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Feb 4, 2015    |       42 comments

The Year to Build

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Throughout December I indicated that I was really taking some time to really think through a life plan.  And in January I kind of laid out my debt pay off plan.  So today I thought I would lay out my plan for 2015.  I know my decisions will meet with some dissension here, but I have truly weighed everything involved and feel that these are achievable goals for this year and giant steps toward my ultimate goal of being able to take in more foster children.  So for 2015, here are my big goals in order:

  1. I’ve given myself six months to pay all ALL debts other than my student loans.  This gives me an estimated date of July 1st having no debt other than my student loans.
  2. I will find an engineer who understands my vision, who will work with me on creating a home that will suit my needs to take in foster kids.  I have met with several now and believe I’ve found the right one.  There is no money involved with this goal, just meeting and finding someone with a like mind who can truly understand the needs.  From them, I will get a scope of work on doing a home build along with a pretty solid budget.  This is needed in order to accomplish #5 in this list.
  3. I will find and purchase land for the someday home.  There is a contingency on this.  I will ONLY purchase if it’s land that must have a well and septic put in, and if I can get owner financing.  I am working on a barter with a company who could do this work, and my thought is that temporarily we could put some sort of temporary housing on it to cut costs down the road.  This is still really an iffy idea but it is in my thoughts these days so wanted to be up front about the possibility.
  4. I will buy a second used car using money saved via the $300 per month budgeted for the existing car so that we will be a two car, three driver household by the end of the year.  There are two reasons driving this goal.  One, I lose a lot of work time with kid chauffeuring duties and having a second car would cut back on that significantly.  On Wednesdays alone I spend a solid four hours in the car.  And two, if I am able to find the ideal land, I will need a truck as we will begin the improvements needed, etc and I will need at least a little truck to haul stuff.  So it will be a beater, but that is my reasoning at this point.
  5. I will create a very realistic budget for a home build.  I have a number in my head for this home build.  It’s REALLY low for this area, and I mean really low.  For one thing, I think with forethought I can barter for or do a good bit of the work myself (ahem, with my wonderful friends help.) And two, if it’s not REALLY low, then this whole housing debacle has been for naught as I will be right back in the place of paying too much for housing and regretting it and it limiting what I can do for the foster kids who come into my care.  But I need to KNOW what this number is going to be based on #2 and #3 in order to accomplish #6, and then someday actually start the build.
  6. After the 6 month date, I will revisit my priorities to balance between paying off the student loan debt and saving for the 10-20% down payment based on the budget for the home build and the equity I will have built up in the land (at least that’s my goal) I will need to get a construction loan to build the house.

Based on my calculations, if everything else stayed the same, and I started paying all existing debt monies to the student loans beginning in July, they would be paid off in April, 2017.  That would be perfect as that is the year at least one of the twins will graduate and I will then be in a good position to help him with college.

So, in order to accomplish all of this and still hit the April, 2017 DEBT FREE date…I MUST make more money.  So that brings us to the title of this post…2015 is the Year to Build.  I would love to say I’m going to Build my House, but that is not this build.  This is the year I will Build my business.  I have several irons in the fire for increasing immediate income, but nothing long term.  As I told my children, right now, I’m selling myself, my knowledge, my skills.  It’s time to add to that and find a way to take myself out of the equation.  To be honest, I’m not sure what that means yet, but I can only be stretched so far. If I can keep going the way I am, my income is limited.  But if I can change up and/or add to my business model, then the sky is the limit?  Right?!?

So these days my energies are going to researching my business, options, ideas…evaluating my strengths, my children’s strengths, my priorities and seeing where we might can go from here.  I’m working with volunteers at SCORE to make sure my knowledge is sound, my ideas feasible.

 

Feb 4, 2015    |       9 comments

Dental Care – Teaching Style

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I think almost every blogger here on BAD has had some sort of dental emergency and got caught without insurance or some help to cover it.  So I thought I’d weigh in on what we do.  Full disclosure, the twins do have full dental coverage and I have utilized that quite a bit, especially when they first moved in since they had never been to a dentist and had to learn more about personal hygiene.  But we are caught up now, and are mostly in maintenance mode.

For several years, I carried a stand alone dental policy for me and the littles.  It was $75 per month, covered 100% of basic maintenance except fluoride and gave us about a 20% discount on other services.  We have been blessed with good dental health and as I weighed the cost of the insurance against what I was spending, well, it just didn’t make sense.  So the next year, I signed up for my dentists own in office plan which for about $600 for the 3 of us, all the basic maintenance including sealants and fluoride were covered.

Then last year, I know, bad mommy, I decided to forego dental anything.  We didn’t go to the dentist at all.  Again, bad mommy moment but forking over that money is the midst of debt pay off, well, I just couldn’t stomach it for what we needed.

Now we are here, and I think a year without at least a check up is long enough SO we’ve decided to visit the local community college dental hygiene school.  For all of us to go, get thorough exams by the students (under faculty observation,) get fluoride treatments, sealants as needed, xrays, etc….it’s going to cost me a whopping $65!  I am so excited about this.  And they are just 15 minutes from my house.

I set it up several months in advance so we can all go at once.  It will be several hours for the appointment as it is a teaching facility, but compare to the $1000+ , then $600+ and now to $65 for what we’ve been getting the last four years, I am super excited.  Obviously, if issues are found, I will have to revisit our previous dentist, but since we just recently had ortho appts and they found no cavities, I’m feeling pretty confident that it’s just the $65 this time around.

Anyways, just wanted to share my dental win!  Appointment is still several weeks away, but I just received their brochure and confirmation card in the mail this week so thought it was a good time to share.

For those who chimed in on my braces post, we’ve decided to hold off on braces.  All the kids know the end game of this debt pay off journey and know that adding the braces payment to that could really set us back a bit.  I did let each of the twins choose independently on how important it was for them, with weigh in from me, and I think we’ve reached a good compromise on all sides.  We’ll revisit my daughter’s in the next year, hopefully with some help from her dad, and let her decide with some parental input.

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