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 :) 

This Years Envelope System

This year I decided to do something different with my budgeting and envelope system.  In years past I would always forget or not plan well for things we needed to pay for that only happened once a year. Things like random holiday's, birthday's, car registration, activities we wanted to do, visits from relatives etc.   So this year I decided to try a different approach to these things.

First I went through the calendar month by month and wrote down every thing I could think of that happened each month that would be an added expense other then our normal monthly bills.  I added the date it happened and the dollar amount I estimated we would spend.  Here is a short example of the list:

January

Family Christmas ( this involved extra purchases of food) -1/2/2016 - $50

February

Valentines Day - 2/14/2016 - $100

My Mom's 60th Birthday - 2/28/2016 - $200 ( this is my part of her party )

My Car Registration - 2/28/2016 - $110.25

March

Easter Egg Coloring Party -3/19/2016 - $100

Easter - 3/27/2016 - $150 - ( this is baskets for 5 kids and filling eggs for and egg hunt at my sisters and bring a dish for Easter dinner)

Kid #3's 21st Birthday and Dinner -3/28/2016 - $200

Spring Break -$200

Anyway, you get the idea I hope.  I did this for every single month.  Every single birthday and holiday and any other things that would be coming up that we needed to budget for. 

Next up,  I have slowly made envelopes for each and every item on my list.  I have used free envelopes that come in the mail with bills and other things to make these with.  I have almost 40 envelopes which may seems crazy but it is working so far.  I write on the envelope what it is for, the date and the allotted amount that goes in it.  I have a box I keep them in.  I do not and have not filled them all at once.  I fill them as I have extra money left from my grocery budget.  When I don't use all of the money in one envelope I empty it and move it to the next one that needs filled.  For example I gave my husband $50 to spend for Valentine's Day and $50 for myself.  I had $20 left out of my $50 so I placed it in the envelope for my Mom's Birthday Party which had not reached it's allotted amount yet. Some of the envelopes I estimated high on the dollar amount and if there is money left that is awesome and I use it to fill whatever is next.

So far this is working out great!

5 Things I Did That Where Frugal This Week

1. I had $29 left in my two week grocery budget.

2. I planned our snacks and made them all this week. 

3. I made a big batch of Taco Seasoning

4. We paid cash for my husband hair cut.

5. We added $200 to our Babystep 3 :) 

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.

5 Things I Did That Were Frugal This Week

1. Painted my half bath. Other then the paint I had all the supplies to do it with. More on this remodel to come :) 

2. Had $20 left in my Valentine's Day budget of $50. Not to bad huh? I moved that into my Mom's 60th birthday party envelope. 

3. Sold some curtains this week and made $20

4. A good friend of our gave Kid # 5 some hand me downs from her daughter. A huge bag of name brand stuff. We always accept hand me downs :)

5. Cooked some dried black beans and made bulk brownie mix to use in future dinners and snacks 

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?