2017 Wins & Fails

We've done it! We have budgeted for an entire year and now I have to admit we're a bit addicted to this budgeting thing.

I began reflecting back on this past year and thought I'd review this last twelve months. We've had some pretty awesome moments and then again some crushing times of defeat. We've always gotten back up, though, brushed ourselves off and tried again. Chris and I praise God during our successes and fails, no matter what's happening we owe it all to Him.

So, in honor of the new year quickly approaching in a matter of mere hours, I thought I'd take a glance behind us and take a look at the highlights.

Wins:

• Budgeting every single month. Again, this is a bit redundant as I already stated this but it's not easy to keep budgeting even when you feel like you've blown it but every month we have budgeted every single month. Twelve months of budgeting! Incredible to see how every dollar was spent in 2017
• Created sinking funds for future anticipated expenses. It's kinda funny but Chris and I have several sinking funds for different things we're saving for. We're trying our best to anticipate future expenses and this keeps the panic for upcoming events or big bills low
• Keeping current with taxes. Up until 2015, I was always current with my taxes but then life happened. I wasn't able to work as much as I wanted to due to health reasons and I got behind. Now, I'm all caught up. I'll never have to fall behind again thanks to budgeting for it every month
• Paid off the lawyer. The whole reason we're able to budget with a decent income every month is that we found the right lawyer to rectify my income problem. Yes, we were happy to pay him back for his hard work. It was a big bill, but again, we budgeted for it and now he's fully paid!
• Paid off the credit card. It's done. We'll never have to worry about leaving on credit again. I love that feeling. I love knowing that anything we buy is paid for outright
• Underbudget every month in our own personal spending. Chris and I love having our own personal spending money. (As a matter of fact, he just told me he's spending a bit of his money right now by buying himself something online) Having a little spending money, but not going over that amount, has allowed us to reign in our spending and we actually find it tough to spend that personal money sometimes
• Paid cash for new Ikea furniture. We've recently bought some new Ikea furniture and that was our Christmas present to ourselves and each other. It felt great to just have the money already set aside and know that this furniture is ours outright. No interest on it and no worry about a bill coming every month to pay it off
• We had cash for first and last month's rent and moving costs for our new condo. Our move was already budgeted. It felt great to move into our new home and feel like we're on firm footing financially. We love our new home

Fails:

• The line of credit is still not paid off. We were hoping to get the line of credit paid off this year. That hurts. I really wanted to get it done and over with
• Dental debt is brand new. Oh, I think this one hurt. My tooth issue just puts a huge dent in allowing us to get our debt paid off by 2017. What a blow to our plans. We're a whole year behind where we wanted to be. Thankfully our dentist is allowing us to pay in monthly installments interest-free. This debt should be done by October of 2018, if not before
• Chris' old taxes. Finding out that Chris hadn't submitted his taxes for many years in a row was a hard thing for us to get past. Not only did we have to come up with money to pay the accountant to work on the taxes and submit them on Chris' behalf but we were worried about what kind of numbers we'd end up with when it's all said and done. The accountant is paid and CRA is still reviewing the numbers we've submitted. It all looks promising but until we know for sure I'm just praying faithfully
• Three categories we find hard to reign in are the groceries, household and eating out expenses. We always seem to dip over on at least one category, if not two or three within the month. This is something we plan to make progress to rectify this coming year

I'm proud of us. We've done well and we've made some significant progress. We've been paying off debt now for over 18 months and within that time we've paid off over $43,000. Chris and I still have ways to go but we're starting to see the finish line which means we will be able to move on to saving for a car and contributing to our retirement funds. Most importantly we can consider adoption which is what our heart longs for the most. 

I was sitting in church today watching a little girl run around on the pew in front of us. She was probably about two years old and I could see the wonderful beauty in her little face. Gosh, I want this debt gone! I want to look forward instead of always having to pay for things past!

I think of Ruby; my daughter. I still long to hold her and I believe she is still apart of our future. This debt is preventing us from moving forward. I cannot wait to kick it out of our lives. It takes sacrifice, perseverance, patience, and budgeting but I'm willing to keep fighting and doing it for as long as I need to. Yes, that means we'll have to keep taking public transportation and we can't go out on dates as much as we'd like. Yes, it'll be mean our honeymoon vacation is still put on hold even though we've been married for over three years but it's all worth it. All of it. For her...for our future...

November's Review

Well, it's time to look back before we press on forward. November was a pretty even keel month. We had a small grocery budget once again as we ate out of our own pantry, fridge, and freezer. We are really just trying to eat at home as much as we can so we have fewer food items to move to the new apartment. Slowly but surely Chris and I are starting to see the bottom of the freezer!

In those common categories, I mentioned things went pretty smoothly. I guess the real shock was how amazing a new system Chris and I have begun to try has really worked for us. So, you remember in a previous post I have written I mentioned that we have still kept our credit card. gasp I know, that's not allowed on the Dave Ramsey plan. Well, what we discovered was some online sites that we have needed to order one or two things from refuse to allow us to use any type of Visa Debit type of plastic card. As a result, I came up with a really good solution. We decided to set up a separate savings account (what we would call a sinking fund) for our credit card. Any money we decide to shop with online for a purchase gets moved to that account immediately after buying that purchased item. For example, I'll decide I want to buy something for $16.75, before making that purchase I check in with Chris to make sure he approves of the purchase as well. (We always check with each other with all purchases.) If it's a personal item for me, I take $16.75 out of my own personal pocket money, or if it's a household item, I take it out of the household money (or deposit it back into the checking out before making the purchase) then transfer it to the newly set up credit card sinking fund. That way, we feel the pain of losing that money for the purchase and we don't forget to budget for it. The money is already sitting there waiting for the credit card bill.

We verify all purchases and balance our account every day (just to make sure all purchases are legitimate) then before the bill is due, we pay from that specific sinking fund.

This method has really changed the struggle with not being able to use a Visa Debit card. It's such a small change, but it has drastically made a difference.

I must caution you though, to only use this method once you've established good budgeting habits. I can't imagine doing this a year ago. I wouldn't have done very well at it back then but now, I trust myself and I trust Chris. We've done the Dave Ramsey plan for almost a year now and life is a lot calmer.

We don't worry so much, about a bill coming in the mail. We know how much money we have in our accounts and we have more in savings/sinking funds then I ever thought possible.

Are we completely out of the hole that we dug for ourselves? Definitely not, but we can see the lip at the top now. The ground beneath us is a lot more solid and anytime a problem comes up our first response is to pray about it. Our second response is to stay calm and look at the numbers, don't blame each other and just ask questions, talk through it.

Amazing what a difference a year and a half of budgeting will do. Yes, we made some incredible progress from May to December 2016 on our own, but once Dave Ramsey came into the picture in January.... radical changes -- and for the better!

Sinking funds.... and a sinking fund for credit card purchases! Who would've thought of that a year ago? Life changing! Thanks be to God for the little changes, which can lead to making bigger lifelong changes!