16 years later....

      I can finally say I am credit card balance free!!!!  Not debt-free, but we are making some progress! At about the age of 20 I realized how EASY it was to get a credit card, and how FUN it was to use it. Even though I was a single mom in college working as a waitress, I had my hair done regularly, brand name clothes, and dined at fabulous restaurants.  HOW could I afford that? V-I-S-A and her sly cousins; namely Victoria's Secret, Express, NY and Company, you name the store, I had the card. And if I had the card I used it.  And if the money was there, I paid the bill. If it wasn't, I played it like Vegas and let it ride.  This has been a well-taught lesson I will NEVER forget. I am still dealing with consequences of actions sixteen years later.
      However, today I have HOPE.  Meeting number two with our money coach will have enough for me to work on and blog about for weeks and it is a beautiful day here in Florida.  We have a reserved deck with food and drinks at the minor league baseball fields tonight courtesy or my teacher's union, and so I have to keep this short and sweet.
      Today, we were able to pay our large Visa balance in full, as well as a consolidation of a few medical bills by taking out a personal loan.  The terms are five years, at 9.24%, but we are budgeting to pay double the payments and finish in 2.5 years.  That will be an interest savings of about $550 per year (an extra half of a paycheck!) and $1500 saved for the remainder of the loan if I maintain the paid off in 2.5 years plan. Can you say "ecstatic"??? I can and I am. If you can resonate with the monkey-on-your-back Visa like I have loathed for years, you should give this option a try.
    Some other juicy tidbits from our meeting I will be posting when it is not 90 degrees and sunny on a long weekend....

• Check out creditkarma.com---It gives you a free credit score, and my favorite part was the report card feature detailing where your credit is suffering and excelling. Bonus? My score was 40 points higher than the bank said it was two weeks ago.  I am wondering if adding my name to my husband's cards is already paying off? Or if old marks just happened to drop off? Or, if it is an accuracy issue. I will be checking again and checking often.
• Open another savings account that you do not touch, and keep as true savings.  I opened mine today with $5 and am going to add money I save via coupons/sales/ect. to set aside as evidence my frugal ways are benefiting our family. I will be posting more on this soon.
• BUMP UP the amount you put in your retirement account.  I talked to an old co-worker who retired a year ago today, and she has me MOTIVATED to retire in my 50's like her. You will not regret saving for retirement.
• Look closely at your paystubs for any other "fat" you can trim.  I want my $25/paycheck I have been paying to the teacher's union and will be leaving the union soon.

Our Real Motivation

    Our kids hopped on their bikes tonight, squeezing the last drips out of a gorgeous Florida spring day.  My husband had lowered the seat on my daughter's free bike scored last night and it was certainly a perfect fit.  I watched her a bit and then crept back in the house to prepare one of the new recipes I had shopped for on Saturday.  It was a winner, turkey meatballs with tomato and mozzarella cheese squished inside, served over noodles and marinara sauce.  My newly licensed driver took one of the littles to the library to pick out some new books, which both littles climbed up into my son's top bunk to read before bed.  A strange leak from the minivan sent my husband to the auto parts store for some free advice and a extra part they had lying around.  After finishing some cute end-of-the year photos for my students at school and cleaning the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of wine and enjoyed the many successes of the day. Tomorrow is a Friday, and I am looking forward to movie night tomorrow (I have a free Redbox code), Saturday brings our money coach meeting (which I believe will have some exciting news!) plus a Jacksonville Suns game that night (free for the whole family, including food, from my teacher's union).  Sunday will be church followed by a trip to the beach (completely free, huge perk of living near the coast), and Monday will be a Memorial picnic/pool party with our best friends (for the cost of lots of corn on the cob, a dessert, and beverages).  But this is what is funny to me; these things are the things I post as ways to enjoy life and spend less.  People might think we do them because we are cheap or free, and they would be wrong. We do them because this is our life. This is what we enjoy. And tonight, at this outlet sale kitchen table I believe I posted about months ago, there is no where else I would rather be. I hope you can all say the same, sitting, reading this, wherever you might be. Enjoy the little things this upcoming weekend!

Free To A Good Home....Beautiful Words!

        There is no such thing as a free kitten. Agreed.  However, keeping your eyes open for other free items (that are not alive) is a way to enhance your life without budging your bank account.  Tonight, we dropped our kiddos off at their Wednesday night gymnastics classes.  Walking through the lobby was a rush of putting my daughter's hair up, getting shoes into the cubbies, and I paid no attention to a bike parked right in the front lobby.  Soon, I realized my daughter's water bottle was still in the car, so I rushed out to get it.  Doing this forced me again through the lobby where we saw the bike seen below, along with the note, "Free to a good home" This bike just happened to be a girls bike, with a kickstand, and a Schwinn, nonetheless.  The seat was up a bit too high,  but can easily be lowered to my girl's perfect height.  Confession, someone easily could have just taken this bike to resell online.  But my daughter actually needs a bike, as her Disney Princess bike she received as a Christmas Gift two years ago now has its training wheels removed with no kickstand to keep it up.  She has also grown considerably from then four, to her now six and a half.  You may recall, my son recently upgraded his bike via a $6.99 Diego bike found nearly new at Goodwill. Now, my daughter has upgraded, too.  I imagine tomorrow night's free family fun will be a bike ride after dinner!
        So keep your eyes open for things people are giving away. We actually keep a free table at my work for people to place goodies for grabs.  My son's daycare has a free table as well.  Emails are another big way people give away their goods in the workplace, and I have even seen Facebook posts offering up items (although they usually aren't in my state!)  Try to pay it forward by passing on your quality items to a new owner....for example, I have a coworker at work who is going to inherit some boy things for her new baby boy to be from my three year old's clothing collection he has outgrown.  Maybe it is time for you to create a free table at your school or workplace, and maybe you can start the trend to  find some things for free you would have had to buy anyways.  I am certainly happy I will not need be bike shopping for a while!

                                                                        

Have You Enjoyed Your Kids Today?

Working outside the home is necessary for this mama, but like all working moms, I feel guilt over the time and attention I spend away from my little children.  Since I cannot change the need to work (although MANY stay-home-moms have tried) and truly, I enjoy my work, I need to bring back the balance.  How I do that is by taking time every evening to enjoy my children.  Honestly, I could enjoy my children spending money! I would love to take the kids out to dinner, or a movie, Chuck E. Cheese, or an ice cream outing...I really would love to.   But we are competing to win this financial race and so we are choosing not to spend freely.  Instead, we are finding free, or cheap family fun every night.  This week, we have done the slip-n-slide Sunday, before bed games on Monday, and tonight, a 100-piece puzzle.  The time is precious to me because you can see the pure joy on my kids' faces. They love having "mom-time" and attention.  The dishes can wait until the kids get into bed and so they did.  But now, my bed is calling, my kitchen is clean(ish) and my kids are snug in bed knowing their mom had fun with them tonight (and every night!)

Better Than Money??? Time!

Lately my blog has been finance heavy--absolutely due to the Money Makeover we are competing in, but even before that, the stress and pressure of making our budget balance (without pulling out a credit card) seemed to take a lot of our time and attention.  However, today is a good day to refocus and remember the most important things in life are not things. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed. As the shirt I wore to work today states, "Your life is your message to the world. Make it count." which is a homage to one soul gone too soon.  This past Sunday, our pastor's wife shared her decision to leave Facebook and I felt many of the same things she shared.  Staring at others' highlight reels on Facebook as you compare it to your behind the scene tour leads to nothing positive.  Although I am not ready to go Facebook free, I can see the enormous drain on my too little time.  I don't want to miss my children's youth staring at screens.  For now, I plan to limit my daily time on the computer to a minimal amount.  I also plan to go through the settings and limit the feeds of many individuals who do not promote what I hold dear to me  hiding their posts, lessening my time to read my newsfeed.  Typically, I try not to spend much time on the computer/smartphone when my children are awake---especially when they want to play with me!  I can't make my children grow slower, and I can't get these moments back.  There is an idea I love, and I will be  making this for my own children this weekend hoping to be a reminder of this very post.

How To Make a Visual Reminder
1. Get a clear, glass Mason jar.
2. Write your child's name on the jar.  If you have multiple children like me, you will need a jar for each of them.
3. Do some math...52 x the number of years until they graduate high school. (for example, Danica, my oldest, would be 52, Kayleigh is 6 so 52x12= 624, Levi is almost 4, so 52x14=728.
4. The product (benefit of being a teacher, I remember what a product is! The answer when you multiply, if you forgot!) represents the number of pieces of candy you will put in the jar now. It represents how many weeks you have left to make every moment count.
5. Take out a piece every week to maintain the relationship and to remind yourself this time is not forever. You might want to eat the candy, or simply throw away, especially 10 years down the line.

If you are opposed to candy (14 year old candy...yuck?) think of other representations you could use from the craft store, like beads or stones, ect.

I will post my children's jars later this weekend after visiting the craft store so you can see more visually what this could look like.

Now, I am going to shut my computer, and stay off it for the rest of my evening.  I hope this post spoke to you and is used for positive changes with our too little time. Good Night!

How to Be Excited About Groceries

1. Read your favorite cookbooks. Choose a few recipes to try this week for something new.

2. Dig in your freezer, peek in your fridge, poke through your pantry; taking an inventory of what you already have and need to use up.

3. Write a list for what you will need to complete a weekly meal plan.

4. Speed clip coupons, clipping only the coupons you are about to use on this trip to the store, or might possibly use on this trip to the store.

5. Shop using your list, but allow yourself to divert due to unexpected buy one get ones or sales. 

        Shopping tonight was actually a pleasure (funny because that is our local grocery store's motto).  I do most of my family's  shopping at Sam's Club because frankly I can't beat the prices.  However, sometimes the large quantities really add up in my cart and I can't get the variety I need. Lately, I have been a bit bored with food--probably for this very reason.  Starting my grocery list with a cookbook read-through really got the ball rolling on what types of food to buy this week.  It also helped me clip coupons quickly with out an overwhelming pile of coupons in my hand at the store.  But the best part?  I only spent $77.xx for my family of five to eat for 5 or 6 days.  Our budget is $125/week, but this was just set today after meeting with our money coach.  It appears groceries in our budget are impossible to track due to combining purchases with household items, clothing, ect.  We are going to track groceries-only for a month and see if this goal is realistic.  But for now, I get to be excited for a good start to groceries for the week!  I used about $10 in coupons and had lots of store BOGOs in my cart as well. The whole process only took and hour and a half as well, done after bedtime so I didn't miss family time on a Saturday night.  Here's to hoping my family loves some of the new recipes we are trying this week too!

Do You Know Your Spouse's Credit Score?

           This morning I had a most unpleasant surprise.  My husband and I had our first meeting with our money coach for the Vystar Money Makeover competition. We went over our current debts, our spending this past week and a half, and our credit scores.  Shockingly, my husband has a much better score than I do!  What is amazing about this is we have been been married nearly nine years, we combine all our income and bills, and truly we should have similar scores.  What is especially crazy is that I PAY the bills and do the budget. How could that be??!
              What we discovered is we have five credit cards, but only one carries a balance.  My name is only one card (with a terrible, close to maxed out budget), and my husband's name is on the other four (with no balance, or a balance that is paid in full each month)  . My name, unfortunately for me, happens to be on a nearly maxed out Visa (which is chilling in my freezer, not being used, and on an aggressive as I can be payment plan).  To lenders, my husband looks like he has a lot of credit available to him that he is not using. What I look like to lenders, is like I have a small amount of credit available because my card is close to maxed out. What is absurd, of course, is that we are equals financially in our household and our scores should be similar.  There is no my card, his card, my account, his account in reality. But according to the credit bureaus, apparently there is.
              The fix is easy, and has already been done.  Calls were made to each lender. My husband added me as an authorized user on all the cards in his name. This should improve my credit score significantly.   In about two months, I am hoping to recheck the credit scores and be more equally yoked.
              Although the contest we are in does not award a prize for biggest credit score improvement, credit scores impact how much it costs for your home, car, insurance and certainly low credit traps you making it oh so easy to stay poor.
              So of course, my advice to you is check your credit scores with your spouse.  I am hoping you do not experience what I did this morning (embarrassing!) but on the off chance you do, here's to hoping this maneuver can help your situation, too.