One Step At A Time

We have had to add a few more things to the debt snowball. The new Total Debt amount is $21,625.22 so that leaves the Total Remaining at $20,637.89. Three debts got added to the snowball, and two of them we knew were coming and we were just waiting on the final tally to come in. See back in May, our daughter got sick and she had to spend 3 days in the hospital and she had to have a procedure done. After the insurance paid their part there was $1,403.00 left to pay. Thank God for insurance! The third bill is one we forgot about. Felicia was attending a court reporting school here in Dallas that we were paying for on credit (student loans). The last quarter she attended she dropped early because she was in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy and it was hard for her to maneuver with her steno machine. As a result of dropping early, the student loan did not pay for the classes and the school is now charging her for it ($1,508.00). It looks like if we pay the minimums we can have our deb...

It has been a tough week for us and I don't think we are out of the woods yet. We spent every day this week except for Tuesday at the hospital with my daughter and I have been out of work the whole time as result. Finally we are home and she seems to be doing better but we are still waiting for some test results. We are praying that she is better and that the test will come back negative. We are also thankful for all the thoughts, prayers, and encouraging words our family and friends sent our way. As a result of being out of work for the whole week, I will not be getting paid for it. Unfortunately, I do not have any more sick time to use at work and we will have to be careful with every penny from now on. We pray this will be a small setback that we can recover from quickly. Knowing a storm is coming and not being fully prepared is a little scary. It has made us realize how important it is to get our finances in order as fast as we can. If we had a fully funded emergency f...

I have not written an entry in a long time, because it has been hard to find time since Maya was born. She was born 02/02 and weighed 7 lbs 7 oz. She is the prettiest little girl you have ever seen with thick black hair. We have been doing pretty good with our money, we only dipped into savings once and that was when we came home from the hospital. We may need to dip into a little bit in a couple of days with the health insurance being due but that is what it is there for. Felicia and I are looking into attending one of the local Financial Peace University Classes in our area. I am really excited about the thought of it. Following Dave Ramsey since July has allowed us to enjoy every moment with our daughter without having to worry about money to much and we wanted to see what else can happen when continue with the rest of the plan. We still have a small problem of eating out, but we are getting better each month. Got to get back to the kids!

So far it has been a horrible start to the New Year as far as budgeting goes. I am not trying to make excuses, but we need to find out why we are doing so bad. I think I know...we are getting anxious about the birth of our daughter. Felicia has been feeling bad the last couple of weeks and this week she has been having irregular contractions. We keeping coming up with excuses not to cook or to buy something we really don't need. Deep down we know we are just trying relieve stress or make ourselves feel better at that moment. Now is the time to stop and tighten the ropes a little bit. Felicia has stopped working two weeks before we planned, but the good news is that we did so good in savings that we have enough in an emergency fund to survive. Thanks for the advice on that one, Dave Ramsey! We stockpiled some cash and now we need to be careful in how we spend it. It would be a shame to do so well and then manage those funds poorly. Even though we have done poorly this mont...