A Thrifty Bathroom Makeover

We have a half bath on the main level of our house that was covered in wall paper when we moved in. Here is a before picture:

In March of 2015 we bartered wall paper removal with a friend of ours who runs a painting/wallpaper removal business. My husband does her taxes for her and she does some painting etc work for us.

Here it is after wall paper removal but before paint.

Next I painted the walls and trim.  Wall paint was approximately $35 ( paint color is Spinach White by Sherwin Williams) and trim paint we already had.

After I painted my Hubby turned the built in magazine rack into the toilet paper cubby. We spent about $5 on that. You can kinda see it in the first before picture at the top.  Here is the after:

Next up we added a new light $78 at Lowes but I had a $50 gift card to use towards it.  We also added a new mirror which I bought off Overstock for $102.99 and then took apart and spray painted the frame gold using paint we already had.  I had a very hard time finding a round mirror for a reasonable price.  We also added a new facet

 light switch cover, outlet cover, door knob and door hinges all of which I bought on eBay, $80.11.  Next up I painted the vanity navy blue and added new handles and towel holder both of which I purchased at Hobby Lobby. I spent $28 on the paint for the vanity and $14.98 at Hobby Lobby.  Last thing I bought was some wall dot stickers for about $10.  I spray painted a frame I already had the same gold as the mirror frame and hung a poster in it that I already owned also. All decor I used in the bathroom I already owned. 

Here are a bunch of after pictures :)

WOW It's May Already!

Well Hello! I sure had not planned to take this long of break from this ole' blog! I can't believe it is mid May already!

I posted here about starting a part time Nanny job in November.  I am still at my job and I still love it.  I love the family I work for and the hours and perks to the job are just perfect for our family!  I really believe this is my dream job!

Kid#5 had 8 days of school left for the year and she will be going to high school.  It is hard to believe that she is old enough to be doing this!

In a few days we have officially been in our new house/town for 2 yrs.  The first year was rough and I was not loving it.  This second year has been much better.  We are slowly making the house our own and I hope to post some of the projects we have completed soon!

Let see, on the frugal, working the Dave Ramsey Babysteps front, I also posted here that we had completed Babystep 3.  We are now working on saving for a new to us car.  For a while we were going gazelle with that because we though we might be getting transferred with my husband work again. However we recently found out that is not the case so we will now be concentrating on saving for a new to us car and paying extra on our house or Babystep 6.

Our goal with Babystep 6 is to pay off our house in 8 years or less.  My husband will be able to retire at this point and we of course would like to do that with no mortgage left.  I hope to update more regularly on how this is working!

This is pretty much has been happening here in a nutshell!  I look forward to hopefully updating here more :)

Few New Things Going On Here...

It's been a while since I have posted a blog post! Hard to believe that it is 2017 already! Hope everyone had a lovely holiday season. We did! It was busy and hectic though and one of my goals this year is to try and simplify that for this year.

Here are a few happenings at our house: 

In November I took a part time job, working 20 hours a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as a Nanny. I watch primarily a 3 year old boy and a 11 month old girl. I make $15 an hour to go to their house and care for them. Occasionally and in the summer months I will also be watching their 6 year old brother who attends kindergarten. I love my job! I love the family I work for. They are all very nice and very good to me. It truly is the perfect job for me. I can also bring Kid # 5 with me to work when I need too. Which is just another added bonus! 

This job will help tremendously with some new financial goals we have for this year. We have completed our Babystep 3 and even ended up adding more to it when we had a job loss scare and then potential move in early 2016. Now we would like to move on to Babysteps 4-6. Our primary goals this year will be to up our retirement savings,  save a small amount towards Kid # 5's college ( more on that later), start to save to purchase a new to us car with cash and pay extra towards our house. Big goals and even bigger dreams for someday :) 

Our other really big news is that we will be having a new Grandchild in August. Kid #3 announced to everyone in Decemeber that she is expecting.  We all are hugely excited!  

Looks like 2017 is going to be an awesome year for our family!

Thrifty Thursday

I had to drop my car off to be fixed this morning. I posted last week about having a issue with my car. We had to wait for a part to come in to have it fixed.  Turns out it was a wheel barring that is bad.  The shop we use is about a 1 mile from our house.  I frequently walk during the day at the minimum of 2 miles.  So I just walked home from the shop so that I can get some of my exercise in. It was a nice sunny morning, although kinda chilly.  When  it is time to pick my car up later today I will just walk to do that also.  Easy exercise and it saves on gas.

What did you do that was thrifty today?

My Goals With EBay

Two post in one day..say what??!!

My first mini goal I set for myself when I started selling on eBay in June was to be able to make enough profit to buy both of our cars new tires.

 Today after mailing my packages from sales over the weekend I realized I have now made enough to get our first car new tires!  Woohoo! one car down, one more to go!

Reaching this point totally helps keep me motivated to keep at it. Even if my sales are slow and I only sale 3 or 4 items a week.  I am still making a profit!

Happy Tuesday!

Well I didn't manage to post over the weekend or yesterday which was a holiday from school for Kid #5.  Today we are back to our normal schedule.  Nothing to exciting happening this week.  We just have our usual schedule until the weekend.

 I do have a few projects I am hoping to finish.

 One is the recovering of our dinning room chairs.  I have 3 left to do so I plan to work on them today.

 The second is I am spray painting some of our light fixtures that I really wanted to update but discovered they would cost us about $40 a piece to do that.  We have 4 of them.  The can of spray paint cost me about $5. This was a much cheaper option.

The third project is finishing up the painting of my half bathroom vanity. I was waiting on my husband to help me with the holes for the new handles I bought, which he did over the weekend. So now I can paint the primer on them and then purchase the actual paint.

I need to run to the Post Office at some point today as I have 3 packages from my eBay sales to mail off.  EBay  has been slow going for me but at least I am making some money doing it. Every little bit helps!

Hope you all are having a great day!

Murphy Is Calling........

Murphy is knocking at our door and I wish he would just go away. 

First item is that our Escrow account was short for the second time and I will now need to pay about $300 extra.  Thank you high IL property taxes!

The next is my Anti Lock Brake system light is on in my car.  I am pretty sure my back brakes need replacing :/  My Hubs is gonna call and see about taking the car in today.

A few years ago these would have been BIG issues with our finances. Now they are minor annoyances.  It still is the pits to have to spend money that we were not planning on but at least now the money is there when we need it and we will not have to charge it on a credit card.

It's October Already...Say What!?

This year has just flown right by hasn't it?  For several years I have tried to write every day in October.  I had intentions of doing the same this year but as you can see it is now the 3rd of October and I am just now writing my first post. I may keep at it for the rest of the month though, we will see.

So what has been happening here....as of right now we are getting to stay in our new city and my husband still has a job with the railroad.  Great news huh? It was a big relief when we got that news.  So now let the house projects begin :)

We recently found out that Kid #5 has a chance to take a trip with her classmates to Washington DC next summer.  This will cost us $2,000.  At first I was not happy about it and not planning to let her go.  It is not really in our budget and it is a lot of money for a 13 yr old.  We have sense decided that she can probably go and we will be doing several things to fund this trip with her helping of course.  First up is a yard sale before it gets to cold.  That is our project for this week, getting everything priced and ready to go, she is going to help of course with every part of the yard sale!

I am hoping to add $4,000 to our Babystep 3 before the end of the year.  We previously had decided we had completed Babystep 3 but then we had the job loss scare and so have since decided to add to it a little bit. 

Anyway, this is where we are at at the moment.  Hope you all are doing well.

Monday Musings...

School started last week so I am once again home alone during the day.

 The weather is suppose to be much cooler this week.  I really really need to get some yard work done.  I do not enjoy doing yard work at all so I have to talk myself into doing it most of the time.

Currently it is about 10 am. I have a load of laundry done and hung outside on my drying racks.  I am hoping to get at least one more done today.

I need to sit down and menu plan and work on our budget.  I am not feeling to motivated to do either!  I do at least know what we will be having for dinner tonight :)

I have about 5 or 6 items I need to get listed on ebay also. My goal with my ebay sales is to make enough to buy both of our cars new tires.  It is not a need just yet but it will be soon.  That is just my first mini goal and then I hope to build on it from there.

I have been applying to some part time Nanny jobs on Care.com.  So far I have not had any response to ones I am truly interested in.  I figure eventfully the right job will come along that will work for our family.  In the mean time I will just keep doing what I am doing :)

Tuesday Happenings....

Today I am off to Kid # 1's house to watch my grandson for the evening while they go to a concert.  I spent the morning working on a few eBay listings I have and getting a couple loads of laundry done. I also threw a couple chicken breasts in the crockpot for my husband and Kid # 5 to have for dinner tonight since I will not be here to cook for them.  Hopefully it will keep them from eating out :) 

Yesterday I worked on inventorying our food and menu planning at least for the next two weeks.  We wasted a lot of produce in June and the beginning of July which is so unlike me.  We just didn't have a good plan for all the busy-ness that seems to be happening at the moment.

I am trying to be more organized with my time.  We will see how that goes :)

Hope everyone is having a good day!

Short Week That Seems So Long...

I had meant to write yesterday but didn't get around to it. It was a good day recovering from the long weekend. Kid #5 and I didn't do much.  I cleaned up the house some and worked on listing a few items on EBay.  I am definitely not gonna get rich selling on EBay but it is a nice little side hobby. Ideally I would love to make enough to pay our mortgage payment every month.  We will see if that happens.  I do figure that every little bit of profit helps though.

I am on the fence on what to do about our savings now.  We have BabyStep 3 complete but with the upcoming potential move in a year I don't know if we should be in storm cloud mode or just move on to start working other steps.  Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Today Kid #5 and I are going to stay a few days with my Mom who is on vacation from her job.  Should be a fun time.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July :)

What's Been Happening With Us...

About two months ago my husbands job informed his entire office that they will be closing the office here in our city and moving it to Ohio to combine with another region. For those of you who don't know we live in Illinois.  At first we did not even know if my husband would have a job.  He had to travel to Ohio and interview for a job which he did receive an offer for.  A couple of weeks ago he accepted the offer so it looks like eventually we maybe moving to Ohio.  My husband is a railroader and has only 9 more years until he can retire from the railroad.  There is some small possibility he would switch fields entirely but I am not sure that will actually happen.  As of right now he does not know when he needs to be in Ohio to start work there.  We do know that we have one year to utilize relocation services provided by his company from the time he needs to report to work in Ohio.  Right now our plan is for him to go there without me and Kid #5 until after the 2016-2017 school year.  Kid # 5 has requested to finish middle school here and be a new student at a new school going into high school. This will allow us time to get our house ready to sell also. 

So there ya go.  This has been our summer so far. To say I am really bummed about this turn of events is an understatement :(  However I am blessed that my husband does still have a job!

We Are On Spring Break

It is spring break here.  My husband is gone on a business trip also so Kid #5 and I are flying by the seat of our pants :)

 We plan to do a few fun things this week.  I bought a Groupon for our local ice cream shop.  We are also doing a little shopping for some items of clothing/shoes Kid # 5 is in need of. We may hit up a movie this week too.  We will just have to see.

Even though we are off our normal schedule I have managed to work on our April budget and our menu plan also.  I have found that by planning our meals monthly I am able to cut our grocery budget.  I am hoping to continue with this.

Hope you all had a nice Easter :)

In Celebration Of Pi Day....

I made this Peanut Butter Pie :). My husband loves pie so he was thrilled when he got home from work to have this as dessert.  Sometimes it is just the little things in life that makes us all happy :)

5 Years Of Blogging...Oh How Far We Have Come...

This month I have been blogging for 5 years! Wow! Time flies!

5 years ago The Plan was to be come debt free.  This did happen, actually more then once :)

It really took about 4 years to really get there and for the last year we have maintained our debt freedom.  Hopefully this continues!

As of today we are debt free and 3/4th of the way to a large emergency fund.

 My husband also received a promotion this week and with that a pretty good raise.  When the raise kicks in we will also be contributing 15% to our retirement. So that will complete Baby Step 4 of Dave Ramsey's Plan.

When I read back over this blog I am just amazed at how far we have come. I really enjoy blogging not only for the record it helps me keep as to how far we have come in this journey but also because
of the other bloggers I have met along the way.

My original goal of blogging was to keep myself accountable to becoming debt free and to have a place to share all my frugalness.  In real life most people think I am weird and do not understand my frugal out look.  This is a great place to share that and also to keep track.

Anyway, here is to another year of blogging! 

Thanks to everyone who comes here to read and comment!

PS: I post a lot about being frugal on my Instagram if you would like to follow me there :) 

Sometimes Little Things Can Do Alot of Damage...

On Sunday we got a couple inches of snow.  My husband used the snow blower to clear the driveway and sidewalk leading up to the house.  Later that day we went to leave the house using the front door, opened the regular door to leave and the glass on the storm door shattered all over the hallway :(  We assume that my husband hit the door with a small rock and didn't know it :(   $342 later we have a shatter proof new storm door.

 A few years ago this would have been a big expense and would have stressed me out.  Now we just adjusted the budget a little bit and we have a new door.  No stress.  Not necessarily what I wanted to spend the money on but at least it is covered and we didn't have to put it on a credit card.  Murphy does come knocking even when you are debt free but it is just annoying instead of becoming a big deal.

My Dave Ramsey Story/ A YouTube Collab

One of the YouTube Vloggers , Jennifer at Path To Debt Freedom who I watch regularly started a collab video on YouTube about other vologgers Dave Ramsey Story.  I don't vlog  but obviously I do have this here ole blog so I thought I would play along that way :)  If you all haven't seen Jennifer's channel you should go check her out.  She shares her families journey to get out of debt, does grocery hauls and menu plans and Dollar Tree hauls also.

Anyway here are the questions she asks:

1. How long have you been doing the Dave Ramsey plan? Well my first post on this blog was March 2011.  At that time we just had a car loan left. We paid that off in September 2012 but in January 2013 my husband got a new position within his company and started driving 3 hours a day.  At that time gas was high and it was costing us a small fortune.  We purchased a new to us car in April 2013 and paid it off in December 2014. Anyway I would say we have been doing the Dave Ramsey plan off and on since 2010 but really got focused in 2013.

2. What Baby Step are you currently working on? (If the Baby Step you are currently working on is 2, please continue with question #3, if not please skip to question #7)
 We are currently on Baby Step 3.

3. What was your total debt when you started Baby Step 2?
In 2013 we had $16,000 in car loan debt

4. What is your total debt now?

5. What estimated date do you expect your Baby Step 2 to be complete, and your debt (excluding your mortgage) to be paid-off?

6. Do you plan on doing a debt-free scream with Dave Ramsey, either on the phone or in person?

7. Did you take a Financial Peace University class either in person or at home, or did you read the Total Money Makeover book, or did you learn about Dave Ramsey online?
 I first learned of Dave Ramsey online reading other peoples blogs.  I have also read The Total Money Makeover twice. When my husband was driving 3 hours a day for work he would listen to him on the radio.

8. Did you do budget prior to learning about Dave Ramsey (whether zero-based, or not)?
 Sort of.  I always have wrote down our bills and had a general idea of what we could spend and have always been thrifty.

9. Have you tried Dave Ramsey’s new free Every Dollar Budgeting website? If yes, what are your thoughts?
 No I have not. I like pencil and a spiral notebook :)

10. Do you consider yourself the free-spirit or nerd of your relationship?
 I am a little of both.  While I do our budgeting and run the day to day aspects of our house I do like to spend money on my kids and household projects.  My husband does all of the long term planning such as for retirement.

11. Are you a hardcore Dave Ramsey follower? Or, have you tweaked/changed some things about the plan? If you have tweaked/changed some things about the plan, please share what and why.
We are not hardcore followers.  For one we did not stop our retirement in order to get out of debt.  We also still took a small trip for my BFF's wedding. 

12. Have you tried any of Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Providers or other products/services he recommends? If yes, please give your feedback.
We interviewed two endorsed realtor's when we were getting ready to sell our house last year. While both of them seemed very nice. One only wanted to list our house for what we ended up getting for it when it sold. So if we would have went with her we would have made a whole lot less on our house.  The other was very nice but just didn't click with us.  We ended up going with a realtor who was not endorsed and we sold our house in 9 days :) 

13. From your experience, do you think this plan works? 
Yes I very much  think this plan can work for anyone at any income level if you follow the plan.

January Recap / Where oh where did the money go??

Really though January was not to bad of a month as far as being able to pay cash for things.  We spent a lot of money but it was all paid for in cash.  We cash flowed Dr bills and some car repairs.  We also ate out a lot and bought to many clothes that probably weren't actually needed.

What we didn't do was add anything to our Baby Step 3 progress.  February we must be better about this!!  We did find out we will be getting about a $4,000 refund on our taxes.  Thank you relocation benefits from my husbands company :) That will help a whole lot in making progress on our 2016 goals .

I did manage to cut our grocery budget for January by $119.29.  This savings went to finishing up funding our Valentines envelope and my car registration envelope.  I will write a post soon on how I am doing some envelopes differently this year.  So far it is working out great! I am hoping to continue on with this cheap grocery budget but we will see.  I often have high hopes for cutting the budget and then I get lazy and don't plan well.  We will see if I can keep up with it.

So as of right now our emergency fund sits at roughly $5,500 ( we had more in this fund but due to some unforeseen expenses this is where it sits now)  The first pay day for February is Thursday so I am hoping to be able to add $500 to that balance. 

How was everyone else's January?

Planning For The Year...

It has really become apparent to me that we have not planned well at all for medical and dental bills.  In years past we have all been pretty healthy and these bills have been at a minimum.

Right before the end of 2015 my husband hurt his back and started going to the chiropractor. While most of the costs are covered by our health insurance, the co-pays for two, three and four times weekly visits are not.  Today he also had a dental cleaning and was told he needs to have a crown.  While again most of the cost of that is covered through our dental insurance thankfully, about $350 is not.

We also have a $155 office visit for Kid # 5 from December who ended up sick for a few days and had to make a trip to the Dr.  We haven't found a Dr yet in our new area so we just went to the closest prompt care.  Turns out our insurance does not cover quick strep tests. Ugh!

 I am not prepared for these large bills at all.  So I will be sitting down and reworking the budget to accommodate them. I know we can easily make this work but it may prolong how fast we get out of Baby Step 3.  I was really hoping to be done by June :(

2016 Goals

I really only have one major goal this year.

Complete our fully funded emergency fund and stay out of debt.

Ok I guess that is 2 goals.  Seems like those would be easy huh? 

Lets hope so.

 My plan is to write here more and document my frugal living more often here also.

It seems that a lot of my favorite blogs stop writing once they get out of debt. But I think it is equally as hard to save money and stay out of debt. So I hope to continue to document my journey through this process.

Here's to completing our goals in 2016