Moonblossom's Financial Freedom Blog

Ugh

2010-12-02T15:08:00.001-08:00

I will be trying to get back to blogging in January, it has been absolutely busy as can be here but I'm making blogging my new years resolution :-)

~Moonblossom

Another Murphy Visit!!!

2010-08-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

Well we have had another Murphy visit and I can't say much because if I do I'm afraid I'll give away my anonymity, but needless to say it won't be pretty although I haven't gotten the bill yet since they aren't done fixing the problem.. Oh well maybe our bad things come in three's will be done and we can move on again.

Updated

2010-08-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

Well I updated my side bars. Not that I wanted to but I needed to. We will just start plugging away at the debt again. We do have things we will have to buy within the next 4 months and probably will turtle the debts and save for the things we need so we don't have to put it on the Credit Card again. Including Tires for my car which will be something that has to go to the front of the line since they are getting very low.

Busy

2010-08-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting we have been extremely busy here, I need to update my side bars again and I'll try to post on the weekend when I have a day off :)

Murphy's Results

2010-07-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Well after it is all said and done our Murphy hit was over 4K I nearly died, but we will stand up, wipe off our knees and bum and move on, which is really all we can do. We have both picked up some OT which will help somewhat and all we can do is plug away at what we can slowly and steadily....

Payday

2010-07-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Well it's payday again I have paid all the bills due & have put some money in savings (I'm going to get the EF up more since obviously we don't have enough, well we don't have any atm.) I have agreed to more OT if I can get it I'll be very happy. I've signed up for 4 days but won't know if I get any until the day of or the day before. The weather is nice and I've enjoyed the time outside alot, my garden is slowly getting bigger. Next year I'll do more Onions and tons of potatoes, since they seem to be doing the best. I'd still love a whole patch of Tomatoes and Peppers so I think I'll put in another raised bed somewhere to make more room for those.

Hope everyone has a great weekend I'll be going to garage sales to look for things for my kids for school and clothing for them to wear this winter.

Murphy!! Dang you

2010-07-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

So we come back from our great vacation and have a major Murphy to the tune of about 1k we did put it on the card and we are going to try to get it paid off as soon as possible. This has been our first Murphy visit that has been really big so I guess it was about time and was way over due. On the down side when we got our oil changed in our car they told us we only had 32% of our tires left which means we have to start saving alot of money for tires, and the car is coming up to 100k in mileage and I'm sure we need to have a 100k checkup I absolutely love my car and won't part with it for the world but geez all these expenses at one time. The only plus side is work has been busy and for that I'm grateful. We do have 2 more trips planned for this year but honestly I think I can pick up some OT to help offset these. Time to buckle down and start saving and doing less spending as I told DH.

Half year

2010-07-05T11:28:00.001-07:00

So now that over half of the year is done I'll revisit how we are doing on our goals.

Goal 1 was to pay down to 8k of CC#1 we are at $8643.14 so we still have aways to go but we are getting there.

Goal 2 was to buy a plane ticket for MIL but since she hasn't given us a date when she wants to come we haven't done this although we DO have the money in savings to buy a ticket.

Goal 3 was to pay down the car to $25k we have SURPASSED this goal and we are at $24741.67 right now on our car, maybe we can get to less then $24k before the end of the year!!

Goal 4 was to take a week long vacation using only cash and WE DID THIS a couple of weeks ago we are so happy and it was great to come back knowing we had no CC debt to pay off!

Goal 5 was to sign up for at least 6 hours OT each month and since this was only Jan-May I was surprised to get even more then this as it's been busy at work and I've pretty much averaged 6 hours of OT since January but it won't happen all the time so I'm glad I got what I did.

So all in all we have done well for the first 6 months of the year here's hoping we continue to do as well as we have been doing, we do plan on spending some of our savings buying a new tent and air mattress (leaks happen) but since this is something we enjoy on the cheap I'm willing to part with the money. DH has OT this week but I promised him he could save all his OT for a new computer if he wanted to although I'd be happy if he would put it toward debt his computer is over 8 years old and dying a very slow death.

I think I'll redo some of our goals since alot of them are made. Now I just have to think of some new ones :)

Happy Fourth of July

2010-07-04T04:58:00.001-07:00

Happy 4th of July to all. Hope your day is filled with fun, family, food and fireworks.

Back from vacation

2010-07-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

We got back from Vacation yesterday, It was so much fun! We hung around the water pretty much most of the time, ate great food, enjoyed the sun for once since ours is lacking right now. I wanted to stay so bad but alas work was calling us both so back to work it is, first we will be going to see Eclipse today and my children want to see The Last Airbender (I'm bowing out of that one.) I am glad to be home but wow talk about piles of laundry and stuff to put away, now I need to find the time to do it between work and everything else...
Have a great weekend I'll be working :)

Bills

2010-06-21T13:28:00.001-07:00

I have arranged for our bills to be paid on Friday since we are going out of town tomorrow. There is only $5 left in the checking account for 2 weeks after we take out money for our jars for the next two weeks I sure hope nothing comes up and It's too bad but there will be no extra to send to the CC this payday. Yes we have the cash set aside for our trip that starts tomorrow, and I'm sure we will have a great time.

Cha Cha Changes

2010-06-15T13:55:00.001-07:00

Well I decided to change up the blog abit. I'm liking the blue alot more, moved stuff to the other side, can't remember how to make the side bars smaller so couldn't do three rows maybe I'll work on it later but not right now, weathers to nice and I need to go outside and play some more :)

Back to normal

2010-06-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well after speaking with Taylor at YNAB via email a few times for some reason it finally decided to download and I'm back to being a very happy camper. I absolutely love that program and plan to keep it for along time. I couldn't be happier with the response and results and well that is all I can say :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend it's absolutely fabulous today and I plan to enjoy the sunshine..

YNAB 3

2010-06-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Well I'm having problems with YNAB 3, I attempted to download a patch they sent me, and got some error message, now I do not have YNAB even on my computer and It will not let me download it again I keep getting some message to contact the administrator I'm not happy since I love this program and have gotten no response from anyone on the YNAB forums about how to fix it. I'm very frustrated I spent all day trying to fix this problem with no luck.

OT

2010-06-09T04:42:00.001-07:00

I picked up a day of OT on Monday, now all I have to do is hope I get it, where I work sometimes due to how slow it is you won't get the OT but I'd be happy to get some of it at least. We'll see :)

Nothing Much to post about

2010-06-07T06:31:00.001-07:00

So as you can see there is really nothing going on at our house right now, we paid down a small portion and haven't added anything new for awhile Thank Goodness, I'd rather be paying it off quicker but things are obviously going to be slower. We have expenses coming up by September and will have to put out some money then so hopefully we can continue to save for that. I have nearly $500 saved for that and will need at least $1k by the end of December for another expense. Work has been busy as can be so I'm good at the moment in that department. I will be taking $1500 out of savings to pay for a vacation we have coming up soon, we booked this along time ago and have saved up for it already. Today is errands mostly and then work for the rest of the week. I'm hoping we have more great weather so we can have fun next weekend.

Only a Couple Hundred

2010-05-30T06:54:00.001-07:00

Well it only dropped a couple hundred dollars but any amount is better then no amount or going up I guess. We had extra in our checks this past week and we finally did something fun since the weather was nice. Now we buckle down and save and try to put extra toward the debt, we have some things coming up that will require money so I guess it's OT for both of us as much as we can get if that even will be possible to get right now. DH and I discussed this the other day and know we need to really stop spending and start saving and paying down debt quickly. Maybe I should tell him it's time to call Gail and have her check us out :) We'll keep plodding along and see what happens by the end of this year. I'm hoping to get our debt below $18k soon, this is not including the car btw.

2010-05-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

Funny how you want to know how much your debt has gone down and its now 3 days past your due date and your saying come on update and tell me my new amount due because you KNOW it's going to go way down and you can't wait to see how much extra that regular payment is going to put towards your debt. Since I pay the same amount no matter what and I just paid a chunk down I'm hoping the payment is now going to be under $200 but I'm off to work so I'll have to check it again tomorrow before work since the new payment is not posted yet. We do have plans for the weekend so I hope we don't have to pull extra money from savings but since It's supposed to be fairly decent I can't wait to have it off when the weather is nice.

Unexpected OT

2010-05-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

I was able to pick up a day of OT yesterday which was totally unexpected, now to decide if I want to use it to partially fund our weekend away next weekend or put it towards debt? I already have just over $200 saved from all the extra money in our jars each week and will probably have $250+ by next weekend I just hope the weather will cooperate and be somewhat decent. I do work this entire weekend so I'm sure I'll be tired on my next day off. Hopefully I'll get to sleep in a bit.

ZERO

2010-05-19T20:36:00.001-07:00

So finally they got it finished and the amount is now ZERO! We are so happy to have this off our spreadsheet and now to move on to the next thing in line. There won't be much paying stuff off for awhile although I'm going to try to pick up some OT this week it's never guaranteed.

Why??

2010-05-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

Why does it take someone over a week to put down you have paid something off. Last week I paid off a bill for some work one of my family members had done, it was orginally over $12,000, it had less then $100 left to pay, so I pay it, 3 days later it shows I owe $0.20 yes that is 20 cents, so I'm like oh geez you have to be kidding me, so I pay 50 cents! that was over a week ago and it still shows it hasn't gone thru I'm going to be very mad if they wait and lolly gag and the 50 cents doesn't cover that whole amount which to me should have been paid off the first time but I understand interest and all. If it's not gone thru by tomorrow with a zero balance I think I'll be calling them because I'm not paying another cent so they can suck interest from me. We were not racing this balance but it's nice to have it done with and done with 4 months early!! Another one bites the dust and is off the spreadsheet.

Auto Pay

2010-05-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

I set up all our bills to be Auto paid on Friday, I still need to remove cash for the week, which for us really works well as we place what we need in jars and use that each week (Ala Gail Vaz Oxlade). I have paid extra to both cards and prepaid our car payment for Friday as well. I won't change any side bars yet until interest is factored in then I'll change them. We might have a large medical bill to pay but we are not sure both our insurances paid but for some reason it still says money is owed so I'll be calling the insurance co if/when that happens. Its nice that the weather has cooperated finally and my plants are going crazy growing. I'll be adding dirt to my potato plants today because they have grown so fast in two days.

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all you mom's out in Blog Land. Sorry for lack of posts but not much happening here at the moment besides work, its been very nice so hard to be inside because of that..

Paid More Debt!

2010-05-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

Well we decided to pay more down so I put another $100 down on a CC not listed here, I list them one at a time for more motivation. We now have $18458.36 left on CC's and we are done with them. I think when we are done I'll be shredding all of them but one for Hotels/Airplanes. I would love to get this number down below $18k by the end of May but not sure it will happen as we are closing in on the slow time where I work and any and all OT might be hard to get. I did not get any OT in April as most days where days I was already working and although I wish I could be cloned it won't happen any time soon :) It's back to work tomorrow for both of us. I think I'm going to take another look at our budget and see how much more we can squeeze out without screaming too loudly. Although spring/summer are the hardest times for us to not spend and we have two vacations (small ones) planned for this year...

More Money

2010-04-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Because this is a 3 paycheck month I paid an extra $300 dollars to our CC debt and will be paying another $301 dollars in 2 weeks which will put us closer to getting this thing paid off. I'll be happy when it's below $8k and in the 7's as we get closer and closer I just want it paid off quicker and quicker. I'd drop everything we don't ever need it I could get my DH and Kids to do it, but that will never happen.

On the down side we have been having trouble with one of our cars and now have to take it to the mechanic to have it looked at, it has recall items on it, but they have no fix for the recall items and it continues to do this odd thing over and over about 1-2 times per week and it's becoming 1) annoying and 2) scary that it won't restart when it decides to act up. So for safety's sake we are having it looked at this week.

Also I'll be updating my side bars soon :)