Finances

Do any of you get excited about finances?  I love to push myself and make goals that push me a little bit out of my financial comfort zone.  I decided to start posting about the different things that I'm doing over the next little while.  Brian and I thought we'd buy a house within a year of moving to Utah.  After some careful consideration, we decided that we needed to both focus heavily on our depression and paying off our student debt before we started the home buying process.  Therapy is not cheap, but we felt an urgency to do it.  While it would be nice to have a yard for my children to play in, and some extra space, I would feel much better if we could learn how to feel happy and pay our student loans first.  This put me out of my comfort zone, but we paid all of our home savings into our student debt.

Soon after making this decision, we were blessed with an opportunity to save $200 off of our rent.  We plan activities for our complex,  and figure out ways to make it more environmentally sustainable and comfortable for the residents to live in.  In exchange, we have a giant rent reduction.  Because of these savings, we are able to pay for therapy without decreasing our debt payments each month.  The arrangement was for 6 months and should have ended at the end of March.  Because of the savings, we decided to resign our lease instead of renting a house with a yard.  Right after we signed the lease, the program director asked us to do it for 12 months instead of six.  So, until October, we will only be paying $560 in rent.  This has been an awesome blessing for us and an opportunity to pay for therapy and still get out of debt as planned.

I used to follow the blog funcheaporfree.com, but once google reader ended, I forgot to check blogs.  I recently started reading her blog again.  In January, she gave a new challenge each week for her readers to do with her.  I missed it because I just started reading it this week, but I've decided to hop on the train and push myself a little more.  I thought I'd blog about it to share my ideas and to stay motivated.  I usually do a spending freeze on the 5th week of the month on those longer months because I want to keep my grocery and "other" budget the same each month.  Doing so allows me to have one extra week of money to pay debt with instead of groceries and other expenses.  This month, I didn't plan ahead very well and ran out of most of my perishable foods and so decided to do a freeze Feb 2-8 instead.  Turns out, one of her challenges is to do a spending freeze.  By doing this freeze, I'll save about $140 that I can put toward our smallest student loan ($294).

The next week, I'll be doing a "No Eating Out" challenge.  This shouldn't be too difficult because we don't typically eat out, but it is Valentines week.  I decided to make a nice picnic meal for the two of us to enjoy in SLC before we go to a free concert.  We were originally planning on spending about $20 for dinner.  I can now put that savings toward our smallest debt.

This next challenge will be harder for me.  I waste a lot of food.  I put too much food on the kids' plates, I don't like to eat most of our leftovers and Brian forgets to take leftovers to work with him. I think that this challenge, 2nd to regular spending freezes, will be the most beneficial one for our family.  By packing leftovers, Brian can save $$ on other lunch foods like soups, bread for sandwiches, etc.  By eating or freezing or even trading leftovers with a friend (anybody up for this, give me a call!) I can cook 1-2 fewer meals each week.  This will save a ton of money on groceries.  I really like to use Dealstomeals.com for groceries.  She'll give you a 2 week trial for free if you'd like to try it out.  This saves so much money on groceries and I don't even clip coupons.

I'll try to keep everyone updated on how my challenges go this month.  If you'd like to hop on board, share your experiences with me via email.  We can keep each other on our toes.  I am very confident that with a lot of courage, determination and consistency, we can push ourselves out of our comfort zones and live more abundantly!