Hosting a Guest on a Budget

Joe and I have been on top of tracking just about every dime we're spending. We started off the month very frugally but as we approach the end we've realized that we were going to need to spend a little more than we intended this month. Father's Day x2 for Laura and 1 for Joe. Mother and step-mother's birthdays for Laura. Joe's birthday and a guest staying with us for a couple days. We didn't go crazy but we did want to be sure at the very least a card was sent for the holiday and birthdays. I had saved up prior to Decision Day and got Joe an Occulus Rift DK2 Kit, which was about $350. I purchased this with a credit card back in May.

I'm kind of disappointed with our spending on food this past week, though I still feel like we're mindful and fairly in control. We have a guest this week so we spent more than we normally would on some extra groceries and a little alcohol, pushing us over the $80/week limit for this month. This is a friend of mine I have gamed with online for years and we've both really been looking forward to her visit. We also wanted to treat her to dinner. It really wasn't that bad, a $60 bill for dinner for 3 and a couple drinks. We plan to go to the gun range and possibly the Columbus Museum of Arts today ($28 and $36 respectively for 3 people) to treat our friend while she's in town. If not the art museum, maybe something cheaper like a skating rink, something indoor and fun since it's a rainy shitty day.

We decided that Father's Day gifts were not possible this year. We simply can't afford a gift for every single Father's Day, fathers' birthdays, and Christmas, and same for our mothers. Phone calls and cards some years are going to have to work.

Unfortunately we had to take the kittens to the vet this week, which wasn an unexpected $132 bill. Their eyes were watering uncontrollably and even had mucus build up so it was clear there was an infection. They're indoor and we don't plan to declaw unless there's a major problem. They still need shots and eventually neutered and spayed, but we'll shop around for the shots and try to pick the lowest cost vet we can for the spay and neuter. Sometimes you can even get a voucher from the county / Humane Society because they want to help control the population, so we'll look into that.

One great thing about this month is we've made about $300 extra just by selling some junk on Craigslist, OfferUp and a few things on Ebay. We've still got a lot to go through, especially games, DVD's, books and a few electronics we think might be worth some cash. Joe also found something at a thrift store he thinks we could flip. He paid about $4 for a Nickelodeon alarm clock radio. It's working perfectly and seems to sell for about $30 on eBay. We're excited to see what happens with that.

A little more good news, we had a GREAT week of free gifts and contest winnings! We won a FREE PIZZA from Mikey's Late Night Slice, our favorite pizza place in Columbus. That was a nice surprise and we decided to save it for the evening of the 25th for Joe's birthday. One of my coworker's girlfriends sent him to work with a gift bag full of fairly pricey lotions and fragrances. Joe's sister Amanda also sent a little gift package with some skin products because I got a pretty bad sunburn at the Arts fair. 

Joe is still out of a job but has some more interviews and a few possibilities that are looking pretty good. As much as I'd like to see him get out of contract work, we would be grateful for any job opportunity so he can have income again. My boss let him work at our store a couple days last week, which was $180 in the bank and would likely let him again if he needed. We're staying hopeful about a new job for him and we're determined to make July an even better month for our budget.

Every (couple) day(s) we're hustlin'!

We realize that cutting back on spending is going to help a lot but it's not going to be enough to get us out of this mess in the amount of time we'd like to. We need more income and a whole lot of organization. According to a lot of other peoples' blogs and stories, we've actually been doing what most of them did in the beginning. So here's our plan of attack:

First, we listed out all of our debt. Every last drop. We took a good hard look at it because it's real and it's not just numbers. It's what's holding us back from our financial freedom. It's what makes us worry about our future, stresses us out, causes arguments and even gives us nightmares. Joe actually took a short walk after we did this to clear his mind. This part may have been one of the hardest parts of our last two weeks.

We decided that we would stop feeling embarrassed and ashamed about it because it's not helpful to us. We've not throwing a big Debt Announcement party and inviting all our friends, but we need to start being honest with ourselves. No more denying it or playing "out of sight out of mind" tricks. Luckily our friends who do know our little debt secret are very understanding. Most of them don't want to go out all the time so we're lucky there. If you do have friends that require going out every weekend, don't be afraid to decline sometimes and let them know you're saving or watching your expenses. Maybe invite them over to hang out, have some drinks, play or watch games, etc. It's so much cheaper that way.

We decided on a budget for the month of June and we'll try our damnedest to stick with it. We know that it's our first month of planning and we may realize that we may have over- or under-budgeted in some categories but we'll learn what's best for us in time. No spreadsheet yet, but we use Evernote religiously and have found that to be useful. Here's what our June budget looks like halfway through the month:

Looking at it I can already see where I can cut back for future months or at least spend wiser. The $10 bracelets were nice and made for a cute Instagram photo but they're totally going to be one of those purchases I shove in a memory box for a decade or two. I broke the groceries down into weeks and color coded. Our Aldi experiment left us fairly unsatisfied for Week 1. I want to note that only $88.77 of that Costco bill was food / water, which will last for two weeks for sure with meal prepping and freezing the extra. That averages to $44.39 per week. $8.99 of that could have been saved if I didn't give into my sweet tooth and buy dark chocolate salted caramels IN BULK. Bad move for my budget and diet on that one. The rest was cat litter and cat food, contact solution and things that are going to last for about a month or more. Overall it seems like we did pretty well with groceries. Prior to Decision Day, we would never have paid attention to prices or what's on sale and be shocked at the register.

We cancelled subscriptions to unnecessary services. This is very subjective for everyone, I think. Some people cancel everything. Some people cancel stuff they can totally live without but keep the super convenient stuff. We decided to cancel just about everything except our Evernote subscription ($5/mo). This allows us to share unlimited notebooks and we use it constantly and it's become a crucial part of organizing our life. We felt like that is the one subscription we'd rather not do without. Personally I cancelled two subscriptions to Twitch channels that I had honestly forgotten about ($4.99/mo each). I cancelled Spotify Premium ($9.99/mo). I can still use the app on all of my mobile devices and I can deal with the commercials and the few limits they give you for playing your playlists on mobile devices.

We started selling our crap. After our first week of doing this, we made $120 off our crap! $25 for a projector we collected somewhere that needed a bulb, $75 for my previous car's OEM radio / CD player that I kept, and $20 for a heavy plastic lounge chair donated to us by Joe's parents. Considering the fact that I've sold things online full time at work for going on 4 years now, you'd think I would have done this much sooner for us. I've sold some things here and there but I honestly haven't made that much of an effort. I've always used the excuse that I did it for 8 hours at work and I don't want to come home and do it even more. But I spent that 8 hours making someone else a lot of money and earning myself an hourly wage. One month last year we made close to $1k because his parents gave us some exercise equipment they wanted gone ASAP, but we honestly didn't put the money where it should have gone (to the debt). I am very careful what I list on eBay due to the amount of scamming buyers these days, but I list just about everything on Craigslist and OfferUp. I've also joined a Facebook group for Columbus and there's the r/columbusclassifieds sub-Reddit for large things worthwhile.

After all the preparing and planning, we realized we had to make a choice of which loan or credit card we wanted to take out first. Originally I thought I would pay off all of my debt since it was so little in comparison, then start banging away at Joe's. Then I took a look at my interest rates. They are all incredibly low compared to his. Joe's Microcenter card has an interest rate of 27.99%. My stomach turned when I first saw that. Mom said that store cards will get you that way - you get a nice "deal" on that large purchase you're making, but they neglect to emphasize the interest rate to you when signing you up for that card. The balance is only $746.58 and we decided that it had to be the first to go. His Fifth Third Mastercard has an interest rate of 23.99% and with a balance of over $8k we thought we'd go after that one next. I know it sounds like an awful idea to pay off a credit card with a credit card, but we may look around for an offer from a trusted credit card company or bank that promises 0% interest for 12-18 months (whatever the special is) and see if we can do a FREE balance transfer or pay it off with the new card. That will give us some time of no interest to chip away at the balance. After that, we decided we'd like to go for the highest student loan with the highest interest rate and use the Avalanche method for destroying the rest.

We've got so many ideas for the future for both saving money and earning extra money. It's kind of thrilling, really. The idea of chipping away at it all and each loan that gets paid off, trickling those payments down the mountain of debt. The day that we say good-bye to Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) will be such a wonderful day. Maybe even the best day.

Decision Day

Looks like our last post was in October of 2014. That sounds about right. We had really wanted to tackle this debt and thought that blogging would be a great way to keep ourselves going. We were totally going to update with our money-saving strategies and little tips and tricks to being frugal. We were going to have a monthly counter with how much of the debt we'd demolished and everything!

Except we didn't have a plan at all. It was another one of those things we just talked about doing and never really did. We never once sat down to discuss and create a monthly budget. We were "thrifty" for a couple weeks, packed lunches for a month and didn't go out for dinner often. Joe was amazed at how much money he had saved in one month just by packing lunches - well over $100 a month.

We fell off the bandwagon pretty quickly with our "money diet" and we fell hard. Diets don't work. They're short term fixes that may produce short term results but they don't address the root of the problem. I should know - I used to weigh more than 300 lbs and tried (and failed) many diets before I successfully lost over 150 lbs. It wasn't until I took full control and counted calories, meal-planned, stuck with a walking routine and completely changed my life that I had major, long-lasting results. For almost 4 years I've maintained in the same 10 lb range, only fluctuating up after some surgery (POST weight loss, I did not have weight loss surgery) or maybe after the holidays.

Anyway, it's amazing how much of that I can apply to money saving and working on destroying our debt. I counted calories then, I'm adding up receipts now. I budgeted calories for the day, I budget spending for the month. Planned meals to lose weight, meal planning to save money. Resisted the urge to indulge with food, resisting the urge to indulge with spending. You see what I'm doing here. I recently had an "ah ha!" moment for our money situation just like I did with my weight and it resulted in another Decision Day.

Joe found out that his contract was going to be ending a lot sooner than we anticipated. June 12th would be his last day, not through the end of June and possibly into July like someone at his work had suggested. I told him to go ahead and not give me his half of rent and utilities for the month of May. I figured I always had plenty of cushion in my checking account for unexpected situations and it was important that Joe be able to make his student loan payments. So June 1st came and went and I wrote the rent check for $985. Last I looked at my account I was close to $3k in my checking and thought things would be fine until payday on Friday. Not even four days later I logged in and saw this:

An overdraft with a $5 charge and a current balance of $5.98. Not only did rent come out, but so did my car lease payment, credit card payment, a utility payment, and a handful leftover charges from our spending spree over the weekend. I scrolled back through the last few months of spending. I had been so completely careless that all of the "cushion" I thought I had was completely flattened.

And the bad news didn't end there. 

Mom called to tell me that a notice came in her mail from a collections agency, addressed to me. I neglected to pay a $350 medical bill for two months. I kept thinking that since I dropped a $1k check as the first payment right away and made another of $100 the following month, it would be OK if I didn't send a payment for a month or so because "people don't pay medical bills all the time" and I had heard they don't send you to collections right away anyway. Well, they definitely can and do (thanks Kettering Health Network!). Things were not looking good.

I had never been the type to be late on payments, miss payments, and not have more than $10 in my checking account. This completely blew my mind. How could I have been so careless with my money? Thankfully I did have $500 in my savings (and a great mother that keeps an eye on my account for anything unusual and keeps important paperwork that comes to her house).

I decided that things needed to change. Things seriously needed to change. I sat down with Joe that evening and we discussed our ideas and plans to not only fix my bank account quickly but to really focus on tackling our debt. We talked about how we could start, the sacrifices we will need to make, and what kind of obstacles we face every year that typically set us back in our bank accounts.

The first thing I did was sit down and write it all out on paper. It was important I write it with my own hand and not just add it all up in a Notepad file or spreadsheet because, and this may sound weird, I wanted to really us to see and feel all of our debt. So on two sheets of paper (one for me and one for Joe) I divided our debt up into our student loans, consumer debt, and anything else. I made sure to write down the interest rate for each loan and card as that will be a huge deciding factor for which loan or card we want to attack next.

As of June 2015, my total outstanding debt is $9,073.43.
The breakdown: $2,814.58 in Navient Federal student loans, $3,599.79 on my Low Rate Platinum credit card. $2,249.41 on our Discover credit card, and two medical bills of $354.65 and $55.00.

As of June 2015, Joe's total outstanding debt is $138,392.68.
The breakdown: $129,622.68 in Navient student loans ($110,636.11 in Private student loans and $18,986.17 in Federal student loans), $8,023.42 on his Fifth Third Mastercard, and $746.58 on his Microcenter store credit card.

It was a little hard to take in. I knew the total before and I've known for a long time. But I had never seen it broken down like that. As I wrote each line, I realized that for many of his loans, just one student loan was greater than all of my personal debt, a few more than double. When I look at the numbers I see the sacrifices for the next years to come. I see the possibility of not having children together. I see the fact that we may not travel and see the world until much later in life. I see a lot... a LOT of hard work ahead of us. But I also see how we've been living - paying the minimum amount due, buying so much crap we don't need, not tracking our spending at all, being lazy about overtime and extra work opportunities and I can see that we really could change this.

I turned to Google and immediately began searching for success stories. I found articles about people, many just like us, who overcame this kind of debt in a relatively short amount of time. One guy knocked out $90k of student loans in 7 months. A bit of an extremeexample, but encouraging. Another lady did around $150k in a few years, a newly wed couple more than $100k in 2.5 years. I'd be happy with getting this under control in five years, but we aren't going to try to race to a date.

Even though I'm so inspired by the success stories of others and I'm slowly getting a good idea of how to initiate our own plan of attack, I still see the big picture and the numbers and at times it just seems... insurmountable. With all of the interest on his student loans the balance has barely budged by the end of the year each year. But I try to remember that I once stared at the number 325.5 on the scale, crying, wondering how in the world I could ever do this. Where do I even begin to lose the weight of an entire person?

Where do we begin to eliminate the debt of an entire lifetime so that we can enjoy ours? How did it get so out of control? I did lose that weight, though. I scoured the web for success stories, supportive communities, was lucky to have supportive friends and family. And ever since I made the change in my life I've enjoyed things I never thought could be possible for me. We can get rid of this debt. We'll take small steps in the beginning. At first, the results may not be all that noticeable but every single tiny bit of effort is going to add up in the end.