December 2014 Debt Update

Holy moly schmoley you guys. I haven't been this excited to share a debt update in ages. You see, a crazy thing happened over the last 6 weeks. We paid off the Tires, LB's card, AND got started on the two biggest credit cards we had. HOLY GUACAMOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since I am so pumped about all this debt progress, we are going to have a money week here on the blog. That's right. In the middle of DECEMBER we are talking budgeting and money and shiz is gonna get real. :) Hold on to your overpriced pants y'all. In October this was the scenario:

Plus the tires with a balance of $-775. So our total debt at the end of October (one year in to FPU) was actually

October 2014:  $-8,635.28.

Our goal by mid-November/beginning of December was to be at

November goal: $-7027.61!

As of this morning this is where we are:

That's right y'all we blew right past that goal by $814! The tires are paid off, LBs card is paid off, Bank of America, Best Buy, Home Depot, Amex! WOOOOOOOOOT!  We are for real FINALLY on the last two debts in our debt snowball. THE LAST TWO!

We have passed the $10,000 mark people!

When we started FPU we owed

$-17,000 in credit card debt alone!

To have that debt down to

$-6,212.87

Means that in the last year  and two months we have paid off

$10,787.13 !!! In DEBT!

Areas for Improvement:

LB has been kicking butt at work and we are taking most of his increased commissions to make bigger debt payments. We aren't taking all of the extra because well, we're human. I'd like to say that we will take more of his increased commissions to put towards debt, but he is going to start a retirement account with some of it, life insurance with some of the rest, and buying concert tickets and trips and nonsense with the rest. I'd like to knuckle down on the nonsense portion, but we haven't done a TON of treat yo'self stuff in the last year. Don't worry, we aren't going crazy.

Advice

Here is my incredibly non-technical advice from Dave for the holidays:

"Remember: Even at Christmas you must act your wage, you aren't in Congress."

We have put $40 per paycheck in a cash envelope for Christmas since the beginning of the year. Next year we will kick it up to $60 because we've got more kids and babies and friends to buy for... plus about 6 very special birthdays in December as well. It is just a lot. A LOT A LOT. So we're gonna kick our budget up in that category.

What are you and yours doing to make Christmas less financially stressful? (*In my never really all that humble opinion, getting financially strapped is just NOT the point of the holidays.)

*Remember to enter the city print giveaway! Only a few days left!

How to Get Your Spouse on Board with a Budget

When LB and I started FPU over a year ago, we were both in pretty bad shape financially. I also had no idea how to leverage the income from my new job to best create a financial future for us. The VERY first thing I did was sign us up for FPU. I had talked about wanting to do this class for a while and as soon as I saw that Sam's church was doing the class, I wrote the $90 check and away we went. I straight up forced LB to go. It wasn't phrased as a question. It was a see-this-look-in-my-eyes-we-are-doing-this kind of thing. The first four weeks of the class were BRUTAL. So much blaming, and arguing, and self/other shaming. I was EMBARRASSED that I had accumulated SO much credit card debt and LB had certain other financial liabilities he had ignored for a good long while. Plus, we had a wedding a year away and no solid plan to pay for it. It was so so so so so so so so so hard. It is STILL so so so so hard. We fought on the way home in the car pretty much every night of class those first four weeks ("pretty much every night" is code for every. single. night).

LB has this thing where he hates to be told what to do. And his second thing is that he hates to be told what to do by me A LOT. His third thing is that he is a classic spender. There is no blame here in him being a classic spender because I am NOT a classic saver either. Dave says that there is usually one saver and one spender. I like to spend as much as LB does. But years of being totally financially responsible for myself have FORCED me to become the saver. Just as I posted recently, I get the urge to spend and it's pretty hard to ignore.

I also like to enforce double standards. I will shut LB down on spending and then proceed to spend myself on non-necessities that somehow feel like necessities at the time. I rationalize it all, but it's totally unfair. I also instantly switch to the defensive which parlays into my need to always explain WHY I deserve something. It's obnoxious.

These two paragraphs that gently describe our behavior are why we needed Dave. We needed someone to come in and break the stalemate. To TELL US what we were going to do. Period. And you know what? It worked. LB checks in with me on the budget after every paycheck. For example, he came home last week and asked if there was enough money in the budget for him to get his iPhone upgrade (spoiler alert: there was not). But I reworked a few things in November so that he could get back to a functioning ear piece in his phone. It will have to wait until November, but he knows we will get it done for him.

I manage the budget and tweak it and tweak it and tweak it. I am sure that I have saved our budget document over 750 times this last year. I change it A LOT.

To really get a full sense of our budgeting journey, I encourage you to check out our newly updated Budget tab. So tell me. How do you and yours manage the budgeting bull crap?