Frugal Friday!

In 2009, Matt and I took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class at our church.  It was a great class and completely changed the way we budgeted and looked at money.  During the 12-week class, we paid off Matt's truck and our credit card.  Since then, we have closed our credit card and haven't used one since.  We haven't even missed it!  Because of what we learned in this class, we were able to support our family of 4 on an income of $19,200 while Matt was a meter-reader, we were able to pay $5,000 that we had to bring to our home closing when we sold our house in Illinois, and we acquired no new debt during this time.  Don't get me wrong, there was A LOT of rice and bean eating and a lot of sacrifice, but we were determined to stick to the plan!   

We still have a loooooong way to go, but today I wanted to share Dave's 7 baby step approach.  Hope you find this useful!  :)  

(Taken from www.daveramsey.com)

Here's the process:

Baby Step 1

$1,000 to start an Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is for those unexpected events in life that you can’t plan for: the loss of a job, an unexpected pregnancy, a faulty car transmission, and the list goes on and on. It’s not a matter of if these events will happen; it’s simply a matter of when they will happen.

Baby Step 2

Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball

List your debts, excluding the house, in order. The smallest balance should be your number one priority. Don’t worry about interest rates unless two debts have similar payoffs. If that’s the case, then list the higher interest rate debt first.

Baby Step 3

3 to 6 months of expenses in savings

Once you complete the first two baby steps, you will have built serious momentum. But don’t start throwing all your “extra” money into investments quite yet. It’s time to build your full emergency fund. 

Baby Step 4

Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement

When you reach this step, you’ll have no payments—except the house—and a fully funded emergency fund. Now it’s time to get serious about building wealth. 

Baby Step 5

College funding for children

By this point, you should have already started Baby Step 4—investing 15% of your income—before saving for college. Whether you are saving for you or your child to go to college, you need to start now. 

Baby Step 6

Pay off home early

Now it’s time to begin chunking all of your extra money toward the mortgage. You are getting closer to realizing the dream of a life with no house payments. 

Baby Step 7

Build wealth and give!

It’s time to build wealth and give like never before. Leave an inheritance for future generations, and bless others now with your excess. It's really the only way to live!

It's never that bleak!

Frugal Friday.... it's never that bleak!

41 days ago on the south-side on Indy, there was an explosion that was felt 3 miles away.  2 innocent people lost their lives, 2 houses were completely blown to pieces, and over 20 houses were beyond repair.  Today, they arrested 3 people for murder, arson, and insurance fraud.

The woman who owned the house that exploded was having severe money problems.  She left her house for a couple of days, cut a gas line, and set a microwave timer.  In her perfect world, I'm sure she thought only her house would be destroyed, she wouldn't get caught, and she would collect a lot insurance money.  But instead, she killed 2 innocent people (her neighbors house blew up as well), and many houses will have to be torn down and rebuilt.  

Your money situation may seem bleak, but remember that when you're in the situation, it's hard to see beyond it.  But when you step back, you will realize that "the waves they don't seem so high from on top of them looking down" (Casting Crowns).  I'm not trying to insensitive to people's money issues, but sometimes we just need to take a deep breath, pray, seek counsel, and make wise decisions.  

2012 New Year Resolution Update

Since it's the end of the year, I thought it was a great time to review my New Year's Resolutions for the past year.  

Here were my resolutions for 2012:

Resolution: Read the Bible in a year.

 Update: I didn't do very well with this resoltion.  I started reading on youversion and when the end of November rolled around, I was only in Acts.  So I started a Christmas devotion on youversion that I've enjoyed this month.  

Resolution: Read 24 books this year.

 Update: I have read 22 books!  You can see all the books I've read here.  I think my 2 favorites were Bloom and Angela's Ashes, but I really enjoyed every book that I read this year.

Resolution: Deposit money into the kids savings accounts monthly.

 Update: Failed this one as well, sorry kids... maybe next year.

Resolution: Give 20% to the church.

 Update: success!  This has been my favorite resolution because God has done some pretty amazing faith-things through this one.  I love how any time I fret about money, God ALWAYS provides and reminds me that it's all His anyways.  

I'm in the process of setting some goals for 2013. If you  made resolutions, how did they go?  

Frugal Friday: Homemade!

Happy Frugal Friday!

1) Homemade Laundry soap:
My friend Andrea makes some really good liquid laundry soap and we made it together one day (it made a huge 5 gallon bucket!)  I just ran out and wanted to try my hand at making some powder detergent.  I know a few people who make powder detergent from pinterest and really like it.  So I made some and really like it so far!  Here are the ingredients:  1 bar of grated fels-naptha, 2 cup of washing soda, and 2 cup of borax.  Mix together.  I use 1-2T of detergent per load.  And I have a ton of borax and washing soda left, so I will only have to buy fels-naptha the next time I make a load.

2) Homemade dishwasher soap:
Since I had all of the ingredients, I made some dishwasher soap at well.  

The ingredients for this are: 1 cup of borax, 1 cup of washing soda, and 1/2 cup of epson salt (you can substitute epson salt with pickling salt or lemishine).
Use 1 T per load

3) Homemade cream of soup mix:
I found that there are a lot recipes that I use canned "cream of soups" in.  On pinterest, there is a recipe for a dry mix "cream of something soup" recipe.  You can substitute this for any cream of soup.  I made a batch of it and have used it a lot.  I find this is much cheaper that spending $.89-$1 on each cream of soup.  And I had most of the ingredients in my pantry.  I think I only had to buy dried milk.  

Here are the ingredients:
1 cup of dried milk
3/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup bouillon any flavor (if you have cubes you have to smash them up)
4 T dried minced onions
1t dried basil
1t dried thyme (can substitute with dried parsley)
1 t pepper

I mixed it all together and put in a large mason jar in my pantry.  For the equivalent of one can of condensed cream soup, mix 1/3 cup of dry mix with 1 1/4 cup of water and cook until thick.

What do you make homemade?
Happy Frugal Friday!

Frugal Friday: Pick up the phone!

Never underestimate the power of a phone call!

In September, I took Warrick to the ER because he fell from a rock climbing wall at the playground.  I got a bill shortly after for $91.  I completely forgot about this bill.  I put it in my "pay bill" file and never paid it.  Opps.  Then last week, I received a "final notice" bill in the mail.  I only got one bill so I thought it was weird that I was already getting a final notice.  Attached to the bill was a financial assistance program sheet that said if a family of 4 made under $92,000 a year that they would qualify.  I called and asked about the program, they asked me what our yearly salary was and they said it was taken care of.  It was that easy!

A few months ago we had some internet problems and had a service tech come to the house.  A few weeks later I got a bill which charged me $159 extra for a service technician charge.  They had just been out to install our internet 6 weeks prior and I had paid a $159 fee then.  There was no way I was paying it again.  Before I called AT&T I wrote down all the reasons why I thought we shouldn't have to pay the extra $159 fee for the tech the second time around.  I called AT&T and I barely got through my first reason and they said that they would take the charge off my bill.  It was that easy!

I look back and can think of all the times that I received a bill and just paid it because I thought it was easier than calling and asking a question or two.  But I've quickly learned the power of making a phone call, even if it may be awkward!

Do you have similar stories?