Resistant Spouses

Budgeting is hard work and it can be even harder if you have a partner that isn't willing or wanting to participate in those talks about money matters. It's never easy to make a big change, like budgeting or paying off debt, if you're trying to do it alone or if you feel like you're dragging your spouse along behind you like a reluctant teenager while you're trying to stay chipper about it all.

I remember when I first read Dave Ramsey's book "Total Money Makeover" there was a burning in my heart to follow his plan. I knew I had found the template for our financial present and future. I was hooked! I was inspired! Chris, on the other hand, just thought I was going through a phase, a crazy phase and quickly all this enthusiasm for paying off debt would fade away.

For the first 2.5 months or so he reluctantly listened to me talk about what Dave Ramsey says... I'm sure there were moments he was ready to throttle me. I was blessed though, I continued to pursue our dream and Chris, thankfully, got the fever, too. Ever since then Chris has been hooked on this journey were are on just as much as I am -- sometimes he's even more enthusiastic than I am. It's amazing the turn he's taken!

Unfortunately, that's not always the case with so many marriages out there though. There are wives who contact me who ask me how I did it. How I "persuaded" Chris to join me on this journey of debt pay off. I really don't have those answers, but thankfully a wonderful You Tuber and blogger, Brittany, whom I admire posted a video on this very subject! 11 Tips to Instantly Increase Your Success When Talking About Money With Your Spouse

I encourage you to watch it and perhaps see if you're spouse is willing to watch it with you. Working together to budget is such an important part of every marriage. I don't think our household would be as successful in our debt pay off journey if Chris and I didn't do this together. We lift each other up and encourage one another and this has been such a huge help when one of us feels like we're struggling a bit.

Also, if you need to talk I'm always here to listen. Sometimes, just having a friend pray with you, listen to your concerns can be enough. :)

Love you all, and know that you're not on this journey alone. We will all become debt-free and have a more financially sound future. The journey is not over. Keep enduring to the end!

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!

Moving Forward

So, we're moving. I know, I know! Most of you already know this information as we're pretty excited about it and y'know us, we can't really keep exciting news to ourselves very well. But what you might not know is why we are moving, again. 

We've moved a lot since we've been together. Heck, before Chris met me I moved even more! I feel like I've moved so many times in my adult life I could practically pack in my sleep I'm so used to doing it by now.

For some of those moves, it wasn't our choice to move quite yet. We've had to move a few times for jobs as they kinda want superintendents to live in a particular apartment to be accessible to the tenants (and to save the company money by having the supers live in the building on a low floor where it's cheapest) but that also led to us having to move out of our apartment, too when we left the job(s). (Technically there were two jobs... I was a leasing agent at one job and had to move out because of management, but I digress...!)

Now that we're retired we kinda get to decide when and where to live without having a boss tell us what to do -- other than God, He kinda still gets a say...Well... a big say....

We moved to the current apartment we're in with good intentions of staying here a very, very long time. It's a two-bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment. It seemed big enough, but it turned out to be a little too small for long-term occupancy. Having said that, we still planned on staying as the rent is good and all utilities are included. 

Then, we started to look at houses to rent as adoption is still at the forefront of our minds. Rental houses are expensive and even with our decent sized retired income, we recognize the need to save more than we spend.

We really thought long and hard about moving out of the city, specifically Cornwall. Cheap housing, small town and near the water. All things that appealed to us for one reason or another, but it still didn't work out with the numbers and owning a house with my slight physical disability seemed impractical. Right as we anticipated finished to pay off our mortgage, we would've had to turn around sell and either buy or rent an apartment anyhow. When you're disabled stairs are not your best friend. I know what you're thinking, "Buy a bungalow, Rosie!" They're too expensive. It just didn't fit into our budgeting number crunching. 

As it is advantageous to stay in the city, keep the same doctors, chiropractor, dentist, etc. we currently have but just find a little bit bigger living space. I mentioned to Chris this one condo building I've had my eye on for many years. He said, "No." I conceded. We kept looking. But that condo building just wouldn't leave my mind! It kept nudging me and so I asked Chris again. "No!" He said.

I prayed about it, a lot.

I kept searching other avenues, a lot.

I crunched the numbers over and over again.

Prayed about it all some more.

One day, almost out of the blue, Chris said "Yes."

That same day I found a condo for rent in the building I had my eye on. Two days later, we met with the owners and we were approved for the lease!

This new space is $50 more a month, with indoor heated parking, all condo amenities, washer/dryer/dishwasher and 250 more square feet. Enough space for me to have a little crafting nook and Chris gets a workshop in the basement, as a bonus. Sweet!

We can live here as long as they'll have us. It's affordable and suits our needs if we do have a child, but even if we don't, it's not so overwhelming that we'll think, "Why did we move here?". Plus, the living space isn't so big that we can't manage it ourselves as we get older.

Chris and I have peace about the decision we made. We feel like we've made a step forward on the journey in which God is leading us -- especially because we think we'll still be parents one day.

We've saved for first and last month's rent, plus moving costs. We'll be paying for it all with "cash". No need to worry about our budgeting. We are still on track.

More than likely we'll end up buying our own condo in the building in the semi-distant future. No rush. We can settle in and rent for a while.

I'm looking forward to decorating our Christmas tree this year in the new solarium window (which we'll also be my crafting area).

Furthermore, I'm happy Chris is thrilled with the move, too. It was hard for us to let go of the dream of not owning a home. Actually, that was really hard. We always pictured a backyard with lush green grass and a park nearby. It would've been nice to have a rec room in the basement for the kids and a completely decked out kitchen for Chris to do his cooking while I could do my baking. But living in a condo we'll force us out of the house more, to the park, the museums, the library...

Sometimes, those dreams are our dreams but not God's. I think, in this case, we were dreaming our own dreams for a while. This condo suits where we're going in life and fits into our financial budget. We are so thankful for what we do have.

I encourage you all, to keep pursuing God's dreams for you. Put aside your own wants for a minute and just see what Heavenly Father speaks to your heart. Hopefully, you'll feel peace from The Lord like we did. 

The dreaded letter arrived

Yesterday we opened up the mailbox and Chris saw there was a letter addressed to me by the Canada Revenue Agency. I always dread hearing from them. Typically it's just bad news; "We need more of your money! Give it to us now!"

If you remember from my post near the beginning of October we had received my tax return and then subsequently a week later another letter from CRA stating they were reviewing medical expenses of  $6,511. They wanted us to resend the medical receipts so that everything could be verified.

After contacting our accountant and resending the medical receipts we just sat waiting and praying that whatever answer we received back wouldn't be too crazy. Honestly, I totally expected CRA to say they wanted us to send them more money and very possibly over six thousand dollars. My medical expenses were legit but you know never know what they will think is legitimate no matter how much documentation you send them.

So, opening this letter yesterday was just something I had to brace myself for. I was determined that whatever the end result would be I would stay positive and find a way to pay them.

I had to read the letter three times, guys. They accepted ALL our medical receipts! We are in the clear and my 2016 taxes are officially fully completed! *happy dance* It's not enough just to file on time. There always some response from CRA, sometimes negative, but this time it was positive!

I cried. Oh, I cried happy tears! Good news! Oh, The Lord has blessed us! If there had been a bill it would've set us back another year, but nope... no bill... Both of us got on our knees and cried... So thankful for God's provision.... We are so reliant on His timing and we knew that no matter what answer we received back from Canada Revenue Agency, with Heavenly Father's help, we'd pay.

We have yet to hear back from CRA's review of Chris' 2016 taxes. If you remember, they're reviewing $1500 of medical claims as well and Chris just submitted the taxes for previous years he didn't even know were not filed. So, we still have a little ways to go in our waiting but one more hurdle is done! There are days when we feel Tax Debt will always be our ball and chain... but hopefully, we're wrong. We are trying to
stay optimistic as Chris and I still wade through the remainder of our debt and just take one day -- or rather one letter -- from CRA at a time....accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.

For now, we can just take a moment and be thankful for this good news as we approach the end of 2017.

Who's the Boss?

I heard this really great call on the Dave Ramsey Radio show recently and it kind of stuck with me. This guy calls in and starts talking about his budget and how he's just not feeling comfortable with how he's budgeting is going. He's got no money really, for all the things he needs to pay for. That sounds like a lot of us, doesn't it? We're stretched so thin, how we can we make enough for all the things we need!

Well, Dave, in all his Dave Ramsey wisdom, says "Who's the boss here? Your budget or you? You tell your money what's going to happen and if your budget is so tight you can stretch anything more out of it, then you have an income problem."

When Chris and I were first beginning this Baby Step plan, our money was tight. We set the numbers so tight in our budget that we didn't have any spending money to do whatever we wanted with it. We slashed everything, down to the bare minimum, but we forgot about "Fun Money" because, really, there was no room in the budget for any fun.

Once we got a few debts out of the way with we incorporated our own personal pocket money back into the budget. It took a lot of work to get there, but if we didn't include some fun money in this budget Chris and I would've never stuck with the budget very long. I know we would've cheated on this agreement to budget and eventually, this idea of getting out of debt would've been tossed out the window just like all those other attempts at doing good in our lives, too. We would've failed, and you might too if you don't incorporate some a Pocket Money category in your budget.

See, I know what you're thinking now. You're saying, "Rosie, how can I have spending money when I can't even afford food every week?" I hear you, and I'll tell you exactly what Mr. Ramsey said. That means you have an income problem. Think outside the box! What can you do to make more money in order to enjoy your life a little more? What side gig will give you the most reward without the most effort? Delivering pizzas? Going to retirement homes and reading to people? Working an extra shift at your current job every week?

If you don't have any money in the budget for your own spending money, you're going to fail at this. This is a natural response to making a change in life. You have to still be able to have fun while you're making a radical about-face in your life.

I will tell you something really interesting. Our spending money is an equal amount. You know what the most awesome part is involving that money? We don't have to answer to anyone else about how we spend it. We don't record it anywhere. We take it out in cash and that's it. I can buy whatever I want for myself with my money (which usually means craft supplies). Chris can buy whatever he wants as well and doesn't have to answer to me for it. Sometimes we decide to save up for something bigger together or save for several months in a row for something really important for ourselves. We love that ability!

We relish that. We really feel a sense of freedom and that freedom means this budgeting thing is actually working. Do it, try it. Still stay within your means, but give yourself some "me" money and see how much it makes a difference for a couple of months start with $10 or $20 but stick to that number and don't feel guilty for whatever you decide to buy yourself.

Another debt is finished!

So, we were able to eliminate another debt this month! That's three big expenses (two debts and one big bill) in two months. Wow. Incredible feeling... This one was the lawyer. We hired a lawyer a year and a half ago to work through my annuity settlement. As a result, it was restructured and now that's our income. In doing this though we incurred an $8,600 bill from the lawyer. Yes, they were expensive, but he was the best and he knew the right people. The issue was solved in 2.5 months after 19 years of searching for the right lawyer who was willing to take this on. It was a battle I kept praying for and feeling quite defeated about. Finally, it's all done. Not only is the annuity solved but now the lawyer's bill is paid in full -- and two months earlier than we expected at that!

I have to admit, this was the highlight of October and it only happened a few days ago. We're quite pleased but very much in awe of how amazing God is... We feel blessed beyond words...

Moving on, October we didn't do much shopping for groceries and such but opted to eat more out of our own pantry, fridge, and freezer. We had a lot of success in this area plan to do it again for November. We've allocated $100 for groceries next month and I think that'll be plenty for milk, eggs, and bread. Really honestly we have plenty of food in our cupboards and it's high time we utilize what we already have so it doesn't go to waste.

Some folks have asked us for advice about how we're doing this. We get asked about it on occasion and it's really not as hard as you think it is to get out of debt and live with greater financial peace. Does it take sacrifice, planning, and a detailed budget? Yeah, but it's worth it!

No judgment here if you have debt, none at all. The only thing I ask is that you stop being an ostrich with its head in the sand and pretend there isn't a problem. I believe in you. God believes in you and trust me if Chris and I can sacrifice continuing to live without a car (a much-needed transportation vehicle!) year after year as we slog through this debt, then you can, too.

Don't let yourself make another excuse to let another Christmas go by with too many presents sitting under the tree and a bank account bled dry.

Remember, God doesn't want you to be in debt. He has a greater purpose for the money that He asks you to manage for Him. Sacrifice today means a great heavenly blessing He can provide others through you tomorrow. It's worth it. Sacrifice with a cheerful spirit!