Old Habits Die Hard

It's not like we've been debt free for very long, but I've found myself more than once thinking, "I shouldn't do that!" and I can't really come up with a good reason WHY I shouldn't. Why shouldn't I buy some groceries that aren't on sale and I don't have a coupon for? Why shouldn't I buy my daughter a new dress for Easter instead of going to a thrift store? I think I am by nature a pretty frugal person so I am wired to find a deal, but at the same time I need to learn to find some happy place where I am ok to spend money now and not freak out or feel like I am doing something wrong.

WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Yeah baby, it's all about FREEDOM!! Hard to believe it, but we are HERE!!!

September 2008:
$39,216.30

March 2012:
Zero, ZIP, NONE!!!

Yes, it took us 42 months, but we are finally debt free! The inner nerd in me just noticed that is almost $1000/month going straight to debt. We didn't actually pay it off that way, but if you spread it out on average, that's pretty amazing. Wowza!! And on a more exciting note, it's like we both just got a mid-year raise at work...YES!

As I was online making a payment to my student loan account, I decided to poke around the website a bit and see what kind of interesting data I could find, because let's face it, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to these things.

I didn't even really pay much attention as I was signing the papers for my student loans, and as I look at my account statement, I am absolutely horrified that I signed on the dotted line for a $16,522.15 chunk of change to be paid back over 178 months (yes, 14yrs!). My last scheduled payment was June 24, 2022, over TEN YEARS from today. What the world was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn't thinking!

We could have probably done this sooner if we had been more aggressive, but we had a lot of "life" catch us up in the past 3.5yrs that we have been working towards this. The 2 big things that have slowed us down:

1. Vehicles
We had a vehicle totaled, the replacement vehicle required 2 transmissions to be replaced, and now we're driving our 3rd minivan. We've paid cash for all vehicles and all vehicle repairs associated with them. That number I dare not add up because it will just depress me.

2. Braces
Nate went in for a routine dental cleaning and we got the "wow, you need to see an orthodontist STAT" conversation. We were super creative in covering the $5500. Some of the money came from my pre-tax flex spending account and we also did a cash payment plan with our orthodontist (interest free for a year). I am so thankful for Dr. Hannapel's office that worked so well with us and made this possible without pushing any of the funky credit plans on us.

Phillipians 4:19 (NIV)
And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

God has provided for ALL of our needs, in abundance, since we started on this journey in September 2008. We made the very intentional decision to go from being $20 in the plate to giving a full tithe to our church. We made the choice to reduce our income by 10% and put our faith in God that he would provide for everything we needed, which is significantly different than what we want. We have been able to not only support our church, but we've also been able to support other charities and organizations we've felt led to. We've been able to take a couple of small family vacations by being very frugal and planning ahead. Our kids all have plenty of clothes, we are all very well fed, we have a very stable housing situation, and we've both been blessed with full-time employment.

Now that we've met this amazing milestone, we are ready to do so much more! Time to beef up the emergency fund so that when we have that next car disaster, we're ready to buy a reliable vehicle, focusing on contributing to our retirement funds, maybe taking a vacation, maybe going on a missions trip....

I'm ready to start having some fun!

Thrift Store - SCORE!!

I know a lot of people are totally grossed out by the idea of going into a thrift store, and the idea of actually buying something makes them dizzy, but there is definitely a segment of the population that enjoys it. Growing up, I always thought of thrift stores for poor people and was horrified when I was on the receiving end of something from one. Now that I'm an adult, my perspective has definitely changed.

When I pull into the parking lot at a thrift store, I am always amazed when I look at the cars. You don't see many broken down, beat up, old junkers. Look next time you drive by (or the next time you shop), people who shop at thrift stores usually drive pretty nice cars! By extension, I would guess that most of the people driving those cars are doing pretty decent financially.

Yes, lots of times thrift stores are just full of junk. But by knowing your neighborhood and knowing the stores, you can come across some true gems in the midst! It takes a bit of time, and sometimes a bit of digging, but if you are a person who thrives on the thrill of a good find, it's so worth it!

Last year I started running and I thought to myself, "hey this is gonna be cheap, all I need is a pair of running shoes." Oy! I was wrong! Even worse, it turns out I like running so I wanted to slowly build up my running wardrobe and accessories so that I wasn't running in old t-shirts and cotton shorts. Those are great to get started in, but once I started running longer distances, the comfort level in those clothes drastically reduced.

In my thrift store travels I've managed to come up with a Pantagonia jacket and a Merrell pull-over hooded shirt. Both items would have easily been close to $100 each, and both of them were in excellent condition and have years of wear left in them. I've also come across some higher end things like Under Armour clothes, but unfortunately not in my size. I'll keep looking though! (Note: I would not encourage the purchase of used shoes, especially if you are using them for any sort of exercise. It's worth it for so many reasons to really buy a good pair of shoes)

One other thing that we tend to buy quite a bit from thrift stores is books. Nate is really reading like crazy and we could go broke just buying him new books. Plus, he has really taken to some older books that are much easier to find at a thrift store or yard sale. He's always excited to come across the older "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and even "Goosebumps".

Bucket List v.2012

I started keeping an actual bucket list instead of just randomly saying, "that's on my bucket list" this past year and it's been fun to look back over 2011 and see what I accomplished off the list and adding a few new things to it.

Things that are coming off the list, because I accomplished them:

1. I ran a 5K
2. I met my dad this summer, and we just spent Christmas together
3. I joined a lunchtime mentoring program through my work

The new and improved bucket list, v.2012:

1. Sing in a choir
2. Read the entire Bible
3. Go on a missions trip
4. Open a B&B
5. Visit Ireland
6. Go on a cruise
7. Give my Christian testimony
8. Finish a master's degree
9. Go in a hot air balloon
10. Take my kids to Disney
11. Be completely debt free
12. Learn to ski
13. Be in a movie
14. Visit South America
15. Visit Europe
16. Visit Asia
17. Visit Australia
18. Visit a National Park
19. Visit Mt. Rushmore
20. Go to Vegas
21. Blog my life story for my kids
22. Feed the hungry
23. Go to an NFL football game
24. Stay at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island
25. Visit Niagra Falls
26. Attend a church service at Saddleback Church
27. Run a 10K
28. Run 365 miles in a year (or more!)

November 25 - Cleanin House!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday! But what comes after Thanksgiving? Well this year, even sooner than usual, came the shopping! I can't say I was thrilled that the sales were starting at 10pm, but I made my list and headed out to tackle a few things and mission was accomplished.

Today I was working around the house and the yard a bit and decided when I went to put away some new purchases in Nate's dresser drawer that I was tired of all the chaos I was up against. I've mentioned before that I have been known to "UpCycle" things, so I thought a bit about what I could use around the house to bring some order.

Yes, I still had some old baby wipe containers stashed away that I just couldn't bring myself to part with and I used 2 of them to organize the every growing pile of Scout gear that lives in Nate's top drawer. One tub has neckkerchiefs in it, one has slides, and then I put his hat in the front. Nothing fancy, but it rounded up a lot of stray crap that was making me irritated everytime I had to put clothes away.

What else did we do post-Turkey Day? Nate had a friend come over and we took a break from organizing dressers and cleaning the basement to go to the park. The weather was amazing! I dragged the bikes up from the basement and we hit the road. We were not the only ones thinking of it because as we were there tons of families made their way up there too.

There are still plenty of leaves on the ground, and still lots of crap in the basement, but those can wait for a dreary day.

Nov 23 - Holiday Shopping

I am slowly starting to chip away at Christmas, one lunch hour at a time. It's so much easier to get my Christmas shopping done this way than having the pressure of going out once or twice and feeling like I have to get it all done in that tiny window of time. This gives me more time to spread it around, and also more time to shop around and find what I have in mind for people.

Right now my life is being ruled by a single little notepad that is tucked into my purse. What it is critical on that notepad that I would be lost without it?

The front page: List of what I wanted to get accomplished this week. Random things I needed from an assortment of stores, random Christmas gifts I wanted to get picked up this week. Movie times for Thanksgiving day to take the kids to go see the Muppets, stuff like that.

Store Pages for Black Friday: I hit up http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com to find all the ads early and start my planning ahead of time. I wanted to make sure I was looking them over carefully and not missing anything and that I had a good plan well in advance. Since Walmart is price matching this year on pretty much everything, I will be spending most of my time there instead of just going store to store for 1 or 2 things.

Holiday Schedule: Matt and I had to coordinate our work schedules, our day off schedules, the kids school schedules, and our family holiday schedules to figure out where we are going to be pretty much every day between December 19 and January 2.

Our plans are to spend a couple of days in the Detroit area visiting my family over Christmas, so I did a quick check to see what that was going to set us back and was very happy to see I had quite a few points saved up towards rooms at the Holiday Inn. For 2 days during the holidays we're only going to pay $80 for our room, so I thought that was pretty reasonable. I booked the rooms today and even had a hard time finding hotel rooms that were open! So clearly I am not the only person thinking ahead.

As I am writing this post and looking down at my notepad, I have to laugh a little about the big sales I am so excited about. Who else but a frugal nut would get so excited about the great prices on socks and underwear?!?! Even better, cereal on sale!! Woohoooo!! Somebody at Meijer is thinking of me!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Matt has to work, so we'll be having the family dinner a little later than usual. The kids won't really notice a difference, but the rest of the family will. We'll do a lot of the dinner prep tonight so that it's a relatively smooth meal tomorrow. If we can get our butts up and moving early, I'm thinking a trip to the theater in Plainwell is in order! We can go see a first run movie (The Muppets) for $2.50 each if we get there before noon.

Grocery Trip - Nov 20

A friend of mine mentioned to me on Facebook the other day that I had a blog. Yeah, welllllll, about that. I admit, life has gotten super busy and I have terribly neglected this poor blog for quite some time. There was just so much more to blog about when we were attacking our debt on a daily basis, and we had so much more of it to tackle. Now that we are down to just my student loans, it's really not as exciting as it used to be.

So I thought I would challenge myself to really blog about my grocery trips and how a non-extreme couponer uses coupons to buy things for the family that isn't just boxes of Pizza Rolls and chicken nuggets. Don't worry, you will in fact see nuggets and Pizza Rolls as I continue doing this, we certainly aren't perfect eaters! But the one thing I hear from people all the time is, "I never see coupons for stuff we eat (or use)", so I am going to attempt to show that you can in fact feed your family on a limited budget and eat a good variety of food. Maybe if I am super motivated, I'll even post a few of our meals to show what we turn all these savings into.

Meijer
Spent: $21.89
Saved: $25.27
What I bought: a turkey, fruit leather (6), dinner rolls (3doz), eggs (3doz), pineapple (2 cans), french friend onions, chips (2 bags)

Meals
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: PB&J, pudding, and banana bread
Dinner: We ate out tonight