Spending Fast

I found this Spending Fast idea from my Sister in law and find that it is a perfect thing for me to do as well. It will go along perfectly with our goal to stay out of debt. We still are out of debt, but we haven't been doing too good on saving money. We are also planning a Disneyland trip in September so this would be great to use the extra money we save each month for that. 

So on to the Spending Fast. My sister in law got the idea from This Girl's Blog. I think it is wonderful and I don't know why I didn't think of it first. JK. So this girl did it for a full year. I am going to be more realistic and make a shorter goal for my family of 3 months and then we will go from there. In her blog she paid off debt with her spending fast, but obviously as we have already gotten out of debt we will be saving all our money from our spending fast. 

So going off her list I can skip the first 2 steps of Listing Debt and Asking Creditors to lower rates. (I recommend looking at her site Here). I've done step 3, Picture the Life you Dream of Living, many times and of course we have already done step 4, Make the Commitment to Be Done with Debt. My husband, as usual, is all for it for step 5, Try to Get Them to do the Spending Fast with you. I've set the initial time frame, for step 6, for 3 months, but I may make it longer. I am doing step 7 now, Making a Public Declaration. Now on to step 8:

Needs List:

Rent
Utilities
Tithing
Internet Bill
Car Insurance
Medical Insurance
Dental Insurance
Cell Phone
WorldMark Maintenance Fee
Daughter's gymnastics
Groceries
Gas
Emergency Prep (we've budgeted out an amount each month to build up our 72 hour kits)


Wants List:

Eating Out
Gifts
Date Nights
Deals I see and usually buy
Misc Random Stuff
Clothing (I love to buy the girls clothes. It's usually on sale, but it always adds up)
Books (I've been really wanting to buy Nook books, but I will stick with the library-It's free!)
Netflix


Step 9 is to spend money on the Needs list only. Step 10 is to Think About what you can buy rather than what you can't, especially in discouraging times. Step 11 she suggests Becoming Immersed in a Community of Like-Minded People. On step 12 instead of Attacking My Debt I will be sending all my money into savings at the end of each month. Step 13 & 14 is to Be Committed and Continue to the end date. And of course step 15 is to Be Proud of yourself and what you've accomplished.

My family will be starting this February 1st and I am super excited. A few things that I've thought about are what about birthday gifts and dates? Well as she mentions that they will all be homemade or re-gifting gifts. I think for most it's important that people recognize it, so a card will just have to do this year. As for dates we still have numerous gift cards left over from our birthdays last year and Christmas, so we will be using those!

Wish us luck :)

September Menu

September Menu

This is the first month I’ve done it this way, so I'm sure there will be some editing to future months.

I first went over all our schedules (mine, hubs, and girls) then planned

out a type of dinner that would work best each night.

Monday: Simple (something I could make and Shaun could take to school)
*Hubs takes 4yr old to gymnastics this night and then goes straight to class*

Tuesday: Crockpot
*We are both gone all day and get home right before dinner*

Wednesday: Lite
*I go to Zumba this night, so I want to eat something super lite when I get
home*

Thursday: Pre-made
*We are both gone all day, so I’d like to have something previously made and
frozen that we can just toss in the oven*

Friday: Husband's choice
*He is home before I get off work, so he gets to decide and make dinner*

Saturday: Out or leftovers
*We usually are out and about this day, so we get to decide to eat out or
leftovers* (We don’t eat out more then twice a month and usually use some
kind of coupon.)

Sunday: -
*I don’t plan anything because we go to in-laws a lot this day or we are
starving because we get out of church at 2 and then aren’t hungry for dinner*

Next I got out a calendar and planned different meals for the days of the
week that we’d be home. There were a few days that we had special events
or knew we’d be gone that night, so I didn’t plan meals for those. So when I
got done I had; for example, 4 Monday meals, 5 Tuesday, 3 Wednesday…and I
also planned special things like desserts for after family night. I also wanted to start making breakfast on Sunday mornings, so I planned those out
as well.

Mondays:
Corn & Zucchini Quesadillas
BBQ Chicken Ranch Wraps
Bean & Cheese Burritos
BBQ Chicken Salad

Tuesdays:
BBQ Chicken Crockpot meal
Potato Soup
Chicken Fajitas
Enchilada Soup

Wednesdays:
Homemade Pizzas
Spaghetti Squash w/marinara sauce
Stack Dinners

Thursdays:
Enchiladas
Pasta Bake (which was awful!)
Sweet & Sour Chicken & Rice
Taco Soup

Fridays:
Red Beans & Rice
Pork, veggie, & fruit
Hamburger Spins

Sunday Breakfasts:
Pancake Bites
Cinnamon Rolls & Fruit
Crepes

Family Night Desserts:
Baked Churros
Brownies
Arroz con leche

After that I went through all the recipes and made a list of ingredients I would
need. I wrote out all the ingredients and then went through my kitchen and
crossed off the stuff I already had. I finished up my list adding breakfast
stuff to the list (cereal, oatmeal…) and lunch stuff and then the usual (bread,
milk, eggs, fruit) and I planned a store trip when my hubby could watch our
youngest and went to the store! I picked up most things for the entire month. We made a few extra trips for fruit & veggies and then I didn't plan well for my daughter's bday, so I had to get stuff for that. Total for the month we spent $266 for our family of four.

This may sound like it took a long time, but the planning was like maybe 2
hours on a Sunday afternoon. (recipes of things I hadn’t previously made I got
from pinterest, so those were all in one place and easy to look up) And I made sure I went to the store on a separate day, so I wasn’t too overwhelmed or exhausted.

Here are pictures of our meals:

Red Beans & Rice w/Squash and Zucchini

Breakfast: Cinnamon Rolls w/Fruit

Chicken Fajitas

Pork Chops, Potatoes, & Veggies

Homemade Pizza

Corn & Zucchini Quesadillas

Pasta & Salad

BBQ Chicken Salad

Sweet & Sour Chicken w/Rice and Cabbage & Carrots

Taco Soup

New Orleans Vacation

New Orleans

June 30th-July 5th, 2012 

(Jackson Square)

My hubby and I had a great vacation in New Orleans. I think what stuck out to me the most was the people. I miss them. Seriously. Everybody was so friendly and laid back. I feel like we did okay staying within our budget. However, I did learn a few things about a good vacation budget:


Make a budge- We had a certain amount in mind. I put savings away from my Christmas bonus from the previous year for this vacation, so we took the cash with us and wanted to only spend that on everything (minus any big tours if we decided to do one). We didn't quite succeed on this as planned because...


Research Food Costs- We figured we'd spend quite a bit on food, but not quite as much as we did. The biggest problem was we planned on buying stuff from a grocery store and eating at the hotel (came with a kitchenette). However, we could not find one until the our last day there! And it was still kind of pricey...so we had to eat out for every meal AND that got expensive.


Try to stay away from tourism- There were some tours (plantation/alligator/cemetery) that looked fun, but not worth the money. I'd recommend doing them if you really really want to because you'll regret it if you don't (I learned this by skipping a broadway show in New York), but I had already visited a plantation in South Carolina, so instead we just walked around a neighborhood and rode the trolley down St. Charles to see some of the unique houses, which was awesome. Instead of going on an alligator tour in the 100 degree humid weather we tried some alligator on a pizza :) Not quite the same, but worked. Instead of taking a cemetery tour for WAY too much money we hopped the trolley and walked around ourselves. That way we could go at our own pace. I even did some internet searching before about the cemeteries. It was perfect and saved us a ton of $$.

Don't always take the easy way- Instead of taking the easy taxi from the airport to the hotel we decided to save $30 and take the bus. Yes, it took us 3 times as long, but we got to see some of the city and meet some great people! We waited about an hour for the city bus, which we had to change buses and wait for another (20 min), but we met this awesome guy from Australia who backpacks all over the place and this other guy from Colorado. Then we walked with our luggage to catch the trolley (30 min). It was hot and we were drenched in sweat, but I wouldn't change what we did. We felt like we were really getting to know New Orleans. However, we knew better and took the taxi back to the airport when we left-didn't want to risk missing our flight!

Our New Car

We really did it. We sold our 2008 Nissan Xterra

(this is a pic from when we first bought it ::sniff::)

And we bought a 2006 Mazda 6

(No this is not our house)

And Yes we miss our lovely Xterra, BUT this is what made us reach our goal of getting out of debt!! That right there made it all worth it. And besides the Mazda is starting to grow on us...not to mention it saves us $$$ on gas.

A little history...

Shaun and I met in 2006 coming from very different backgrounds. He was born and raised in Utah very much into hunting, camping, anything outdoors. And I came from So Cal very much into the beach, shopping, camping in a log cabin-not on the actual ground. We met at Los Hermanos both working as servers, but only worked together for a few weeks before I changed jobs and went to Applebees. It was just enough time for us to meet and start eating lunch together with friends at college during classes. We married shortly after...I'll spare you the sappy details.

So Shaun had grown up handling money rather well, but had no credit cards, which equals no credit. I on the other hand had many credit cards (too many) and therefore lots of credit. Luckily we compromised a bit and met in the middle when we got married. After paying off any remaining balances we threw away and cut up all my old credit cards and Shaun and I got one "emergency" card together through our bank. It was a great decision for us because we rarely use it and pay it off quickly, but it will help us keep building credit (I think, I don't really know).

A few months after we were married we went to a sales pitch for WorldMark just expecting to get the free thing at the end. Well we ended up buying. Married couple financial mistake #1 (investing in timeshare knowing nothing about it). However, we do use it every year and love it and were able to pay it off last year with our tax return, but we do pay a monthly maintenance fee for it. I don't think we've saved any money by buying into it, but we always know that we'll be staying at a great resort when we travel and we LOVE to travel.

September 2008 we were due with our first baby girl, so naturally we thought we needed a "family" car. Married couple mistake #2 (buying brand new car). We bought a 2008 Nissan Xterra. LOVE LOVE LOVED it, however, being a brand new car it lost its value almost immediately after driving it off the lot. Also put us in a lot of debt, which I justified in my mind because it was for a car. I've learned since.

We of course had our debt for schooling, which compared to others was not bad at all. We applied for financial aid and grants, which were both awarded to one of us leaving us only paying for the others. We were also attending a State College, which turned into a University my last semester making our tuition much cheaper. We did take our time paying off the student loans because the interest did not incur until a while after I graduated, so we paid on other debts first.

We had our second baby girl in 2010, which we very lucky to have military benefits, so we did not go into any debt on either girls.

And at this moment we are COMPLETELY DEBT FREE!! It took some time, but I definitely think it was well worth it. Now on to the savings...