I can't believe that I haven't posted in October yet. Between the baby teething, me getting a stomach bug, and trying to get through a lot of CRAP at work, I can barely formulate sentences during the day let alone put anything together anyone would care about reading (Random side note- can I do that on a good day? Ha!) But I am slowly recovering, catching up, and getting used to functioning on 6 interrupted hours of sleep each night so here it is....
One of the most important things we found when we started to do the "Dave Ramsey" plan was to take a look at our budget and actually stick to it. We've made some tweaks along the way but for the most part, our monthly budget remains mostly the same. Some things I'm not proud of lately is that we added a cleaning lady at $40 a week but the stress relief (and decrease in fights between my husband and I) it has added to our lives is definitely worth the few months it will put off being debt free. AND we paid off another student loan this month so I think we are doing okay... that's item number THREE off our debt snow ball for the year.
Everyone's budget is going to look different. But here is an outline of the things that are in OUR budget. I think going through and making sure everything (even the smallest thing) is on there is one of the most important things.
Home:
House
Payment
Utilities/Gas
Internet
Cell
Phone
Netflix/Hulu
Living
Expenses
Food
Jake
Household
Products
Gas
Haircuts
Daycare
Cleaning
Student
Loans
Miscellaneous
Payments:
Fun
Money
Giving
Total
Expenses:
Checking: Leave in X amount
Cash: Need X amount
Savings
Debt
Snowball
Emergency Fund
Future
Purchases
Haircuts $ /month
Oil
Changes $ /month
Vacation $ /month
Home
Repairs $ /month
Registration for
Cars $/month
Insurance $ /month
Gifts $ /month
Thinks that are highlighted in yellow are things that we pay cash for... ALSO one of the most important steps we took towards getting out of debt. Once the cash is gone, we are done spending things in that category or those things come out of our fun money (unless we completely forgot to budget for a big purchase item-case in point, buying things to babyproof the house).
The Future Purchases under Savings are things that come up throughout the year but we budget for the entire year. So for example if we spent $1200 on gifts throughout the year, we would put $120 into that category a month. And then when we buy a gift, the money is there and we just deduct it from there. Makes birthdays and holidays a lot less stressful.
So there it is--our budget and paying cash. Two years, 1 month in and we have already paid off half of our debt that we had. Progress!
