DownHill Debt

Everything update

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:21:00 +0000

Since December life has continued, as it does.. here's what been going on:

Job - my job is still going good. I've been working with a new account and won some business which should in the near future provide some bonus beyond my quarterly $3500 bonus's I've been receiving. That is currently in works and I'm am hopeful to get some update on this in the next few weeks. As I mentioned last year my husband finally went back to work, he got a part time job delivery pizza. Well about 3 weeks ago a position opened up in the company I work for, we needed someone asap, and they could work from home, so after a few phone calls my husband had a new full time job making quite a bit more than delivering pizza. It's been a bit challenging for him as he was kind of thrown into this and having to learn our systems, etc with very little training, and also working a normal 8 to 5 job. He got his first full check yesterday and let me tell you, it was nice to see additional money. This will help ease the stress I had for the past few years.. the only downside is if I lose my job he could very could lose his as we work for the same company. But right now, my performance has been excellent, the president of our company is happy with everything I've done, and I've been working for them for 13 years.. so job security looks to be good.

Debt - We had decided last year that we could not continue pouring money into one of our rentals.. keeping it rented, maintenance etc was just to much. It's been about 7 months of non payment on that house and we expect to see paperwork soon that they will be foreclosing. We went to look at the house the other day to check on it and everything looks good on the outside. The bank had changed the locks on Jan 3rd, so let's hope this one gets moving so we can put this behind us. As to our last 2 CC's that are in collections, we have not heard from one of them, and the other one has been calling every week. Last month they sent me a letter for payment of the full balance they show 27k, this CC has been in collections since 2007 when all this started.. 3 years since the CC company turned it over to collections. After last's month letter which was a joke, this month they finally made a somewhat reasonable offer of settling for 4K which is about 15% of the balance. I would like to take care of this one but don't have enough funds yet, and I am a bit Leary of dealing with this collection company. With my DH working, I have started a savings account to save up for this one CC. So my goal is to have the money by Aug of this year and see what they offer and the wording of their letter is to ensure if I pay their offer, it will actually settle this, they won't resell the remaining and confirm it will pay off this account.

Health - still not good, all the traveling has taken a toll on my weight, the cold dry weather has been hard on my skin, and I have yet to get/keep enough will power to quit smoking. I need to start moving, lose a few pounds, and figure something out to get this smoking thing behind me. I did get to the dentist and everything looks good with my teeth, so the one bright spot. Need to get back on the every 6 months to ensure our teeth stay healthy.

Savings - With DH's first check I finally took the plunge and upped my 401k to the max at 15%. Our account is steadily growing again which is awesome, and as he can't join the 401k yet, I've upped mine. I know some people don't agree with putting money into a 401k before paying off debt, but my feeling is we need to save money and learn to live with what is left, we need to have something for retirement and with the benefits of tax savings now, it just makes sense to save something. We can't touch this money, so for my personality it's much better to have savings in the 401k, I know we can't get to it, and it gives me peace of mind, it's there, and I can't get it..

Ok enough rambling for today!

Been awhile

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:27:00 +0000

Just noticed the date and it's been almost 4 months since I posted! Where did the time go? Well shortly after that post my work just got even busier.. I have been traveling almost non stop for these past 4 months. It's been challenging, draining, exciting, and fattening! I managed to get though it and will have a bit of down time this week and next and then it starts again, the first two weeks of Jan travel is already scheduled. But for these next two weeks I have decided to try and get back on track. First up, start working out. This is so hard to get back into, but my DH got me Just dance 2 for the wii, and I played it yesterday and today. So much fun I forget I'm burning calories. I will be doing that each day until I leave on travel again. Next up, review all finances, close accounts if I can and consolidate them. Then come up with 2011 finance plan. This year was pretty good for us. Some of the highlights:

DH started working a part time job.
We paid off our taxes for 2008 and 2009 except for $200 which will be paid this Friday!
We now owe just $7600 on our car until it's paid off and the $440 payment is GONE for good!
Over this year I have managed to slowly increase my 401k from 7% to 12%
I received a gift of a top of the line washer/dryer (which I LOVE)

And the best one of all - we paid of $28,734 this year!

We did still spend quite a bit of money which could have gone to the car loan or into savings and I still struggle with that. But we continue to make progress toward being debt free and have come a long way from 2007 when this all started!

So happy holidays and on to another great year!

Aug 2010 updates

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Another month has gone by, and it seems this blog just gets put on the back burner. So much is going on it seems like the days all just start running together. So I thought I would try and provide some updates on my personal and finances and see what I can work on going into the the last 3 months of the year.

DH- has been working delivering pizza's for about three weeks so far. It's nice seeing his tip money add up after each night he works. I'm saving it up and going to use his money for our taxes. Will take awhile to build up to $5k, but having another source of income even small is really nice. He says it's not bad at all and seems to be handling it fine. Plus it's usually only 3 - 5 hours a night and it works great with our schedule and he would just be watching tv or something at night, so not a huge impact to our lifestyle.

Rental houses - we had one tenant skip out and not pay Aug's rent, and now we won't get Sept, they didn't give us a 30 day notice and they just left. Our management company is going after them for Aug/Sept rent and trying to clean the place up to get it ready to re-rent. I haven't made the Aug payment and looks like I won't be able to make Sept, hopefully we get someone in there quick and get the back payments. But in the big picture, I just can't use our EF money for a house we may not be able to keep. So this one is in a holding pattern. Just when everything starts going good with these houses, something like this comes up and puts us behind again, ugghhh!

Collections - We still have two outstanding CC's we haven't settled yet. So far only one has been calling pretty regularly for the past few months. I'm still not answering those calls, nothing I can do about these two. Right now they are about 3 years since they went into default. They haven't taken any other action, so these are on hold as well.

Car - just made another car payment, we now owe $8900, it's getting there.. will be so nice to have this one paid off and get rid of another bill forever! I've had a car payment for as long as I can remember, and you know what.. I'm over it! After this, we're done, cash for a car or no car.. that's my new motto. Our payment is $450 so getting rid of this bill will be great for our budget!

Primary house - finally getting some of the work done due to the hail damage, the roof is done, our gutters have been installed, windows are ordered, so making progress, but it's taking forever!

Upcoming - we need to plan for a trip to Alaska in May to see my niece graduate, so far I will have enough for possibly one plane ticket and 1/2 the hotel stay, just from my rewards I've been accumulating from my business travel. My goal would be to have this trip be as least expensive as possible, and put alittle money away for this since, planning for it instead of worrying about how to pay for it when the time comes.

I think that about covers it, so keep up with working on additional income, keep chipping away and debt and continue to plan for items, work towards reining in other expenses, which is a monthly/weekly goal.

So happy labor day everyone

A month already..

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

It's been just about a month since my last post.. time is really flying by now. My sister, niece, nephew and other niece and her 6 week old son came to visit for a few weeks and just left this past Wed. It's been a busy month. With my new projects at work, and doing things all weekend, and in the evening trying to spend time with the family I am surprised I survived. I've been out of town every other week for the last 6 weeks and I leave out of town on business again on Monday. My budget didn't really survive, more like was thrown out the window. The good news? My DH just got a part time job and he starts his training on Tuesday! I'm very excited and I am hopeful he likes it enough to stay there for a few years. The extra income will allow us to get the taxes paid off and hopefully our car paid off sooner than we expected. That is of course if it all pans out. With our oldest out of school now and our youngest heading to 10th grade, he has time to work without impacting our family much. Although there may be some nights I'm out of town and he has to work, then our youngest may have to fend for himself, but it shouldn't be to often.

So no real budget update at the moment, I'm afraid to really run the numbers but I will be working on that, and looking forward to a 2nd income in the coming weeks from my DH.

Finally under 10K

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:04:00 +0000

I just made the July payment on our car and we are finally below 10K! Been a long time coming and still have a way to go, but still feels good to have it under 5 digits. We will never buy a brand new car again. Just pay way to much and it's really just a means to get from point A to point B. That lesson took me a long time to learn. I'm finally getting it. A little late in life, but I believe still plenty of time to correct past mistakes, learn from them and start making forward progress. I will be keeping this car FOREVER! : ) I am looking forward to the day I can post I have made the last payment. Will be awhile for that, but something to look forward to.

Roth account nd EF fund

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:45:00 +0000

I read a blog post a few weeks ago about saving your EF fund in your Roth account. It turns out you can take money out of your Roth as long as it's your original investment, not any earnings/dividends. Now I opened a Roth account a few years ago, and just stopped paying into it every year due to our financial issues. Armed now with this new information I have decided to start funneling our EF fund money into my Roth. I will leave it in the money market account and not purchase any investments until I have two years worth of money in the account which with the current limit for me is 5k per year, so I will need 10K. I don't think I will be able to build it up to 5K this year with all the debt repaying we are doing now, but I will probably move the $2500 I currently have saved to this account at the end of the year and in the next few months I will be putting in small amounts to this account. It's a great way to work towards meeting two goals. Having an EF and contributing to our retirement. Since we can't get these contributing years back it just makes sense to save our money here and if we have a real emergency I know we have access to the money. If not then it counts as our yearly contributions and that's just great!

So think about moving your EF to your Roth or if you don't have one, check out opening one and tackle two goals at once!

Here is a link with some additional information and worksheets, etc to go through. This makes the most sense when you won't need to pull the money out monthly, etc. As there is some paperwork you need to fill out. My intent is to use this money only in an extreme situation. So a little paperwork won't matter much to me if I need it.

Roth Withdrawal

BTW - I'm not a financial adviser so this is just my opinion.

Summertime

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:01:00 +0000

Summertime is finally here and now on some days I wish it was springtime. It was so hot the other day and I finally wanted to turn on the AC, and of course DH said it was fine. That's one thing I can thank him for, well NOT when I'm actually roasting to death and secretly cussing him out, but now that I'm writing this post I can. I have to say we almost NEVER turn on the AC. This really does keep our utilities bill down in the summer and that is really all him. If it was up to me I would have had the AC on for the last two weeks already! So summer is here and our AC will for the most part remain off.

In other news I received a letter for one of our rentals. If you recall our rentals are interest only ARMs, which ya, looking back was not some of our best financial decisions, but if we had made smart financial decisions, I probably wouldn't have bought all those houses at the time. But we are where we are, so back to the letter. Our ARM will be adjusting for the first time and due to the way this particular loan was written we now must pay for principal and interest. I was expecting this payment to just go down with the way interest rates are and provide some income. Well that won't be happening, but I can't say this a bad thing, just not expected. This loan will actually be the same amount I'm paying now but it will now include principal and interest. So while paying on this, we will finally be paying down the loan. At least I can say it will feel good to have our tenants paying down the actual loan, that's how rentals are actually suppose to work, but of course as I said, we weren't the smartest people on the block when we started buying all these houses. So the economy and they way they have affected interest rates will actually work in our favor. If the rates stay low for a few years, we may actually have a chance to really make the houses start working for us and long term be recurring income.

The first payment starts Sept 1, so I will finally be able to debt reduction on that loan with my update totals. On and upward!

New baby! Not mine.. so don't worry

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:07:00 +0000

We have a new addition to our extended family. My niece just had a baby boy.. so cute and I can't wait to meet him. I am officially a great aunt..that's the good news. The not so good news is we had a lot of repairs to one of our rentals (sprinkler, AC) , and we had a major hail storm that damaged our house and two of our rentals. We already received one check for part of the repairs, although our contractor is saying he will go back and negotiate with them as he feels they had a really low estimate. Since we have a year to get the work done, I decided to use some of the money to pay off the remaining balance of 2008 taxes. So we would avoid additional interest. It was $3000. This now means we won't have a monthly payment of $400 but I will be funneling money back into an account to pay back this money. So it will stay on my list of debts until I have paid it all back.

It has been busy as usual, I started two new projects, but I don't have any other travel this month so that helps. I will be traveling for 2 weeks in July, so I will be working hard to get these projects going and some other stuff out of the way. Also the 2nd qtr is coming up and I am hopeful I will get another quarterly bonus, and this will go right into the pay back insurance fund. I have also started working out again. Got in 4 days for week one, 3 days last week, and this week today I started off with yoga, I really need to get back with it as I feel so much better when I work out. I am making progress. Next up, hubby needs a job. We talked about this yesterday, and I know it's difficult and depressing for him as he's not sure what he likes or wants to do, but it's really time. He either needs to find something or decide what he might like to do so he can go back to school. I know my job is secure for 2 years, but after that, we don't know. Now is the time for him to step it up and figure something out. I am working to clear up these few big debts to make our monthly expenses lower and more reasonable, but I really think we need a plan, and that is to use this time for him to find something or go to school so we will know we have income in two years. Well see how that goes. It's going to be a challenge I know but something needs to happen.

Summertime!

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:47:00 +0000

Summer is officially here! And it's been hot the last few days. I love it and hate it! : ) So I just got back Friday afternoon from a week long business trip and with the traveling, my vacation the week before and all the stuff going on I have gain yet again, more weight! So summer is here when I should be sportin cute summer clothes and I don't even want to wear shorts. Last week I did manage to get in 4 workouts and this week is the start of a 14 day detox and try to increase my workouts. I don't have to travel again for about 3 weeks so man oh man, I need to get my body moving and lose some of this weight. It's weighing me down physically and mentally! Ok enough of that, on to the debt stuff!

Collections - I am still receiving a few calls from collection agents. I still have two debts outstanding that I didn't settle. They are listed in my total debt(the amounts I think I need to save to settle them, not the total of what I owe) but since these aren't pressing, I just don't answer the calls. These will just have to continue to be on the back burner until I can get to them. I just don't answer the phone, or I delete the messages. Of course the messages are always the same, this is xxx, please call us immediately or have your attorney call us..etc. They add that "attorney" part to scare you. I just ignore them. July will be exactly 3 years since we stopped paying on them. July 2007. Now I know some of you are wondering why we haven't taken care of these, but since that time we have paid off/settled about $80k and in the last year another $13k in taxes we owed. So it's not that I really want to avoid them. It just there were other pressing debts that we needed to get to. And we are making progress, so I may in the future (next year) be able to do something with these last two. So to the back burner these go.

As for my updates - we have made great progress since the beginning of the year and even in May.

Total for May $843584
Ending May balance $841279
Total paid off $2305

Total for the year paid off is $16408
So an average of $3280 per month

I had a great few months with extra income and a bonus, so I really don't if I will be able to keep this going and I am planning a few day trips this summer with our kids so things might slow down a bit but debt is still my priority and I am working to balance getting our debt paid down/off while still enjoying the few short years left with our youngest son, and our older son since he hasn't found a job yet. I might be up for another quarterly bonus and if so most of that will go to our taxes. But overall I'm working on balancing debt, savings and still enjoying life. This is still new but I'm starting to get the hang of it!

It's been a great week

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:14:00 +0000

Graduation was awesome, and DS's party was great! We had family and friends and lots of laughing, so amazing. This week I am off from work but I have been sort of reviewing my emails. Let's just say all my work stuff is building up so I might take some time Sunday and just go through and weed through it all. I hate the feeling of coming back to work, and having so much to do, and since I will be flying out on Tuesday I will really be limited on time.

Money wise, I have spent to much, eaten out to much and this week it is really apparent that finances and fitness really go hand in hand. When I'm watching what I eat, I don't spend all this money dining out and my waistline thanks me.

This week also brought a nice storm to our area, and now we have about 14K (estimate we received today) worth of damage to our house. We do have insurance thank goodness, and our deductible is $1, 000 but some companies are offering to pay this. And as 2 of our 3 rentals are real close to our house, they got hit as well, so we will have to get estimates on those as well. I really hope our insurance company will give us enough to get everything we need fixed. The hassle of having to deal with it though is not fun, thankfully DH will be handling this and I'll be in CA. Maybe he will have it all figured out by the time I get back. Wouldn't that be awesome.. : )

Let's hope I don't have to touch our EF money. I'm finally seeing some progress and building it up and I really don't want to use any of it. The first adjuster is scheduled to look at our house Sunday, so let the fun begin.

One more day..

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:33:00 +0000

One more day until my oldest son graduates. After years of struggling (he's smart but a bit lazy in the doing the actual schoolwork) he will graduate. I am proud he made it this far, and amazed I made it! Friday I will be shedding tears of joy and relief! Fortunately, we have come a long way since 2007 and our finances are so much better, not where we want to be but at least 100% times better. We paid off/settled 77K through 2009, and around another 13K this year. I bring this up because I'm about to total how much we spent on his graduation. All the money has been factored into our normal budget but of course any money we spend, just means it will take longer to pay off our debt. For me this is a necessary thing. Debt reduction for us is/has been a long term thing and I don't want to miss out on my life while doing this. So even though it will take longer to pay off our debt, I'm happy with the money I spent on my son. I'm excited for him to start his life (debt free hopefully, like I'm trying to teach him) and I am enjoying all the last few things he has to do before Friday. Although now that I have an idea on how much $ everything costs, I think I will save up for my youngest son's graduation. I have three more years until that day. So here is the breakdown:

$50 year book
$113 Tux for prom
$12 senior fee's
$90 decorations for party
$30 cake
$150 Food/drinks for party
$200 cash / gift
$50 Laptop / gift (I get awesome deals on older refurb models)
$25 Gift card
$50 Sports jersey gift
Grand Total $770

Wow, first time I totaled it up. It could be have been more but my son didn't ask about a class ring or any senior trip, but even the amount about is a little shocking. For me every penny was/is worth it. He will be walking up to get his HS diploma, he is starting his adult life, and he will have memories of prom, and senior year and for me that was more than worth $770 dollars.

Ok I have to go before I start to cry. : )

Great PF blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:49:00 +0000

I just found a new PF blog: Punch Debt in the Face. I have to say this one is so entertaining, comments are funny and all the stick figures are hilarious. Now that is what a blog should be like! Unfortunately I am not at all talented in design etc, and thus my blog will never be that.. : ) but I can share it with you on my blog, I hope everyone adds it, as money shouldn't all be stressful, but we should work to making it fun and work for us so we can do and accomplish our goals and dreams. Reading PF Blogs helps keep me mentally in the game and hopefully you'll enjoy his blog.

Interesting Article

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:46:00 +0000

I read an interesting article today about net worth and the obsession of the number. It reminded me that this is number is a good way to gauge how were doing and an overall financial picture. You can read the article here. Back in 2007 I didn't even want to look at this number. Now as things are getting better and I have better control over our finances it's not such as scary number. I signed up for NetworthIQ.com back in 2008 and haven't really updated it since. But looking at just our car loan, we owed $21515 at the time and here as of today we owe $10750. Awesome to see that progress. Our net worth at the time was negative $39K but with everything that's happened in the last few years, real estate dropping, 401k dropping, having to add another house to our rentals that wasn't purchased as planned by our friends alot has changed. Since this is a good tool I've decided to work on updating this and use this as an overall of how we are doing. I'll be posting this info here as it will be interesting to see the changes. One other thing I got from this article is the ability to open up and talk about finances. In my journey to debt freedom, this has been the one item everyone should embrace. Talking about/discussing and not being ashamed of our situation has help bring me out of the darkness and into the light..lol. This is one topic that should be freely discussed.

Time to work on my net worth!

Getting through the month

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:05:00 +0000

It's been a great month so far, except for the rain today the rest of the month has been pretty nice. Things are moving along with my boys, DS1 went to prom last weekend, he is doing his finals this week and next week he has all sorts of things to do for graduation. DS2 is also doing great, he just received his award for having a 3.8 gpa. We are so proud of him! Financially it's a bit straining, but we are still moving forward, although slower than last month. I bought some items for the graduation party, next week I'll need to get the food and also family is coming in from out of town. I'll be taking a week off and I'm sure there will be some money spent there on frivolous stuff/activities, but I will work to keep it to a minimum. Some items are on auto pilot now like the IRS monthly payment etc, so that will go out this month and it's nice to just see each payment reduce how much we owe. I will still show some debt reduction progress this month and as long as each month shows reduction, one of these days, we won't owe anyone! Well ok maybe we will owe on the houses, but the other debt will be gone. Just keep making the payments, and oh keep making money. : ) I will be enjoying this month and just knowing how much $ we have paid off in the last 2 1/2 years makes me feel great and excited to have one son graduating with me not being stressed over money!

Lot's of stuff going on!

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:36:00 +0000

So much to say on this post, I hope I don't bore everyone.

First off we are heading into May, and my oldest son has two weeks left of school and then one week after that until his high school graduation! I'm excited and worried because is has one class he is not doing to good in but needs to pass it for graduation. We are on the home stretch so I'm doing everything I can to make sure he graduates. We have sent out invitations, I am in the process of planning his party, my sister from AK is coming out with my nieces and nephews, he has the last of his community service this weekend, his Prom and driving class are both next weekend, oh so much to get through! My youngest also has his awards this next week, he's in 9th grade and doing really well. Fortunately it looks like I won't have to do any traveling this month. I worked it out so I can take off a week and 1/2 the 19th - 28th. So a short work month, and lots to do on that front. So this should be the busiest month out of the year. Knowing this was coming I have put away a little bit for his graduation gifts and our party will be small, maybe 20 people at our house so not to expensive.

My debt updates are also looking pretty good, my DH was able to bring in some extra $, and I called our mortgage companies and had them review the escrow accounts, we are getting a check for $330 and the payments are all going down by about $50 each! With the extra $ DH made I was able to send $1600 off to our tax bill. Thus on the payment plan of our taxes, we only owe about $4500 left, the other $5000 we won't "officially" owe until we file in Oct. June will bring an "extra" check and maybe another bonus, I know some people don't consider it an "extra" check, but as I do our budget based on only two checks a month, when I get the 3rd it really is an extra paycheck. I plan to try and use $1500 of this for taxes and put some in savings to keep working on building up a comfortable EF fund. If we can pay off the 4500 from 2008 taxes, the IRS will stop taking out $400 a month payment. Then we would focus on how to get the remaining $5k. But not to rush things, I am happy with where we are now, and to see the total taxes due under 10K finally is a nice feeling!

So here's my update, and I should be able to finally clear the last $700 from the one loan we have, $330 is coming from the escrow check and the rest from the 3rd rental we had to take back in April - this rental actually provides us a profit, and this will be the first month we really see $400 income. We just got a raise! : ) Savings totals will be updated in the side bar - we finally have $2K in savings! I know this could be used towards debt, but like they say pay yourself first, and I want to have cash in case something happens, especially in this economy, although I am just putting small amounts in the accounts and using the majority of our money to pay down/off debt. It still feels good to see it slowly building up!

Debts	Balance May 1st
Loan	$ 700.00
Capital one	$ -
Car	$ 10,750.00
IRS	$ 9,540.00
Matt Teeth	$ 700.00
House 1 - 1st	$ 205,171.00
House 2 - 1st	$ 95,000.00
House 3 - 1st	$ 158,722.00
House 1 - 2nd	$ 76,000.00
House 2 - 2nd	$ 21,000.00
House 3 - 2nd	$ 39,366.00
House 4 - 1st	$ 166,985.00
House 4 - 2nd	$ 42,000.00
Collections 30K	$ 10,000.00
Collections 28K	$ 8,000.00


Total	$ 843,934.00

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:48:00 +0000

Well here it is, the 1st quarter update. It was looking good until we did our taxes! So all the progress we made only allowed us not to really go deeper in debt. We paid off about 7K and that is what our 2009 taxes are. So here it is:

Debts	Ending Balance 3/10
Loan	$ 700.00
Capital one	$ 800.00
Car	$ 11,600.00
IRS	$ 13,575.00
Matt Teeth	$ 1,000.00
House 1 - 1st	$ 205,901.00
House 2 - 1st	$ 95,000.00
House 3 - 1st	$ 158,722.00
House 1 - 2nd	$ 76,000.00
House 2 - 2nd	$ 21,000.00
House 3 - 2nd	$ 39,366.00
House 4 - 1st	$ 166,985.00
House 4 - 2nd	$ 42,000.00
Collections 30K	$ 10,000.00
Collections 28K	$ 8,000.00


Total	$ 850,649.00

Our starting total as of Jan 1, 2010 - was $850, 687. So a whopping $38 dollars down in 3 months! And one of our rentals needed $250 worth of work this month so the rent check was less, things always seem to pop up! The bright side is since we did pay off a lot, our debt didn't actually go up.

Now I do have some good news... I will receive a quarterly bonus on next weeks check. Well if everything got processed in time I should see it on Friday. I found out last Friday that management has been pleased with everything I've managed to accomplish this 1st quarter and approved a $3500 bonus! Now with taxes/401k, etc I expect to receive only about $2400 of that, but this will make a dent in some of the taxes. I'm going to pay off the state taxes since that one is $2k and so we will just have one tax bill.

We WILL see some progress! This next quarter should be good. With the 2k towards taxes and I will get an extra check this quarter, I do expect to see some good progress. We don't have anything else that would be just a huge impact to our debt (like the taxes were) so let's hope at least for the next three months things stay on track.

It can only get better right? : )

Quick update

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:50:00 +0000

Sorry I've been MIA again. I still need to do my 1st qtr update, although with the 7k in taxes I have to add back to my debt, it's not going to be as pretty as I thought it would be. I should have time to work on that next week. This week I'm out of town again, and I'm also exhausted. I'm trying to quit smoking again, today is day 9! And this time I have been so tired! I was just about worthless last week! I did get in 3 walks and 2 workout classes at our gym. But ate really bad. Today, on the travel day eating wasn't much better. I did go to the hotel gym and did this 1st week's workout "Couch to 5K running plan" Thought since I'm not smoking might want to give this a shot. Tomorrow I go into the office, and I have a big presentation due this Thursday. I just want to finish up the presentation, get through my meetings, not think about smoking and try to keep my energy levels up. I do want to get my finances posted here so I have some accountability, so I will work on that. Oh and my son's 18th BD is next week! He doesn't want a party, etc, so just a BD cake and his present, boys are easy!

Tax update..

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:25:00 +0000

Most of the blogs I've been reading are all about taxes this time of the year. Most people have been deciding what to do with their refund. Right now I envy them. We once again will have to pay. So much for thinking we would get something back. Our total tax bill this year is 7k. 2k to the state and 5K to the IRS. Now factor that in to what we already own, and the total is a big whopping 14K! That's more than what we owe on our car right now! So it's back to the drawing board on how we can get this paid off and keep progressing on our other debts. Fortunately since we already have a payment plan setup with the IRS, we shouldn't get in any trouble, etc. I did recently drop my exemptions down a bit, but the issue seems to be the extra income I earn. I just haven't done a good job of putting any of it away for taxes since they don't take any out. That has got to change this year. Now to get going on this debt.. I should(keeping my fingers crossed) get enough money to pay off the state 2k in the next few weeks. At least we won't have penalties etc from the state, leaving our total federal taxes due at about 12K. What's really funny is I just don't feel like we are in some high tax bracket, but we are, and I know the reason I don't feel like we are is because we have been paying for the really bad choices we made over the years. So the last 2 years has been all about pay back time. The piper has come calling.

Can't wait for my 1st qtr update

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:44:00 +0000

So far we have made quite a bit of progress these last three months. I have to say they have been flying by with all the travel, I've been out of town about 6 weeks this quarter and thus it has just flew by. I have some bills that are scheduled to be paid this Friday and then I can update my totals. I am really getting back my focus on paying down the debt but I am making a few changes to savings. I really have been nervous about not having a big EF so I'm diverting some of the debt repayment to savings. This will give me some piece of mind while we continue to work on these debts. Even with this we had more than expected income from other sources so this is helping a lot. With me traveling so much we really haven't spent much at all on eating out (I do when I travel, but everything is reimbursed) or much entertainment. We still have a few bumps to get over, the rental house this month, we need about $300 for that and last week our cat got attacked, not sure by what either a dog or fox, but that required a trip to the emergency room. It was pretty bad, but after $300, drugs, one staple and a week of healing time, he is doing much better. Good news is we had the money on hand to pay the vet bill. Anyway, don't want to ramble, but I'm just excited to post our update and don't want to do that until they are actually sent on Friday!

We got a tenant!

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:08:00 +0000

We have a tenant! They will be moving in the last week of March. So with our previous partners/renters paying for part of this month, our portion of the rent for the 3 weeks it won't be rented out is $300. But that is better than the $550 we were going to have to pay. On this rental we will be making about $440 each month on this house. So no out of pocket money for us on this new rental we will be taking over now. With the extra $ each month, my goal it to "build up" a rental house fund. As I mentioned in a previous post, this house was originally purchased 4 years ago for our friends, they decided not to purchase it and we have agreed to take full ownership, also it is only in our names. So with 3 rental houses it's time to start thinking about security, which means lots of money in a savings account to cover mortgage payments if we lose any tenants. This is on my list along with all the other finanical goals to start working towards. I think initially I'll try and just start dumping it into our savings account, my goal is to have 30K in savings, and this would cover some of these payments. Long term it might be wise to have 60K in savings just because of the risk with owning multiple houses. This is a long term goal, that's alot of money, and I have other bills and obligations I need to work on as well, but this $ from the rental house will be a great start and it's a new income stream for me.

At the airport again..

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:34:00 +0000

My life seems to me a never ending tale of waiting at the airport. Gone are the days of getting here 30 minutes before your flight and walking through security quickly. Of course I don't really remember those days to much, only what I hear, but I can still be bummed that I missed that generation. Especially after the last 4 months. Each time it's a challenge, I'm leaving in the middle of the day, I need three hours, this is smaller airport, I think 2 hours is enough. Sign.. oh well, I do enjoy my work and it gives me time to blog when I do manage to get through checkin/security and everything in record time! Which by the way happened today. This week is already starting off bad in the food department. Just had about 1/3 of a bread type dessert, and sipping on my ice tea. I did decide to walk to the concourse instead of taking the train, so that might help alittle in the calorie dept, but I need to get this back on track and quick! This week I decided to leave Sunday instead of Monday morning at 6am, the whole getting up at 3:30 am has been really hard on me so this was a nice change. I have a busy week, and hopefully an announcement this week on the proposal that has been on-going and in the decision making process. This is the one that would affect my income in a good way, which would then allow me to tackle our debt quicker. I am happy to say we have been making some progress. We got the plates for our car, paid the reserve line off and put a $100 into savings. The car payment was made for Feb, bringing that down some and I am working on a plan to get the 3K we owe paid back. The negatives this month are, the initial review of our taxes is that we will owe money once again. I'm still paying monthly payments to the IRS for 2008 taxes, yuck! Also, we didn't get the rental house rented out yet. There is someone applying but might not be until the middle of March, so we will owe part of that rent, our friends will owe part as well since initially we were purchasing this together, so minimum $250 up to $550 if we don't have a tenant until April 1st. Keeping my fingers crossed we get a tenant. Well I think that's about it for now. Another busy week coming up but makes the days go quick and provides well needed income to keep striving to reach our goals.

Once I'm back on my personal machine I'll update our totals to reflect what our new balances are.

Things are coming together - sort of..

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:05:00 +0000

I'm back from CA, and will be here all next week! I need a break. After two weeks of traveling, meetings, reviews, etc, I need some time to put together all my notes into something usable for the company I work for. That's this weeks project. But while I out last week I got some goodies!

My Replacement Blackberry - I have only had my blackberry for about two months, but on the screen there was a thin green line, it was getting worse. A few weekends ago I called my provider and was able to get an RMA and replacement sent. It came in Tuesday while I was out, today I spent some time setting it up and getting all my data, email settings etc transferred. Works great, no more green line!

My DH ordered me an 8GB memory card for my Blackberry which showed up last week. $17.95 with shipping! He took care of loading it up with all kinds of music so when I'm sitting at the airport, and the plane I will have tons of music to listen to.

My 24" Monitor showed up last week as well! I sort of whined a little to my manager about having a bigger monitor at home, since I work on large project files, Excel files, have multiple programs open all day long, he broke down and sent me a brand new wide screen 24". It's beautiful! LOL if a monitor can be beautiful, but I set that up today as well and I'm looking forward to really seeing how well it works this week.

I did manage to also get a few other things done, loaded MS Project Pro for a committee group I'm going to be involved in, meeting on that this week, and finally got my schedule computer back up to run tonight, I hope it works as I haven't had a back up of my data for months.

It was great to come home and have all my stuff ready and waiting! Christmas in Feb! Now on to the bad, worked out only 2 times this past week, eating was about 60% good and my weight is slowly creeping up even though I've been walking so much these last two weeks. So if I can get my act together, maybe I can hit the gym this week..

As to money - since this is a money blog - although I should probably change the name to money, debt and everything else, I spent company money this week. My hotel was right next door to a mall and twice I was tempted to go and "browse". I resisted, I'm proud to say. I don't have anything I really need right now and didn't want to spend any money knowing we have other things that need to be paid off. We did get some extra income and Monday we will be able to get the plates for our car. So one item off the list! YA!

We will keep slowly accumulating additional funds to buy the water heater next.

The one thing I am worried about is the other house that we have up for rent. I haven't heard from the management company who is trying to rent this out, so March 1st we may have to pay about $500, the other previous tenants will pay the other 1/2 as they agreed to it if we couldn't rent it out. I really would like it rented so both of us to have to pay this, especially now that we are starting to dig ourselves out of all these smaller bills, I just want the progress to continue.

Oh well, we can only control so much and do what we can. We'll see.

Dang late charges

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:04:00 +0000

Got home, and now I'm back out of town, got here today, and the weather is beautiful! Eating was ok today, not great, tough on the traveling day, but I did get in my workout tonight.. so feeling better about that. I submitted my expense report and paid our cable/internet. It seems I forgot to pay this last month so it was double the amount $145, which includes an $8 dollar late fee. So my lesson this week is those late charges add up. I need to stay on top of my bills. It's usually not an issue, I get an email notification and then pay it a few days before it's due. I leave the notification in my in box until it's done. The problem has been I'm traveling with my work computer which doesn't download my personal email. Thus, I'm not being reminded to pay it. When I did check this weekend, I realized my error, and it cost me $8 bucks! So, pay your bills on time! All those late charges can really kill a budget, and getting out of debt means to make our money work in the best possible way for you. Paying late charges doesn't qualify!

2010 Snow - I need to get home

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:47:00 +0000

Well I am sitting here at the Atlanta airport, the snow just started here, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can get home... please, please, let me make it home.. we'll see.

Thought I would update and let everyone know how it's going -

So far work is going good. Making progress the projects I'm working on, which once approved, will allow the raise, still another month away or so. Thus I am just limpling along, making some progress toward our debts, but of course more income would make this go much quicker.

My eating this week wasn't to bad, I would say my TX trip a few weeks ago was about 25% good eating, this trip more like 50%, and I worked out twice. If I could get the eating to about 80 - 90% I might actually lose a few pounds which I need and help me feel better. It's an on going challenge.

Money spent - this week pretty much all the money spent was my work's money, they pay for my food, etc, so I put this on my credit card and they send me a check for all my expenses. So money wise it was actually a pretty good week. I will work on my expense report this weekend get it faxed over as I'll be out of town again next week. So should be another good - no spending week next week. And I get miles on my CC which allow me to cash in for statement credit or request a check - it is nice to build up some $ with my miles and it's all courtesy of the company I work for.

I think that's about it right now, been so busy that I haven't had much time to work on any personal items, sort of just hanging on right now. I will get our financial stuff / mail / bills etc caught up this weekend before I leave for CA.

Hope everyone is staying warm and safe if you in the blizzard area.

Until next time!

Weekly update

noreply@blogger.com (Jaiparis) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:45:00 +0000

In keeping with this weeks goals, I am updating my blog! So far I have accomplished a few things:

Started gathering our tax documents - I have most of them, just waiting for one more and then I need to do our business taxes -
Work out - once this week so - and maybe I'll try and get a workout in tonight
Projects - I have pulled together and organized most of my projects, currently everything is right on track
Blog more - I'm blogging now! Accomplished! : )

I have a few other items to get done this week, laundry, pay a few bills and return the shoes to JC Penny and pack so I can have everything ready for travel next week. I have my weekly schedule worked out for next week and it will be some long days again. The silver lining for me is I'm enjoying my job a lot more, still have a possible bonus/raise in the works and I'm gaining more experience in project management. So things are good on that front for now.

J