Going out with a bang!

"The borrower is slave to the lender" Proverbs 22:7

We have some good news! Since we received our January income payment a day early this year, we paid our bills a day earlier than usual, as well! That always feels good. Chris went out to do some errands and also stopped by the library to pay his library debt off. 

We had budgeted $385 for his debt because when we first heard about it, it was somewhere around the $300 mark, or so we thought. Well, as it turns out, we remembered incorrectly and it's a blessing in our favour! The total owed on his library account was only $138! 

That bill is DONE! Here we thought there would only be one bill paid off in 2016... (my 2015 taxes -- the only time I've ever been late with taxes in my whole life) but we also got this other bill done with! Yay! Our first happy dance in this journey!

The next bill in our list will be the credit card....groans.... I cannot wait until this one is done! We have a ways to go but we'll get there! 

On another note, we tried inputting our bill payments into the Dave Ramsey created app "EveryDollar" that I mentioned in my last post but I didn't like certain things about the app. Chris will be designing a Google Docs spreadsheet to our liking instead. (He's working on that currently I type)

It just didn't flow nicely... I tried to input some information and it told me I was $50.90 over budget, but I knew I wasn't... I struggled through trying to fix the issue to no avail. (We actually had an extra $100 to add to our budget thanks to a Christmas gift from family and this input into our income threw everything out of whack and initially told me we were $75 over budget... So strange...!)

Anyway, once the new spreadsheet is finished I'll kinda give you a glance at it so you can have an idea of how things will work, but that will be later in the month.

The last thing we went over for our budgeting starting in the new year was something known in the budgeting community as "Sinking Funds". Chris & Jackie from "GazelleInTents" explain these funds better than I ever could so here's a link to that explanation, if you're curious: Sinking Funds | How to Get Started. It's an old video of theirs, but a good explanation. With that being said, Chris and I have started three sinking funds of our own. Firstly my chiropractor's deposit that will be due in April, secondly the accountants fees will need to pay also in April once taxes are filed (because my taxes are so complicated it usually takes two really good accountants to figure it all out) and thirdly for Chris' driving lessons/licensing fees to make another step towards his full G license.

I have found the best way to stay on track with budgeting is to try your best to account for every expense you already know is going to be coming up so you're not scrambling to find the money for whatever expense you are faced with. For example, we know we'll have to file our taxes in April and we know we'll have to pay the accountant for their hard work and dedication so why not put that money aside already so there is no worry or argument about where that money comes from. The less we have to use our emergency fund to cover the gaps for things that can be planned, the more we realize those type of expenses are not actually emergencies.

There are so many people dreading 2017 right now, I'm seeing social media inundated with all those posts, but what I'm also seeing is a lot of people in the budgeting community excited about the goals and progress they'll continue to make in 2017 to become debt-free. That's what I'm focusing on. We can do this and we will do this... 

One final thought I leave you with today; if you have sat down with your budget, crunched the numbers and put it down on paper, have you budgeted every dollar of your income? Is there $50 or $250 that just sits in your chequing account that you've privately classified as "just in case" money? If so, re-calculate your budget and give every single dollar a name and place in your budget. If your "just in case" money stays in your chequing account you'll spend it. Seriously, it's too tempting to just sit there. You know you'll buy more groceries, or pop over to your favorite Christian book store to see the "Boxing Week Sale" prices that your email pop showed you just this morning, or maybe you'll eat out three times this month instead of your allotted two already planned. Whatever the reason, whatever the excuse you'll spend that money. I know this because we're the same way. 

As a result now, we budget everything. Every last dollar, heck every last penny is given a name, a home, an assigned spot and this way we know we've told our money where to go!