I wish I could report that we are now debt free, but that is still a little far off. However, I can now report that we are no longer living paycheck to paycheck.
That's right, we are now officially spending less than we earn. Most of the extra money is going to be going toward the debt, but if I had a month where we needed the money for something else we now have it!!
On top of that, we are finally saving for the inevitable. Like car maintenance and medical expenses. I know it is not 100% foolproof yet, but our budget is getting better by the month!
I guess I should admit that we added a bit more debt to be able to do this, but at the same time we will be able to pay off all of our debt much faster now. We got out from under a leased vehicle (which I could have killed my husband for doing in the first place!) and bought a repossessed vehicle from our credit union. So, we got a pretty sweet deal on it.
We were going to need another vehicle when the lease was over anyway, we owed less turning it in than if we continued making the payments until January, and now we have some breathing room!!
This is also a result of me changing my w4 and taking out some other deductions from my paycheck. I will make another change in October when our open enrollment takes place at work which will add even more money to our debt snowball.
For the first time in a long time, I feel really good about our finances. It was not that it was that bad before, but we were not able to put say, $20 a month aside for pet vet visits etc. Now we will have that money accruing each month in different categories so that we don't have to use our emergency savings for non-emergency purchases.
And, in true fashion, just as we have gotten to this point our washer broke down, lol. We will have a repairman coming out on Monday. This is one of those things that I COULD use emergency fund money on, but I don't have to because we have the extra in house maintenance fund! (Unless the repairs are really expensive of course)
In other news... I will post the winner of the David Bach book tomorrow, but it seems pretty obvious who it will be since I only have ONE entry... No one was snowflaking this week? You have until 11:59 tonight to enter the contest!!! See the post directly below this one for details.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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