One Step At A Time

Felicia and I decided that when we become debt free and have a fully funded emergency fund, we are going on a debt free vacation to celebrate. A lot of listeners to Dave Ramsey call in to yell about being debt free and a lot of them talk about celebrating by going to Disneyland. We have never been and think it would be nice to take the kids when they are a little older. Right now, vacation is not in the budget, but we are getting started by adding in change that we get into a piggy bank that I made. All it is an old diaper wipes box that I painted green and wrote "Vacation Fund" on. I am thinking about updating the amount of the Vacation Fund once a month. We will see. Christmas was good for us. We did not buy any presents for any adults and stayed in our budget. My son got lots of presents from his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Felicia and I got the best present, not having to worry about how we are going to survive on December 26th. I do have to admit I was a

Spending is a Hard Habit to Quit!!! Felicia just asked me what we were going to eat for lunch, and I am trying to think about what I can go out and buy, because I just did the dishes and they are not even dry yet. I don't want to dirty them again. But a voice told me to cook the pizza we had in the freezer, I yelled out to her I can make pizza and she said she could make the salad. We sat down next to each other and I told her what my first thought was for lunch, but for some reason this lunch tasted really good. I think because it was a tasty, healthy, and guilt free lunch. I think we count this as a small victory, we did not buy lunch and we ate food that was in the house already paid for. I don't know how many times before, we would buy groceries and then throw most of it out. Spending is a Hard Habit to Quit!!!

Babe, I know I complain a lot about the budget and your new leader, Dave Ramsey, but I wanted you to know that I really do want to learn how to live on a budget and get better with our finances. Being able to take a vacation and not having to worry about paying the bills would be really nice, and I know we can do it. Just give me a little time. It's hard to adjust to not getting the kind of food I want all the time, especially when I am pregnant and craving things all the time! Maybe after Maya arrives, I'll be better :) I love you!!! Email written to Andres a few days ago I had a wonderful dream last night. We lived in a big, beautiful house and had a few friends over for a party. One of our friends mentioned something about being strapped for money and was worried about losing his house. Andres and I took him into a room that only had one piece of furniture in it, a dresser. We opened one of the drawers and there was bundles of money in it, and when we took some out, more of

Felicia looked at the bank account today and discovered we have not been sticking to the agreed budget. I know it was both of us. We both have been buying lunch, which is not in the budget. I think that was the big killer. We both feel really bad about it. We have been taking so many steps forward that I hate that we jumped back a little. These next two weeks we are going to try to keep a close eye on it. Knowing the problem now, we have to find a solution. For my part, I am going to ask around for ideas for easy brown bag lunches to take to work. We can't do a lot of lunch meat, because Felicia is pregnant and she can't have too much of it. I need to email mom, my aunt, and my cousin the chef to get ideas.

Lately, I have been trying to read different blogs and articles about personal finance. Looking at different programs, so far I like the Dave Ramsey approach. Some people write about how simplistic it is and if it is the right approach for these tough economic times. I am not a personal finance expert but I like the program. I like how you are able to accomplish little goals and that encourages you to keep going. When we finished Step 1, we were so excited and we even cheered out loud as we saw $1000.00 in our savings account. I have been wondering about others I know and if the program will work for them and some of them were interested but have not taken the first step. My mom, two sisters, and cousin and his girlfriend bought the book, but they haven't yet finished step one. I know my cousin and his girlfriend are now working towards it, they have sat down together and figured out what they want to accomplish. One of my sisters is tying to get it together now after she

For the past couple of months, I've been learning to sew. I found a book at Barnes N Noble about making sock dolls and I was inspired. I didn't start sewing with the intention of selling my creations. I started out wanting to feel closer to my mother and grandmother (they both make beautiful blankets and quilts) and I also needed the creative release of doing something with my hands. But today I actually made my first sell, a green monkey by the name of Neon . It happened because I made a sock monkey for my best friend and she started getting all kinds requests from people and asking where she got it from. A friend of hers said that she wanted a green monkey for her baby daughter so I said that I would see what I could come up with. Today, she went by to pick him up and my friend said that the woman fell in love with him and her whole face lit up when she saw him. I have to say that I'm a little sad to see him go but knowing that somebody appreciated him so much makes me fe

Man that was hard!!! The way we started budgeting was one pay period at a time. A day or two before we got paid I would sit down and figure out what needed to be paid, make a list and send it to Felicia to look at and review. She would tell me what she needed or wanted to buy and we would work it in. It has been working and it has allowed us to catch up on bills that we were behind on, but now it is time to move on to the monthly budget. Dave calls it the "Monthly Cash Flow Plan," I like that better. I sat down and went through every category and filled in what we needed to pay and what I thought we should budget and tried really hard to make sure our budget reflected our goals. Filled in our amount for monthly savings, rent, utilities, food, transportation, clothing, medical, personal, recreation (not much of that will be going on for awhile), and debt. When I was done I added it all up and plugged in our income and realized, it was still more than we make. Looked at

For a long time, we have been hunters and gatherers. We lived in the moment and when we were hungry, we went out and fed ourselves no matter the cost. We would spend an outrageous amount of money at restaurants, or going to the movies. There we plenty of times when we did not bat an eye at a dinner bill that was around $60. As we are getting older our mentality has changed a little, we are trying to become farmers . We are looking ahead and planning for the future. We have taken the seeds of our goals and planted them, now we have to continue to water it, and make sure to give it plenty of sunlight. We will get there, like farming it takes time and patience. Felicia is turning out to be a great farmer!!!! I am so glad I am working on this with Felicia. She is really trying hard to stick to it, there are times when I am like let's buy something to eat and she reminds me that we cannot do that. She was telling the truth when she said that now the question for dinner is, wha

She is right!!! I am not sure what it is, but when I get really stressed out the first thing I want to do is hide and not deal with anything. When we were engaged and moved in together, we put our finances together and tried to run our household. I know when I was young my mom handled the money and I saw how it would stress her out a lot, so I guess I thought I would let Felicia deal with it. We split it up 50/50, her job was to pay the bills and my job was to complain about having no money. Now, that is not working together. Since I did not where the money was going, I wanted to spend like we had all the money in the world. In the end, I realized it was not fair to Felicia. She had to keep track of all the bills, pay them on time, and when money was thin, deal with me complaining. Now we sit down before each pay day and spend the money before it is in the bank. We look at what bills are coming up, what we are going to spend on household things, but the very first thing we do

We have been on somewhat of a budget lately, thanks to Andres' fascination with Dave Ramsey, a financial guru that he listens to on the radio. Even though I am slightly sick of hearing Dave Ramsey's name, I have to say that his principles are working for us. We have put close to $2500 away in savings for when I am out on FMLA and I have to admit that it feels good to not even miss the money that we are putting away every time we get paid. We always make sure to pay ourselves first and then focus on the important bills, and then we pay the not so important bills (cable and DSL). We've also been eating at home a lot more often lately, and I was telling Andres that my mindset has changed from a couple of months ago. Whenever we were ready to eat dinner, I would always think, what are we going to go out and buy for dinner? Now I think, what are we going to go home and cook for dinner? We still splurge a little bit whenever we have a little bit of extra money, but it hasn't

Just went shopping again using the envelope system, this time there was money left over. A couple of weeks ago, we had to get 47 cents from Felicia's purse to cover the bill and did not get enough milk for the week. What a difference this time because I got everything I needed and still had $4.97 left. That is a little over $5.00 difference. This time I went to 3 stores to get the best prices. First was El Rio Grande Supermercado,$49.17, second was Tom Thumb, $10.49, and he last was Minyard Food Stores, $35.37. I am really excited because the total was under budget, $100.00 and I haven't even learned how to incorporate coupons into shopping yet. I have to admit I felt a little weird because while shopping I wrote down the price of everything on the list and walked around using my calculator. Everyone else seemed to know what they wanted and threw it in the cart. I saw kids waiting until their parents turned their backs to throw what they wanted in the cart too. If bein

Thinking ahead, Felicia and I started to discuss Christmas gifts. We have both decided that we will buy presents for the kids and not adults besides our parents. We are not planning on buying anything for our friends, my brother, my sisters, and cousins. This will keep our Christmas bill down and allow us to continue to work toward our goals. Felicia and I were talking money at lunch and we both realized that this topic is not a stressful conversation anymore. It does not end with me in a bad mood or her stressed out. We know we are still at the beginning stages of turning things around but we have hit the ground running. We pretty much have the two months of her income to cover expenses when she is out of work and we almost have the deductible for the hospital when the baby is born.

We are going to try to implement the envelope system. We are going to pull out cash for some of our budget categories and put those funds into their own envelope. We are using Gas, Grocery, Gift, and Blow$$$ categories so that we spend the cash instead of swiping our debit card. A lot of times, we don't realize how much we have spent until its gone and their is still stuff we wanted to buy with that money. This way when the money is being pulled out of the envelope and we see the Presidents leaving our hands, we can ask ourselves if this money is being spent wisely. I think it will come in handy for the groceries, because when I am at the store and I am heading for the checkout sometimes and I want to grab the Oreos or whatever my friend Little Debbie has just created. We will give it a try and see what happens. I know we will do good, because we feel bad when we mess up. Thursday night, we messed up. Well, to be honest it wasn't Thursday night when we messed up, it was

How did we get started? We looked at our bank statement and realized we spent almost $1000.00 eating out. A thousand dollars for us two and, at the time, a 15 month old baby, and we spent $500.00 on groceries, which we throw most of it way because we didn't eat at home. We started to cook more at home and put as much as we could in savings. Initially, our plan was to take 3 months to save. We figured to save 1000.00 in 3 months we needed to put away, 333.33 a month. That number looked huge to us, so we broke it down per paycheck and we decided to save $85.00 a check. We got paid 4 times a month between the both of us. As soon as the direct deposit hit, we transferred 85.00 to savings. What helped us save faster was not eating out and I got a bonus check from work and we put 200.00 away from that. We have not moved on to Baby Step Two, because we are expecting a baby. Felicia and I decided that we should probably save enough to help cover expenses because again she would no

My wife and I are expecting a baby girl in February. We are very excited and cannot wait to meet her and for her to meet her older brother. Naturally after we celebrated the good news, we started to think about how to prepare for this addition to our family. We looked around us and our home started to look even smaller than what it really is. Where are we going to put this stuff? How are going to afford all the new stuff? My wife and I would talk about our excitement and our worries. Of course, money is a concern. If we had the money, we can just go out and buy everything we need and buy a bigger house before the baby is born. Right now, we simply cannot afford it and that it is frustrating. The stress of it all was started to get me, so much that I started losing sleep over it. We don't have anything in savings, we have too much month at the end of the money. My energy level was starting to get sluggish, I started to show up late for work more and more. I started to que