It hasn't cleared the bank yet, but we authorized payment to the credit card for the remaining balance, which means we are almost half way through our debt and only have the SUV and my student loans left to pay off. Oh my gosh! I drew a black line through the credit card on our poster-sized budget on the kitchen wall. It's amazing to know that we will be able to nearly double the SUV payment for the next few months and then it will be paid off - about a year and a half early!
It's already nice knowing that the Honda is paid off, but when the Expedition gets paid off, it will be amazing. I can't even begin to describe how it feels to know that we won't have any car payments. Yeah, we have 10 year old vehicles, but they're ours. I can't fathom paying $300 or more a month just to have a new car. It's never been important to me to have the newest, coolest car. Plus, being my practical self, I just can't see paying for a new car that depreciates almost by half the minute I drive it off the lot. What a horrible waste of money that is. And, as evidenced by our journey to financial freedom, we don't waste money any more!
Ah, to be debt free..... We're nearly half way there in just 18 months. In another 18 months, I'll be posting, "We're Debt Free!"
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Downsizing
Downsizing for most people probably involves getting a smaller space, cutting out the clutter, that kind of thing. For us, it means purging the bookshelves. For those who don't know, when we moved into our house, we built a massive wall of shelves. Seriously massive. This is no sissy bookshelf. It's 9 feet high and 14 feet across. The lower 3 feet is cabinets to house CDs, DVDs, and even some VHS tapes that we just haven't gotten around to replacing yet... Which leaves, of course, 6 feet of open shelving for books. And we've filled it - nearly every inch of it with books from Dr. Seuss to the Qu'ran and everything in between. And it still wasn't enough, especially considering that we are constantly reading and acquiring new books. Today, we downsized a little bit, and our books can breathe a little easier. There's actually space on some of those shelves!
In addition to the books we wanted to keep, we had approximately 8 boxes of books in the garage that we knew we didn't want to keep. We have a hard time throwing out books (could you tell?), so we didn't want to just dump them. And yet we also would like to see some kind of return on our investment, so we were hoping that at some point, maybe someone would buy them all at a garage sale. No luck there. I found a site called Cash4Books (http://www.cash4books.net/) and thought it looked promising. Nothing like getting some cash for all those books, right? That would be true if they bought all the books. They don't. But I'll get to that later.
I also found another site called PaperBackBookSwap (handy link is on the right side of my page - sign up, it's free, I get credit, yadda yadda). This is cool - post your books and send them to people who request them. In return, earn credit for each book you send that can used to request a book from someone else. You pay postage to mail the books, and you receive your requests free. So $3 for a book instead of $10-whatever. It's cool. I got 2 of my book club selections and am waiting on several more to arrive. I sent out 6 books today, and have about 13 more in the queue. The cost to send them adds up, but I will have that many "free" books coming my way in the future.
So, after finding these sites, I realized that we could try to sell some and whatever we couldn't sell at Cash4Books, I would post on PaperBackBookSwap. And today that's what we did. We set up an assembly line, if you will. Howard ran the ISBN numbers through Cash4Books, setting aside those that could be sold through them. Everything else came through me to post on the Swap. Of the nearly 200 books we went through, we are able to send 11 to Cash4Books for a total of about $42 (and they pay shipping). The rest have been posted on the Swap. I already ran out of Tyvek envelopes!
At the end of the day, we've done a good thing. We downsized the bookshelves, decluttered part of the garage, made a little cash (well, as soon as we send the books), and will make many people happy with books for their own collections. It was sad, too. We threw away about 2 boxes of books - some of the books had no ISBN numbers and were just in bad shape, and another box had been peed on by a cat (damn those neighborhood cats sneaking into my garage!)... And I now have 4 four-foot stacks of books in my kitchen, so perhaps I'm not as decluttered and downsized as I thought?
In addition to the books we wanted to keep, we had approximately 8 boxes of books in the garage that we knew we didn't want to keep. We have a hard time throwing out books (could you tell?), so we didn't want to just dump them. And yet we also would like to see some kind of return on our investment, so we were hoping that at some point, maybe someone would buy them all at a garage sale. No luck there. I found a site called Cash4Books (http://www.cash4books.net/) and thought it looked promising. Nothing like getting some cash for all those books, right? That would be true if they bought all the books. They don't. But I'll get to that later.
I also found another site called PaperBackBookSwap (handy link is on the right side of my page - sign up, it's free, I get credit, yadda yadda). This is cool - post your books and send them to people who request them. In return, earn credit for each book you send that can used to request a book from someone else. You pay postage to mail the books, and you receive your requests free. So $3 for a book instead of $10-whatever. It's cool. I got 2 of my book club selections and am waiting on several more to arrive. I sent out 6 books today, and have about 13 more in the queue. The cost to send them adds up, but I will have that many "free" books coming my way in the future.
So, after finding these sites, I realized that we could try to sell some and whatever we couldn't sell at Cash4Books, I would post on PaperBackBookSwap. And today that's what we did. We set up an assembly line, if you will. Howard ran the ISBN numbers through Cash4Books, setting aside those that could be sold through them. Everything else came through me to post on the Swap. Of the nearly 200 books we went through, we are able to send 11 to Cash4Books for a total of about $42 (and they pay shipping). The rest have been posted on the Swap. I already ran out of Tyvek envelopes!
At the end of the day, we've done a good thing. We downsized the bookshelves, decluttered part of the garage, made a little cash (well, as soon as we send the books), and will make many people happy with books for their own collections. It was sad, too. We threw away about 2 boxes of books - some of the books had no ISBN numbers and were just in bad shape, and another box had been peed on by a cat (damn those neighborhood cats sneaking into my garage!)... And I now have 4 four-foot stacks of books in my kitchen, so perhaps I'm not as decluttered and downsized as I thought?
Friday, January 28, 2011
Heating Woes
It's a chilly winter day... IN MY HOUSE! When I arrived home yesterday at 6:00 pm, it was 64 degrees in the house - much too cold for the likes of me, who keeps it 72 all winter long. We reset the thermostat and changed the batteries, all to no avail. I knew I was in for a cold morning. I was right. 59 degrees as of 5:00 am. I wonder how "warm" we'll get today.
Last year, we replaced the motor in the heater to the tune of $990 because the motor was a non-standard part. Last month, we replaced the thermostat when this happened before, thinking that it was the cheap thermostat we bought when we moved in. It seemed to do the trick...until yesterday. I hope it's not an expensive fix this time.
Woe is cold me.
Last year, we replaced the motor in the heater to the tune of $990 because the motor was a non-standard part. Last month, we replaced the thermostat when this happened before, thinking that it was the cheap thermostat we bought when we moved in. It seemed to do the trick...until yesterday. I hope it's not an expensive fix this time.
Woe is cold me.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Financial journey continued...
It's been a long road on your journey to financial freedom following the plan laid out in Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover, but we have made amazing progress since our start in September 2009. In that time, we've gone through some changes:
But that's okay because our outlook for 2010 is even better. I am still teaching a total of 5 classes at a time, which is considered full-time, though it's still between 2 schools. My salary is still a little lower than it was at the full-time job, but that's okay, too. We've learned a lot through Dave Ramsey's plan: we know where we can tighten our budget and still be financially fine. Howard's promotion (and the raise to go along with it) will give us some extra money each month to attack our debts. I could possibly be full time at the business school this year, which would give us another boost to get us closer to our goal, maybe faster than we have planned.
We are now down to a car payment, one credit card, and my student loans. Our plan is to knock out the credit card and the car payment in the next few months with our tax refund. We will start paying the student loan and our goal is to pay off the entire balance in one year to be debt free by March 2012. It is amazing to think that in just over a year we could be debt free other than the house and be ready to start on Baby Step 3 to fully fund our emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. I cannot imagine having a bank account with that much money sitting in it!
What I'm really excited about is getting to Baby Step 4, where we start funding our 401Ks again and start saving for retirement. Howard is a little nervous that aren't doing this now, but I believe in this plan we're on, and I know that in the long run, we will reach our money goals!
- Our wages returned to the full amount early 2010 (after a 10% pay cut in early 2009)
- Howard was given the only pay increase in the company at the end of 2009 (other than employees who were given held promotions from the year before)
- I went to 3/4 time at the full-time job in January 2010 and started teaching a class at the community college in the spring semester
- I left the 3/4 time job when my second class started in March 2010 (late start)
- I picked up 2 classes at a business school (April quarter)
- I taught 4 classes in the next 2 quarters (July and October quarters)
- I also taught an early morning class at the community college in the fall semester of 2010
- Howard got his anxiously awaited promotion at the end of 2010
But that's okay because our outlook for 2010 is even better. I am still teaching a total of 5 classes at a time, which is considered full-time, though it's still between 2 schools. My salary is still a little lower than it was at the full-time job, but that's okay, too. We've learned a lot through Dave Ramsey's plan: we know where we can tighten our budget and still be financially fine. Howard's promotion (and the raise to go along with it) will give us some extra money each month to attack our debts. I could possibly be full time at the business school this year, which would give us another boost to get us closer to our goal, maybe faster than we have planned.
We are now down to a car payment, one credit card, and my student loans. Our plan is to knock out the credit card and the car payment in the next few months with our tax refund. We will start paying the student loan and our goal is to pay off the entire balance in one year to be debt free by March 2012. It is amazing to think that in just over a year we could be debt free other than the house and be ready to start on Baby Step 3 to fully fund our emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. I cannot imagine having a bank account with that much money sitting in it!
What I'm really excited about is getting to Baby Step 4, where we start funding our 401Ks again and start saving for retirement. Howard is a little nervous that aren't doing this now, but I believe in this plan we're on, and I know that in the long run, we will reach our money goals!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Welcome to 2011
It seems like a good day for a blog post, first day of the year and all that. I am ready for this new year. I don't know that there is any greatly profound reason why, it's just a feeling that this year is the year I get my shit together. There are always so many things I want to accomplish in any given year, and the end of the year comes around and I find that I haven't accomplished as many of them as I would have liked. Not that I feel like I have failed in any way, things change and those things that seemed so important at the beginning of the year no longer take precendence, and why worry about the things you cannot change, anyway? So in this first hour of the first day of 2011, I can see all the possibilities in what lies ahead in this year.
Some of 2011 is already planned, so there are fun times to look forward to. In May, I will walk/jog in my 5th Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. It has become a tradition since 2006, our first year. I missed 2007 because Spencer was due the day of the race. I probably should have gone anyway - she was 5 days late! In July, we're traveling to Minnesota with Mom to see where she grew up and learn more about her side of the family. We've never been there with her. We'll also have a reunion with my dad's side of the family and celebrate my oldest brother's 50th birthday. Can't wait for May and July to roll around!
And of course, there are the resolutions we're supposed to make every new year. I can never decide if I want to make them or not, and when I do, I make half-hearted resolutions that last about 2 weeks and then are forgotten in the daily grind. Perhaps if they weren't called resolutions it would make them last longer. Okay, goals then. I will set goals for myself instead. So what do I want to do? What do I want to see happen for myself in 2011? Let's take a look....
-- Complete the Bay to Breakers 12K in under 2 hours
-- Lose 20-25 pounds before the Bay to Breakers
-- Pay off the SUV and the last credit card
-- Pay down my student loans
-- Finish the work on the front yard
-- Plan better
-- Procrastinate less
-- Achieve a better work/life balance
-- Drink more water
-- Allow myself time to read
-- Walk, hike, and swim more
-- Blog more consistently
Welcome to 2011 - there sure is a lot to be done!
Some of 2011 is already planned, so there are fun times to look forward to. In May, I will walk/jog in my 5th Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. It has become a tradition since 2006, our first year. I missed 2007 because Spencer was due the day of the race. I probably should have gone anyway - she was 5 days late! In July, we're traveling to Minnesota with Mom to see where she grew up and learn more about her side of the family. We've never been there with her. We'll also have a reunion with my dad's side of the family and celebrate my oldest brother's 50th birthday. Can't wait for May and July to roll around!
And of course, there are the resolutions we're supposed to make every new year. I can never decide if I want to make them or not, and when I do, I make half-hearted resolutions that last about 2 weeks and then are forgotten in the daily grind. Perhaps if they weren't called resolutions it would make them last longer. Okay, goals then. I will set goals for myself instead. So what do I want to do? What do I want to see happen for myself in 2011? Let's take a look....
-- Complete the Bay to Breakers 12K in under 2 hours
-- Lose 20-25 pounds before the Bay to Breakers
-- Pay off the SUV and the last credit card
-- Pay down my student loans
-- Finish the work on the front yard
-- Plan better
-- Procrastinate less
-- Achieve a better work/life balance
-- Drink more water
-- Allow myself time to read
-- Walk, hike, and swim more
-- Blog more consistently
Welcome to 2011 - there sure is a lot to be done!
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