I’m not going to have too much to share as far as our debt diet goes for the next couple of months. The holidays are in full force and so our credit cards are taking a little bit of a back seat. But I’m okay with that. We are still paying double our minimum payments and after the new year we will be back on full force. We really don’t have much further to go but once the credit cards are paid off it’s time to start on our savings. 
One thing I do want to share with you is a great list I found for Christmas gifts under $20.
http://www.blogsmonroe.com/budget/2009/11/ideas-for-christmas-gifts-under-20/
My favorites for children are cash (for young kids a $5 bill will make their day), art supplies, and handcrafted doll clothes. I love that last one and think it is a great idea for someone to do as a side business. For adults I like the idea of a bottle of regional wine, a Christmas tree ornament (add a picture of your little ones for the grandparents), itunes gift card, decorative Holiday pin, and a case for phone or other electronic device.
Check out the site for many more inexpensive gift ideas and other Christmas savings ideas.
Eva has started this new super cute thing, because you know everything your own kid does is super cute and when a different kid does the exact same thing it’s just annoying, anyways she does this thing where if she is trying to get my attention she waves her arms at me and says “WooHoo!”. My face is beaming with pride just telling you about it that’s how darn cute it is. But I realize she’s not your kid so you probably find it annoying. Oh well, you’re just jealous.
The title of this post was inspired by my dear Eva because lately I feel like I have became that person, that parent who just isn’t all there. You know what I mean? Maybe it’s school, maybe it’s my health, maybe it’s this debt diet, maybe it’s the holidays just around the corner, or maybe it’s motherhood finally infecting my brain. Wow, that’s a lot of maybes. Maybe it is all the maybes? Ha!
School is great, but the only thing is that every since I have started back I have not worked out, once. Not once have I gone to the gym, gone for a run, done yoga, or popped in Jillian Michaels DVD. I think it is starting to affect my health. I just don’t have the energy I used to have, I’m not taking care of Eva the way I used to (she ate candy corn for breakfast for goodness sake!), and this week I got infected with some sort of upper-respiratory nastiness. Which is why my 2 year old now knows how to hack a lugi. You’re Welcome.
The debt diet is getting stressful. The stores have already been flooded with Christmas presents and I feel like if I don’t buy them all now they will sell out and I won’t be able to get them later. Ridiculous, I know. Plus it’s like, FALL. And there is all this wonderful fally stuff to do around here. But it gets expensive. There are high school football games, elementary school festivals, apple picking, pumpkin farms, long drives that require lot’s of gas, and Cracker Barrel because you need to eat after watching the football game, going to the festival, picking apples, carving pumpkins and taking that long drive you know?
The Holidays could very well be to blame for the clouding of my mind. I have soooo been looking forward to this Christmas ever since last Christmas. Eva will be older and more into it. She already knows half the Christmas songs. I am beyond excited for Halloween, trick or treating, and hanging out with family and friends, eating lots of candy, dressing Eva up for what may be the last year I have the final say on her Halloween costume. The Holidays are just so much fun when you are a parent! 100 times funner even then when you are a kid. It must be that whole “It’s better to give then to receive thing” or something.
So, I apologize if I just haven’t “been there” as much as I used to be. Just wave your arms at me and yell “WooHoo!” every once in a while. Even if I don’t answer you I’ll still laugh at you and tell you how cute you are.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Well we are dealing with a small setback this month. I was tempted to start this post talking about how we have failed this month but I couldn’t let myself admit defeat. The reason is if I do that then I will just give up all together. No, we are not defeated we are just having a small setback and we need to dust ourselves off and start right back up again.
What happened is I went back to school along with the fact that there is some pretty heavy stuff going on in my family right now and it’s taking some time to adjust. I just haven’t been able to get it together enough to do my regular grocery shopping, so our fridge looks like a bunch of bachelors live here. We’ve been eating out like crazy. I swore I was gonna go grocery shopping today but that didn’t work out either so I’m gonna try again and go tomorrow. Starting with getting a good nights sleep tonight so I can wake up early, take a shower and get my butt out of the house.
The school schedule has been rough because I go Monday and Tuesday night, and then my husband goes Wednesday night. So it’s definitely taking some getting used to as far as cooking dinner and that sort of thing. Going to school after you have kids is a whole new experience. It’s certainly interesting trying to do homework when a two year old is demanding your constant attention.
So, yes, we have spent extra money on eating out this month and there was the little incident yesterday where my car was towed and I had to pay $135 to get it out. Yep, we all live and learn right?
However, even though we didn’t follow our budget exactly we have still kept up with all our other budget cuts and we have not bought anything on credit. That is major. I am disappointed that we were not able to pay as much as we wanted towards are debt this month but I am so proud that we have gone the entire 6 months without charging anything to a credit card. That alone is amazing and we plan to keep it that way.
We have been on our debt diet for almost 5 months now. I really can’t believe we’ve made it this far. It’s been a very difficult road and I’m a little embarrassed even to admit how difficult. I thought it would be hard at first but then would get easier as we got used to it…but no. It is really a daily struggle not to spend money. Everyday I wake up in the morning I have to fight the urge to go shopping or take Eva to lunch, or something else that would require money. Money is a lot like food. You can be addicted to spending it, and you can fight that addiction but you can never cut it out of your life completely because you need it to live. Unless your like this guy then that’s a whole different story.
These past 5 months I’ve learned a lot of things about myself and about money in general but I’ve really been thinking a lot lately about the 3 different reasons for spending money.
1. Needs – things like food, shelter, electricity, fuel. There are really very few things that we actually need.
2. Wants – clothes, furniture, pedicures, getting my hair done. Every time I want to buy something I ask myself “Is this a want or a need?” It is always a want. After the weekly trip to the grocery store, I have everything I need. The hardest things not to buy are clothes for me, clothes for Eva, toys and books for Eva, and books for me. However I REALLY struggle with the whole want vs. need thing when it comes to things like new furniture for Eva’s room. I HATE the furniture in her room which we bought from craigslist when she was a baby to save money so that we could buy her something nice when she got older. Well now she is older and I am so ready to get her the something nice. We went to Ikea the other day to scope out some things, that was a BIG MISTAKE. We found a daybed there with two overhead cabinets that would go PERFECT in her playroom. Now it is taking everything in me not to just hop in the car and go get it, and it’s not even for her bedroom! I have gotten my hair done once since we started this and I had to sell our fire pit to do it. It’s been 8 weeks since then and just starting to get to the point where it needs to be done again. I’ll probably wait another month or two and then see what else I can sell around the house.
3. Convenience – This sort of fits in with both of the two previous categories. There are many things of convenience that we could argue are a need but really would just make our life easier. Such as going to the car wash, or eating out. It is a huge challenge everyday to wake up and try to figure out what I’m going to do with Eva that day to keep her entertained. Since she doesn’t have anyone to play with (besides me) I always feel like I need to take her somewhere fun at least a few times a week. Also, I’m the kind of person that needs to get out of the house or I’ll go crazy. It would make my life so much easier if I could just take her out to lunch a couple of times a week or to the children’s museum or someplace like that. But those things all cost money. We are both dreadfully sick of the free places we’ve been going all summer like the library and the community pool.
Why am I putting myself through such torture you might ask? The progress we’ve made does make it all worth it. So far we’ve paid $12,344 towards our credit cards ($6,000 of that was from our tax return) and we still owe $9,600. I write down those numbers not for you but for me. So I can see how ridiculously in credit card debt we let ourselves become. Imagine what we could be doing with this money right now if we weren’t paying off our stupid cards with it!? To help us get it paid off a little sooner Chris took out $1000 from a 401k he had at a previous job. That will make it so we will have one more card paid off by November, then we can just focus on Christmas, and start up again on the last two cards totaling $4,600 after the holidays. When I think about all of the sacrifices we are having to make just to pay off all these cards it makes me sick.
Can you believe how optimistic I was when this first started?
http://www.modernmommyblog.com/index.php/2009/03/25/my-debt-diet/
I don’t know where I was getting my math from in our 1 month post.??
http://www.modernmommyblog.com/index.php/2009/04/27/we-made-it-1-month/
What I love most about having company over is it forces me to clean my house
I finished reading New Moon in two days. Yes there was a little bit of that ooey gooey teenage mushy romance that made me want to vomit but really not very much. I can’t wait for the movie. I am so addicted to these characters. I haven’t read a book like that in a long time so it was kind of nice to be able to escape into something that way.
Eva’s favorite book right now is Goodnight Gorilla. It is the perfect book for her age. Not very many words but a lot going on in the pictures. It gives us a lot to talk about and she can tell me what is going on in the story. She loves the page with just the two surprised eyes in the dark room. She makes me read those last few pages over and over and over again.
I love saving money! Ever since we started our Debt Diet I have been a coupon cutter. Never have paid much attention to ads or coupons before but now that I have more time to do it I love it. So far this year I have spent $162 at CVS and saved $201! Everything I buy is something that I genuinely need, I don’t just buy stuff because it is on sale. Today I went to Albertsons my final bill was $60 and I saved $58. I cut my bill in half! I know there are ways to save even more than that but I am still learning.
I do buy the paper and get coupons that way but I find my best coupons come from registering on product websites. It’s true I get a million E-mails a day but it’s worth it if it means I am saving more money.
Links:
http://www.thegrocerygame.com/
http://print.coupons.com/CouponWeb/Offers.aspx?pid=13306&zid=iq37&nid=10
Hope you are having a Fantastical Friday too!
