgiven through PSLF in approximately 2 more years. That brings us to the mortgage…
When my husband and I bought our home together in 2020, one of our goals was to have it paid off by the time my husband retires. He’s set to retire in under 9 years. We have a current loan balance in the mid-$200s. Since we bought it, we’ve made a double payment twice each year, and every month we round up our payment, so an extra $105 goes to the principal each month (on top of the portion allocated toward the principal from the mortgage payment, itself). We locked in an unbelievable interest rate – a fixed 2.625%, and our payment is reasonable for our budget, $1695/month.
At our current rate of payment, we will not have the home paid off by the time my husband retires, but our plan was to ramp up payments as incomes increase (with raises) and debts decrease (paying off my car and when my student loans are forgiven). I know it will take some making up on the back end, but the goal has remained constant: to have the house paid in full by retirement time.
As an aside just for context – my husband will retire in 9 years from his current position, but he will only be 50 years old at that time. He fully intends to find another job and continue working, but my hope is it could be a more flexible, maybe part-time or remote position. His income will definitely decrease in retirement, but it won’t be zero. He has a pension and healthy retirement account, plus plans for continued work on some level.
Recently, a neighbor who works in real estate was chatting with my husband and I about his plans for investing and building long-term income. He mentioned how one of his big financial mistakes with his wife was sinking all their money into their first home together. They’d put 35% down to get a low mortgage payment, but then the 2012 recession hit. Although their family was fine, he regretted putting all his money into his home. He wished he’d had liquid assets available to purchase a second property that could be used to generate rental revenue. The best time to buy, of course, is when prices bottom out!
The conversation got me thinking – is it really wise to put all this money into our home? What if, instead, we put those extra payments into savings with the goal to use it to buy a second property at some point that could be used to generate rental income? I think we all feel like the housing market is extra inflated right now. Although I hope the U.S. finances strengthen (I’d never hope for a recession!), another housing market bubble pop feels inevitable at some point.
Paying off our house early would be great since it would be lovely to have no mortgage payments! But with our super low-interest rate, it doesn’t save us as much money as we could potentially stand to earn by putting that same money into another investment vehicle (property or stock market, etc.). All that said, my husband and I are both pretty financially conservative. And the thought of having a paid-off home just feels nice. Having a second property certainly comes with some risk – having two mortgages to cover, requisite repairs to be done, etc., etc. But property also tends to be a great investment. Please chime in if you’re an expert in this area, but I believe that over my lifetime the ROI for property has been higher than what the stock market has produced. At least in my areas.
I’m soliciting advice! What are your thoughts or opinions on paying off one’s home versus putting that money elsewhere? Would you suggest investing in real estate versus investing in the stock market (or something else entirely)? What would you do if you were in my position?
The post Soliciting Advice: Setting Financial Goals appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>First off, I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Today my partner and I kept it really low-key. I decided to opt out of Thanksgiving this year to avoid all the hassle and expense of cooking a big feast. We didn’t make a special grocery trip for the holiday so we didn’t have to […]
The post Increasing Our Liquidity and Settling Into Our Home appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>First off, I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Today my partner and I kept it really low-key. I decided to opt out of Thanksgiving this year to avoid all the hassle and expense of cooking a big feast. We didn’t make a special grocery trip for the holiday so we didn’t have to fight the crowds. We were still able to make stuffing and potatoes au gratin with ingredients we already had on hand, so we felt like we got a taste of Thanksgiving. I’d love to hear what you did today down in the comments.
I also wanted to thank everyone for the feedback on my last post! It was encouraging to hear that I’m going down the right path. It certainly feels like I’ve made progress, but it’s nice to have that feeling validated by others. I wasn’t able to provide all the updates I wanted to in the last post, so I thought I’d share a few more now.
A few months ago I was contemplating the idea of moving to a less rural area. Since I was feeling unsettled in my career, I thought moving to a more populated place would provide more job options.
However, my spouse and I are happy with our home, the cost of living, and the unparalleled access to nature we have here. There would have to be a concrete reason to move, and there definitely isn’t. The vague notion that I might be able to get a “better” job is not a good reason to pack up our entire life, sell our house, and incur all the expenses of moving.
Again, I think the whole idea of moving was anxiety and ADHD talking, but I just could not see that at the time. Anxiety makes it hard to think in a clearheaded way, so I couldn’t tell that moving was a half-baked idea. We’d have to make a lot more money to make up for the difference in cost of living if we moved to a populated area, and I had no real plan for how we were going to do that.
Another thing I’ve been able to follow through on since getting treatment is increasing our liquid savings. We’ve been reducing our mortgage overpayments and stashing more cash in our high-yield savings account instead. Between decreasing our mortgage overpayments and saving my spouse’s bonuses, so far we’ve increased our savings by around $5,000.
This has definitely made me feel more comfortable and secure. I’m not worried at all about replacing our car when the time comes. We still want to pay off our mortgage and are working toward that, but recognize that liquidity is important too. I feel like we’re striking the right balance now.
Before I got on medication, I felt like I needed the forced savings aspect of sending more money to our mortgage. I was always worried that keeping too much cash on hand would make me feel “flush” and able to afford impulse buys. But now I feel confident that I won’t be tempted to spend any of the money in our savings account, so we can pad it more.
I wasn’t ever spending recklessly or making tons of purchases. However, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to fight temptations. Exercising willpower feels much easier now. Today a Black Friday deal caught my eye, and I was easily able to put it out of my head because I don’t need it. Before I might’ve spent hours thinking about it and agonizing over whether or not I wanted it obsessively. It definitely felt like a win to be able to move on so quickly.
Overall, I’m feeling less restless and anxious and more settled and content. I’m hoping that these changes in my mental health will allow me to keep making financial decisions that will set us up well for the future.
Read More
The Unexpected Costs of Moving
The post Increasing Our Liquidity and Settling Into Our Home appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>A divorce doesn’t have to take away the sunshine from your life and leave you drained and discontent. That’s because there are ways in which you can revive yourself while going through a divorce and emerge at the end of the process healthy and happy. If you have no idea about how to get through […]
The post Is Divorce Draining You? Use These Tips to Revive Yourself! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The first thing that you should do is to come up with a healthy routine and maintain it. This should be one that involves healthy habits such as sleeping and waking up at the same time every day. When you do this, it may be easier for you to keep up with the rest of the activities that you have planned out, and you may also be able to keep time a lot better as a result. This includes spending time with your child if you have one. On this note, keep in mind that in PA, if a child has to travel over one hour between their parent’s homes after one parent moves, this move is said to be a relocation.
If you have a child, you can also add meaning to your life by making sure that you’re present whenever you spend time with them. This is an important detail to keep in mind because you can draw fulfillment from maintaining a happy and healthy life with your child. Be patient with them and validate their feelings so that they feel safe and happy while they’re with you, keeping in mind facts such as that 15% of children still wet the bed at five years of age. By spending time with your child and teaching them how they can be the best version of themselves, you can expect to have a richer life in the end.
If you don’t have any hobbies, this is the right time for you to find some. These should ideally be healthy hobbies that can improve your health and help you to relax mentally. Something that you may want to try along these lines is golf, which can help you get active and also give you a reason to spend time outdoors with people whose company you likely enjoy. While walking or driving through the course, you could learn about facts such as that motorized golf carts first started to appear on golf courses in the 1940s, according to GolfLink. This and general conversation can take your mind off the issues that you may be having and improve your mood considerably.
Last but not least, identify supportive people with whom you can surround yourself. Spend time in their company, and you may find that your life develops new meaning. Whether you’re meeting friends for brunch or going out to a hangout area with family or even talking on the phone to someone you hold near and dear, there are a number of things that you can do. As long as you don’t feel alone or end up in situations where you feel judged, you’re sure to have a much better outcome in the end.
These tips can help you regain your happiness and enjoy a much better life after going through a divorce. As long as you don’t lose sight of yourself, you can bounce back happier and healthier than ever. Remember that the most important thing may be finding meaning in life and learning to be fulfilled by yourself. This way, you can improve your perspective and have a lot more to share with those who spend time with you.
The post Is Divorce Draining You? Use These Tips to Revive Yourself! appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I believe I’ve written about this before, but maybe not all as one piece. My house. My mortgage. My thoughts. First, some background. The kids (Gymnast and Princess) and I have moved ALOT since my marriage fell apart. So much that I’ve lost count and don’t have the energy to count them up right now. […]
The post Selling the House? appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>First, some background. The kids (Gymnast and Princess) and I have moved ALOT since my marriage fell apart. So much that I’ve lost count and don’t have the energy to count them up right now. Rental homes pulled out from under me because the owners wanted to move back or sell the house, etc. Then my dad wanting to sell the house he bought to give us some stability when he moved out of state. Job loss meaning, I couldn’t afford even apartment housing in the expensive area we lived in previously (Williamsburg, VA). So many moves.
We moved into our current home in April, 2017. It was a rental, after living with my grandmother after our emergency move to Georgia in December, 2016. Then a few years later, I bought it and have pretty much completely remodeled it.
Now here’s an important point about housing for me: The only reason I was able to purchase this home was because I went back to the corporate world. As a contractor, getting financing has always been challenging. The roller coaster of income doesn’t encourage trust by the banking industries.
Now I face and have to consider selling my house, the house that has become the home I have never, ever had. These are the thoughts swarming my head (and why I am putting this decision off until after the new year):
There are lots of moving parts. I do not know the right answer. As a commenter has pointed out, I think I have to figure out what I want next in life. And then make decisions towards that end. To be honest, I am pulled in so many directions. And I don’t think that the financial challenges point me in a clear direction either. This is why I am tabling this decision to the new year.
Do you disagree?
The post Selling the House? appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>In the retail world, clear chats between makers and home improvement shops are key to bagging top-notch goods and staying ahead in the game. To ace product sourcing, we gotta amp up our communication game, really get what customers are after, and build some solid teamwork with partners. This guide delves into the strategies that […]
The post How Home Improvement Entrepreneurs Communicate to Get Affordable and Great Products appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>To keep their game on point, producers need to keep tabs on what’s trending and what customers are digging so they can whip up products that jive with the current industry vibe. However, businesses need creative yet practical marketing plans to achieve their goals and manage tight budgets. For example, it’s important to understand that Statista states that the navigation devices and services market is worth 1.87 billion in 2023. When manufacturers get the hang of market trends, they can really sell their product’s perks to home improvement shops and boost their chances for solid partnerships.
Streamline supply chain management processes to ensure the timely and efficient delivery of products to home improvement stores. Pour money into cutting-edge tracking and stock management tech to let a smooth dialogue between the guys who make stuff and those selling it. With a well-oiled supply chain, manufacturers can keep home improvement stores updated on what’s in stock and when it’ll arrive, so they never run low on crowd-favorites.
Foster open and transparent communication channels between manufacturers and home improvement stores. Let’s use tools like emails, calls, and virtual meetup to talk about product details, costs, and delivery times promptly. Foster a team spirit where both sides can voice their worries, give input, and get on the same page with their company goals for shared growth and victory.
Emphasize the importance of product quality and reliability to instill trust and confidence in the offerings. Manufacturers need to zero in on creating top-tier, resilient products that don’t just hit industry benchmarks but smash customer expectations out of the park. Businesses need clever marketing plans to stretch every dollar. According to Houzz, most homeowners spent between $5,000 and $10,000 improving their homes in 2018. When they spend that much money, they want to know they’re purchasing quality products.
Present cost-effective solutions to home improvement stores by offering competitive pricing strategies and flexible payment options. Roll out sweet bargains, rewards for buying in bulk, and hot specials to coax retailers into broadening their product assortment. By showcasing how their goods save bucks, makers can pitch the money-wise perks of teaming up and lure home improvement shops to pick their stuff over rivals.
Emphasize the adoption of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices throughout the production and distribution processes. Manufacture eco-conscious products that align with the growing demand for sustainable home improvement solutions. We must explore green shipping strategies, too, because our products aren’t truly sustainable if they’re not delivered sustainably. According to the OECD, ships are the most common way to transport cargo, as 95% of the world’s cargo moves by ship. Communicate the eco-friendly attributes of the products to home improvement stores, highlighting the benefits of incorporating sustainable offerings that appeal to environmentally conscious consumers.
Clear, open lines of chat between makers and home improvement stores are key to keep the shelves stocked with high-quality stuff that folks really want and that’s trending. To make sure top-notch products reach customers, manufacturers and home improvement stores need to focus on clear communication, put product quality first, and build teamwork-based relationships. Because of this, working together to be eco-friendly and affordable makes customers happy and helps the business grow.
The post How Home Improvement Entrepreneurs Communicate to Get Affordable and Great Products appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Tough Decisions Looming appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>I waver between hope and worry. But am working daily to cast all my cares to God and trust his care and protection:
“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” Luke 12:24
I begin to wander do I keep trying to scrape things together and make it work and hope for the best? Or do I get proactive and begin working toward putting the house on the market and figuring out what’s next then?
Of course, the holidays looming does not help with the stress level.
I keep choosing gratitude and joy. I keep clinging to knowing that God has a plan and purpose in all this.
When I was speaking to my dad this week he said, “God sometimes lets things get bad, and then he lets them get worse.” That was not comforting at all. But at the same time, I get several messages weekly from people telling me how much my posts (doing a month of gratitude on Instagram) are inspiring them and helping them walk through a dark time in their own lives.
My plan at this point is to table the concerns through the holidays. Keep doing what I’m doing. Since I should be able to catch up with bills by January, I can revisit the tough calls then and step into 2024 with options.
Is this what you would do? Other advice?
The post Tough Decisions Looming appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Baked Goods – A Perfect Gift appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>But I also knew that I couldn’t do much. I let the twins know that we could do a birthday celebration for all of us fall babies when we are together at Christmas. It broke this mama’s heart to not be able to do anything at all other than send them a text message.
But with the tides turning, I had to do something for the three boys on their first Thanksgiving away from home. So we…
Princess graciously made a day trip home this past weekend. She and I spent Sunday baking goodies new and old and packaging them up to be shipped out to Virginia, Texas, and Las Vegas this week. We froze things and used $0.50 containers from Dollar General.
We made banana bread with chocolate chips and nuts, corn flake wreaths (pictured), chocolate chip cookies, almond pralines, and a lemon pound cake. My house smelled so good. We played Christmas music, cleaned as we went, and had a wonderful time.
I have to be honest, I have never, ever fretted over grocery costs so much in my life. I made a grocery list from the recipes I wanted to make. Then added them all to my Walmart grocery app (I typically do pick up.) Then I went to the cheapest grocery store in town, Quality Foods. I compared prices between the two for every single item. As I added something to my Quality Foods shopping cart, I would remove it from my Walmart app.
I googled substitutions for things I knew I wouldn’t use again. I bought off, off brand items that I wouldn’t consider if I wasn’t using them for baking. After I finished my in person shopping trip, I placed the online order for pick up of the remaining items.
And in the end, I spent over an hour and a half in the grocery store, stressing over every single penny I spent. And I will be honest, I am not sure the amount of money I saved justified the additional time and stress of it. I don’t think it added up to more than $10 of savings.
But it was an experience. And it set us up for a fantastic baking experience.
Boxes went in the mail a few days ago. None of them knows they are coming. I hope they will bring joy to their faces and yumminess to their tummy’s.
As an aside, postage is absolutely crazy. It cost me $56 to ship the 3 boxes to the boys. Granted I did choice priority since it was baked goods, but man, that was expensive.
Do you bake and gift homemade goods for the holidays? Do you enjoy receiving those types of gifts?
The post Baked Goods – A Perfect Gift appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>After I started coming out of my funk from last year, I knew that this year was going to be my year. Needless to say, it hasn’t been. Not only have I struggled to find a well paying job, but the trauma of last year took a lot more out of me than even I […]
The post A Rough Patch is NOT Going to Stop Me appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Not only have I struggled to find a well paying job, but the trauma of last year took a lot more out of me than even I realized. The healing has been slow with lots of set backs.
But I am determined to go into 2024 with a whole lot of fight and determination to make it not only a great year, but a super productive year as far as my debt payoff journey goes.
Obviously, getting a steady stream of regular income is Priority #1. And I am working toward that DAILY. I am advertising on social media, creating all the digital assets to grow a mailing list, pound the street daily, and reach out to my network on a regular basis.
I know I can do this. I have done it before. And now it’s just me, so I’ve got nothing but time to work, grow my skills, and work some more.
So BAD community, you saw my debt update a couple of days ago. Once I get back on my feet, have enough regular income to cover monthly bills, AND have a $1,000 EF saved again. What should my next step be?
I am literally all ears and 100% ready to listen and abide by your wisdom. No trip planning. No crazy adventures. Will see all the kids in just over a month.
I am ready to 100% buckle down and go hard to become debt free. Give me your best advice here.
This rough patch will not beat me. It will only serve to motivate me.
The post A Rough Patch is NOT Going to Stop Me appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>The post Hope’s Debt Update – mid-November, 2023 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>Figured I would get that out of the way, so you wouldn’t wonder why some of these debt numbers are going up!
Debt Description | October, 2023 Total | Interest Rate | Minimum Payment | Paid This Month | Current Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Personal Loan #1 | $2,500 | 0% | 6 months to pay | $2,500 | |
Personal Loan #2 | $2,500 | 0% | 6 months to pay | $2,500 | |
CC - AMEX | $894 | 29.24% | $93 | $954 | |
CC - Wander | $1,630 | 29.24% | $124 | $1,834 | |
CC - USAA | $5,000 | 19.15% | $135 | $131 | $5,190 |
CC - Amazon | $1,497 | 29.99% | $53 | $55 | $1,519 |
CC - Sams | $1,106 | *29.99% | *$40 | $40 | $1,113 |
CC - Frontier | $3,857 | 29.99% | $338 | $170 | $3,994 |
Car Loan | $19,581 | 12.69% | $500 | $563 | $19,581 |
Student Loans | $22,121 | 2.875% | $306 | Deferred until Dec, 2023 | $22,186 |
CC - Apple** | $500 | $500 | $497 | ||
Total | $61,186 | $61,868 |
A couple of notes:
*The website to get my statement and these details was not available so these are estimates.
**I pay this CC off every month and reuse. This and the USAA CC will be left open. But the goal is to pay off and close all other lines of credit.
On the flip side of that, I have contracted out enough work to pay the bills through the end of January. Most of these are one off projects. My regular monthly intake has increased from the $2,200 per month from my part time job to around $2,700. (I will need to allocate some of this additional income to self-employment taxes.)
I am hoping to be caught up with everything by mid-December. This really depends on how timely I will receive payments for these projects. And I’m hoping to resume saving with the $200 from my part time job. I will definitely feel more comfortable when I have some sort of emergency fund again.
I continue to literally pound the pavement on a daily basis. Hitting up and few brick and mortar stores and introducing myself and dropping off a flyer details my service offerings from web design to social media management and everything in between.
The post Hope’s Debt Update – mid-November, 2023 appeared first on Blogging Away Debt.
]]>