SunShay

Are you ready?  Did you plan this year ahead of time?  Did you save up?  Or is "planning" using a credit card and paying it off for the next year. Our family hasn't used credit cards personally to charge any item at all since 2001!!!!!  And I'm still paying them off.  Can you imagine the Christmas presents and interest I've paid? This year and in previous years, since discovering Dave Ramsey, we've created a savings account for Christmas.  Any type of expense that is not monthly like Christmas, Auto Repairs, Vacations, or Insurance, I've created a "sinking fund".  In this fund I put a 12th of the expense every month.  So if the insurance is $175 a year, then I divide that by 12 and transfer $15 a month into a sinking fund.  Then when the bill comes due, it doesn't put a $175 hole in my monthly budget! We do this for Christmas too.  A 12th of the Christmas budget goes into the sinking fund every month, so that when November gets here w...

Our Weekend Round Up:  Well a big budget buster came when I accidently (I guess?) scheduled two payments for the same card.  That was a $344 oops.  Not good.  Well, good that that much debt is gone, bad because it is so close to Christmas and I had already budgeted that $344 for other items. Work was a bit  hurried because we had early dismissal at school this week which meant I picked up the kids 2 hrs early all week.  That's 10 hours of work I lost.  I made a up a bit on Friday afternoon, but still am looking forward to three regular days next week and then Thanksgiving!  The good news is the "big" check came in from our client and that make our bank account fat and happy for a while! I love Thanksgiving!  Seeing all of our family, relaxing by the fire, sleeping in, not having to clean the house or do dishes or laundry.  It's a nice vacation for me!  I also look forward to Black Friday shopping with DSIL.  We get all ou...

November 16th. Not enough planning tends to make us overspend.  When we have absolutely no cash on hand or don't budget for extra meals out during a late soccer game and don't bring food with us, we just spend and guilt follows. I haven't been looking forward a month and planning for that month's expenses very well.  I programmed Quicken to automatically populate our register with items that occur on a monthly basis.  Unfortunately, that type of planning is only good for the "perfect" budget from heaven scenario and doesn't take into account the extra things needed for certain months. My goal this month is to look ahead and plan the extra meals and excursions we will be doing and make sure the money is set aside ahead of time.  That way I will enjoy the time spent with family and not be nickel and diming everything because I didn't plan.

End of the check cycle today! Tomorrow morning our account will be fat again. I had to transfer money from savings twice this weekend to keep up with our random food spending. $40 here, $40 there. Entertainment and dining is banned this week! I have to make up some of that so that I can put it back in the sinking fund. It is not a fund for eating! I need it for the accountant, dmv, life ins, and pet expenses. Luckily I think our car repair hole has been plugged. I got rid of the Volvo and even though I have a huge bill that I still need to pay from the last of the repairs, I know that will be gone in six months or so. $12,269 in work for the darn thing, which includes multiple tire replacements/alignments, oil changes/tuneups, one warranty work $1144. This does not include all the covered warranty work done prior to 2008 that was covered! I've got to sit down and plan for soccer and baseball coming up, as well as start another sinking fund for Halloween and birthday expenses for ne...