After we turned the clocks back, it made me really want to make homey, wintery comfort food, so this menu reflects the change!

Monday: French Onion Soup

Tuesday: Ham Steaks & Mashed Potatoes

Wednesday: Me - Business Dinner; Cory - Leftover soup

Thursday: Dinner with my brother

Friday: Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Saturday: Leftovers

Sunday: Spinach Pies

Well, kinda.

We started this project of painting all the trim in our house in June. Of 2008. That’s right, we’ve been painting for a year and a half. When we started, I thought we would complete the project in a weekend.

It makes me want to go back in time and punch myself for being so stupid.

When I say that we are done painting, I mean exactly that. We will not be painting anymore. It has sucked up too much of our time and effort. We have reached the point where we personally are not going to paint anymore. We are going to hire painters to finish the job.

I know this sounds like the least frugal thing we could do. It’s going to cost us around $1400 to finish the trim, paint the bathroom walls and paint the entryway and stairs. If we painted it ourselves, the materials would cost less than $100.

At this point, though, we are sick to death of painting. We have painted every free weekend for 18 months. Everything else has been put off. We have a long list of projects that have been postponed as we wanted to complete the painting first. The worst part is, we couldn’t just leave half of the trim painted in the house and the other half the old color. It has to be finished.

The decision to hire painters has lifted a huge weight off our shoulders. I am so happy to spend this money. At the end of the day, it is definitely worth it to us. I’m glad we did a lot of the painting ourselves, and I’m glad we’re outsourcing the rest.

We gathered a few quotes and chose the best one. He’s coming in tomorrow to get started. The project that has taken us a year and a half should be completed in about a week!

In the beginning, it was pretty straightforward. We listed all of our debts out from highest interest rate to lowest. The only outlier was a family loan that we paid off first. After that, we went down the line, crossing them off as we went.

Now things are a little trickier. We have three non-mortgage debts remaining: Car Loan #2, My Student Loan and Cory’s Student Loan. My student loan has the highest interest rate, but we can write off the interest on our taxes and, if we ever needed to, we could put it into deferment. Cory’s student loan is the largest debt we have, starting off at over $92,000. It accounts for over 62% of our remaining debt. We would love to eliminate it, but it’s going to take years of hard work.

Which leaves Car Loan #2. It has the lowest remaining interest rate (5.64%), but the monthly payment is nearly $500. It also has the lowest balance, sitting at just over $20,500.

We briefly considered attacking the second mortgage next, but decided to wipe out the car loan as it is half the size of the second mortgage and has over twice the monthly payment. This will free up our cash flow and make a big difference in our debt snowball.

So look out, Car Loan #2, we have you in our sights!

One of my absolute favorite parts of paying off a debt is crossing it off in the debt snowball spreadsheet I have. I draw a beautiful red line straight through it. So therapeutic.

We bought this car back in 2005. We were recently engaged, just bought a house, and had 2 cars already. My car was a 1995 Monte Carlo and it was less than reliable. We didn’t really need to replace it. We wanted to replace it.

At the time we had no credit card debt, one relatively small car payment ($230/mo) and we wanted something shiny and new. Never mind the fact that we had graduated college 6 months before, and our student loan payments were about to kick in. Forget that we had just purchased a house and for the first time ever would have a mortgage. Don’t worry that we were now planning a wedding aka the most expensive day of our lives.

Our Brand New Mazda 3 Back in 2005

With all of that, I don’t regret buying this car. Sure, it was probably not the best decision in the world. It has been very reliable for us, and has gone over 100,000 miles without needing any major repair. We take good care of it and it takes good care of us. We plan to drive it for many years to come.

The loan was up in June 2010. We didn’t really save any money by paying it off early (versus our normal monthly payment), but I am very excited to have $404 less in payments every month. That’s money we can roll into our debt snowball!

There are just under 10 weeks until Christmas. Whenever I say that out loud, people tell me, “Don’t SAY that! I’m not ready for Christmas.” Well, hate to break it to you, sweetie, but Christmas is coming whether you’re ready or not. So let’s get ready!

1. Decide how much you want to spend. This has to go first. It’s so easy to get carried away just buying one more thing and before you know it, you’ve got bills until July. Take a good, hard look at your budget, cash flow & bank accounts and decide how much you can realistically allocate to Christmas gifts.
2. Make a list of who you exchange gifts with. Once you have your list, check it twice. Do you really need to swap presents with everyone you’ve ever met? Perhaps you can cut back to a card or a homemade treat. I’m not saying to cut out the important people in your life, but think twice about coworkers, service providers, etc. before automatically buying more stuff just to have something to give them.
3. Allocate the funds. Once you have your total, distribute it among the people you’re exchanging gifts with. This might take a little time. One trick I always use is to always allocate the same to people who are related to us similarly. For example, all four parents (mine and my husbands) have the same budget. No playing favorites.
4. Start putting money aside. Unless, of course, you have already saved the money you need. Figure out how many paychecks you have between now and December 20 (let’s be realistic, you don’t want to be cashing a check to buy presents on Christmas Eve). Divide your total budget by the number of paychecks. Each paycheck, take that amount and put it aside - in another bank account, in an envelope, whatever works. Or if you’re very disciplined, know how much you have to spend and pay with a credit card, then pay it off using the budgeted funds.
5. The fun part: shopping! My goal every Christmas is to buy as much as possible using my budget. I only buy things I know people will like, but I work to get great deals on them so I can maximize my spending power. Most things I get are on sale, so the actual value (MSRP) of the items people receive is much greater than my budget. That way I don’t feel like I’m stiffing anyone.

This year my budget barely changed from last year. I made a few tweaks here and there, the most significant of which was increasing my nephew’s budget (last year he was still in the womb). Once you have done this exercise, every year after it’s simple - and you get to pretty much skip to the fun part!

All this for only $48.87

The reason the price was even that high is that I bought a package of steaks for dinner with friends this week that cost $18.

The pasta, Splenda, shredded cheese & frozen veggies were part of a deal that gives you $3 off a future purchase when you spend $10. I bought those first and got four $3 coupons that I used in a second transaction for the rest of the groceries. That way I don’t have to worry about using them before they expire. Or losing them. Or bringing them to the wrong store. When you have a lousy memory like I do, these things can happen

Onto the week’s menu!

Monday: Apple Bacon Tomato Soup (didn’t make this last week & it was yummy!)

Tuesday: Shrimp & Broccoli Alfredo

Wednesday: Peppercorn Bleu Cheese Steak & Smashed Potatoes

Thursday: Sausage & Pepper Pizza

Friday: Cory - leftovers, Me - Dinner @ my sister’s

Saturday: Cory - Chicken Stir Fry, Me - Dinner out

Sunday: Pumpkin Sausage Pasta

This all came to light recently on our vacation to St. Maarten. We were married there in 2006, right before we woke up and began climbing out of credit card debt. While we were there in 2006, we had almost no money in our bank account and most of our credit cards were maxed out. The one card we had that wasn’t maxed out was American Express. Being young and naïve, we didn’t realize that American Express wouldn’t be accepted everywhere we went. We learned that very quickly when we went to pick up our rental car and had to give them our bank card for the security deposit, thereby locking up all the available funds we had in our bank account. After that, we were forced to use the credit card and the few traveler’s cheques we had brought for everything.

The dire need to get out from under all this debt was demonstrated on our wedding night. After the reception, we went to pay the restaurant for their services. In the islands, the credit card machines are less than reliable. That night, the card kept getting rejected, and there was no way to determine whether it was our card or the machine. Picture us standing there, still in our wedding clothes, freaking out and trying to hide it that there might not be enough room on the card to pay for the reception that had just ended. Talk about being in debt causing you stress!

Fortunately, the restaurant owner was very understanding and offered to keep the card and try again the next day. It turned out that it was a problem with the machine and not our card, but that moment of utter panic was horrible. It helped fuel us to never let that happen again.

When we traveled back to St. Maarten in September, we experienced a similar difficulty with their technology when renting our car. The credit card machine wasn’t working, but this time we were sure it was their equipment and not our credit card. After a few tries (and no panic), we just paid him in cash. Easy, stress free, SO MUCH BETTER than before. The peace of mind in situations like that are my favorite part of being out of credit card debt.

Monday: Cory - work dinner, me - leftovers

Tuesday: Chicken Caesar Salad

Wednesday: Apple Bacon Tomato Soup, Grilled Cheese Paninis (because according to my husband “soup is not a meal”)

Thursday: Turkey Chili & Cornbread

Friday: Having friends over for dinner - haven’t decided on the menu

Saturday: Dinner at my parent’s house

Sunday: BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Plan:

1. Sell some large items on craigslist (old tv, computer monitor). Listed some things, had a few bites, but was unable to sell anything. I will continue to try and sell them in the coming weeks.
2. Sell some smaller items on eBay (cell phones, decorations, old servers). Sold an old cell phone & made $33.83. I still have more things to list in the future.
3. Sell some old jewelry via Cash 4 Gold (from ex-boyfriends). Sent in a necklace & some earrings, but I haven’t heard anything back about how much it’s worth.
4. Sell old books on Cash 4 Books (notice a trend here?). FAIL. All my old books were too old to get any money for them. I will instead donate them.
5. Sell old CDs & movies on Second Spin. Success! I got rid of an old box of CD’s and a bunch of movies we never watch. Total earned: $50.56
6. Add some ads to the blog. Done! This is something I don’t expect to make any money on for a little while, but the ball is rolling.
7. Post a round up of all the participants’ progress each week. Not so much. However, stay tuned for a final round-up and voting!

So all in all, I made an extra $84.39, which will top $100 by the time I get the money from Cash 4 Gold as well. Not quite what I was hoping for, but I am happy to have made some extra money.

Although it doesn’t officially count for the challenge, I also made some extra money in commissions at my sales job that will allow us to pay off the car loan #1! I am really excited to reach this goal soon - sometime in the next week or two.

My answer: practical for snow & future expansion of our family

Lexus RX350

His answer: pipe dream

Aston Martin Vanquish

I love that we can have such different answers and still not fight about money (ok, rarely fight about money). A little compromise goes a long way. We have pretty different finance philosophies, but we don’t have a lot of issues about it.

And if we win the lottery, I think we’ll get both cars. Then invest the rest.