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!

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 :) 

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 :(