Day 6 of UFM is getting finances in order. While I do feel like I currently have a system that works for me, there is so much room for improvement that I'd like to do. It seems overwhelming to do at this time. Two things I did implement are Snafu's suggestion to pay cash for everything and tracking everything spent. It'll take some manipulation to get all the payments in an appropriate order to align with our paychecks, but I did start immediately paying off anything charged to the cc's with money in our accounts. I will continue to do this and pay minimums on all accounts until we have $1000 in Savings and can live off of last month's income. We used to live off last month's income, but fell behind with the house and DH's job change resulting in less income. Currently, we pay the mortgage from last month's income, and everything else gets paid from income within the month. It'll take a few months to get to this point and will hinder my debt payoff, but I think it's an important first step if I want to get our finances back on track.
As for the spending yesterday, DH's inspection was free, so the only spending was the cat litter. I failed on two accounts with that expense. First, I also needed dog food, so that will be another spending day, but I'm trying to put it off and will get it when another expense comes up. We're running pretty low though and feed 2 large dogs, so I suspect I will have to cave early next week. I plan to root through ads/do some planning, so I can go ahead and get some of the party foodstuffs with the $50 allotted to groceries for next week. The other flop associated with the cat litter is that I had a $5 PetSmart coupon. It expired on the 2nd which is a bummer because had I planned ahead, I could have used it taking ~30% off the $16 price. I'm terrible about using those PetSmart coupons...
Back to the UFM, our other money saving strategies are going well. We've been sticking to our 5 minute showers and kept the house at 60. It's been challenging, but it's also become kind of a game. DH gets one 10 minute shower at some point this month for his birthday. I've had multiple layers on at all times this week. We have an electric fireplace space heater, but it makes a disturbing noise when on, so we can't run it. I have to look into troubleshooting because if we had it, the basement would be much more bearable.
The last bit of news is that the hot tub is being looked at today. The cost for the visit is $150 which I've already budgeted. DH's dad had connected it, but when we filled it and tried to turn it on, it didn't work. My FIL rechecked the power and everything is good there, so it seems to be an issue with the unit itself. Really hoping we just missed something simple (like the time we tried filling it without plugging the drain plug). It would stink to have gotten a hot tub that's broken. Since it had already been drained, we took them at their word when they said it still ran fine. Their reasoning for getting rid of it was that they were moving to a townhouse and the backyard was small and afforded little privacy. I haven't yet discussed it with DH, but I'm thinking if it's anything more than $200 to get it up and running, then we'll just wait on it.
Free Inspection, Cat Litter Flop, and Other Stuff
January 6th, 2017 at 02:10 pm
January 6th, 2017 at 02:18 pm 1483712310
January 6th, 2017 at 02:27 pm 1483712828
January 6th, 2017 at 03:16 pm 1483715761
January 6th, 2017 at 05:24 pm 1483723499
January 6th, 2017 at 09:26 pm 1483737976
January 10th, 2017 at 02:33 am 1484015611