Thursday, March 15, 2012
To spend or not to spend.....different for everyone.
I always finding it fascinating when others tell me what they spend their money on and what the don’t spend it on. So I thought I would share ours. I don’t spend money on paper towels (unless it’s getting them for my husband for on the road) because kitchen towels are very cheap and I can wash and reuse them, same with sponges I just buy wash clothes. My girls and I have long hair which is less up keep so we only get our hair trimmed about twice a year. I do get my hair permed and highlighted but the perm lasts all year and sense this is my first year getting highlights‘, I’m not sure how many times I will have to do them but I haven’t had them done sense October…..although I probably should. The only reason I got highlights is because I have very dark brown (black if you will) hair and I started going GREY!!!!!! I’m only just 28 years old, how did that even happen!?! Anyways it’s cheaper then dying all my hair. We don’t go out to eat very much at all, I’ll rephrase that, the girls and I don’t..the husband when he runs out of food that I have made him will eat out. We don’t travel a lot, little day trips here and there, but have decided until this house is done that there won’t be any big trips, which includes flying back home to see my family. That was a really hard decision for me, but life isn’t always fair and having my husband only home 3 days a month wasn’t fair either. I LOVE and am boarder line obsessed with reading frugal blogs and blogs about others getting out of debt and started coming down hard on myself last night because I read that a lot of them don’t have cable, landlines, cellpnones, coupon and shop at thrift stores…..ummmm I have all of those, I don’t coupon (I do for clothing and home projects) and you can’t find anything in our thrift store that is 40 min.’s away! I had gone for 8 months without satellite TV and only had netflicks and hulu plus, but it just hasn’t been working out as well has we had hoped it would, so this Sunday we are getting Dish TV but it will cost about the same as what we have been spending…yes I’m trying to justify it. And like I said we spend a lot of time at home and I would go crazy without the net and TV, that is my window to the rest of the world! I don’t coupon because we don’t buy the products that they have coupons for, I will write a post in the future about our groceries. We have a landline because we don’t have cell service in out area, the husband needs a cell and I have one for when I do leave town that cost $20 a month. I spend more money on natural beauty products for my girls and I (Husband wants nothing to do with it) because have had some skin problems and once I looked into what the products had in them I had a minnie wig out. And I will also go more in-depth about those in a future post as well. I don’t get manicure or pedicure, because I can do them myself for free and that is just to much up keep for me. Yes I am every mans dream :O) Neither one of us drinks or smokes. My closest friend lives 6 hours away, so I’m not spending money out with friends all the time. I’m not into designer bags or shoes…that saves a lot! As of right now my girls aren’t in any after school activities. We did have them in gymnastics and two made team…YIKES! That was a lot of running around and money, and not only that grades started slipping. They took the news of stopping it very well, they also can see the bigger picture better then most can. I can almost count on one hand how much of our furniture has been given to us, same with out appliances. One day I would love everything new for right now everything works, looks decent and works. With three kids and all the construction that goes on here, we thought best to wait to replace anything for awhile. We don’t have big over the top Christmas’s or birthdays, we make a budget and stick to them, we have one next month that I will post about. We are all so different with our money and what we choose to spend it on, and there isn’t a one size fits all. How about you? What is worth the money to your family and what isn’t?
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Financial Plan 2012
Our Financial plan for this year consists of paying off cc debt, medical bills and working more on “The Money Pit”. I have already paid some off, but will just start from what I have to pay off now.
CC Debt: 10k ( We have high hopes of paying this all off this year!) If not it wasn't from lake of trying, and it will be pretty close to be gone!
Medical Debt: Should be paid off next month
On to the house projects…We have already had some work done this year, which includes, having some electrical work done $80 (not our normal electrician,) Paid our contractor 2k for porch gutters, framing the kitchen/dinning room and master bathroom) I want to say that we paid him more and that he did more work then that, but I really can’t remember. I really should start writing these down! Also paid a guy to help with something that he needed a hand with $70. We had a plumber run the plumbing for the master bathroom (which was gutted before we moved in) that cost us over $300 to have done.
What we are having / hoping to have done this year on “The money pit”:
*Rip up the floors and beams in the living room, replace them and the supporting beam to the house ( that isn’t scary at all) And when I say replace I mean new beams and sub floor, we aren’t going to be able to afford new flooring for the living room this year. Our estimate for this is about $3k
*Have the electrical work done in the kitchen **Side note about our electrician** He lives down state PA and has a house here (camp) we take care of it and have housed his four wheelers in our garage in the summer and so he does our electrical work, it has taken time and it gets done when he has time and comes up this way….but it has saves us so much MONEY!!!! He said that he has most of everything that he needs to get the job done… lets go with $200 just in case.
* Dry wall the kitchen, Master bathroom and have some drywall fixed….Husbands father does it for a living so we will just have to pay for the materials, we should find out about how much that will cost this weekend.
*Kitchen cupboards, counter tops, have a pantry built or buy one. We really don’t know how we are designing the kitchen, husband should be coming home this weekend and we plan to take a trip to home depot and have them help us come up with one of two designs and we will pick the one that best fits in the budget. We hope to have most of the kitchen done for $5-6k we will see…lol
So there you have it...
This was the "The Money Pit" almost before...the porches are new in this picture. They were falling in and HAD to be taken care of ASAP...it only took us 4 years to get that done...ugh.....when your broke your BROKE!
CC Debt: 10k ( We have high hopes of paying this all off this year!) If not it wasn't from lake of trying, and it will be pretty close to be gone!
Medical Debt: Should be paid off next month
On to the house projects…We have already had some work done this year, which includes, having some electrical work done $80 (not our normal electrician,) Paid our contractor 2k for porch gutters, framing the kitchen/dinning room and master bathroom) I want to say that we paid him more and that he did more work then that, but I really can’t remember. I really should start writing these down! Also paid a guy to help with something that he needed a hand with $70. We had a plumber run the plumbing for the master bathroom (which was gutted before we moved in) that cost us over $300 to have done.
What we are having / hoping to have done this year on “The money pit”:
*Rip up the floors and beams in the living room, replace them and the supporting beam to the house ( that isn’t scary at all) And when I say replace I mean new beams and sub floor, we aren’t going to be able to afford new flooring for the living room this year. Our estimate for this is about $3k
*Have the electrical work done in the kitchen **Side note about our electrician** He lives down state PA and has a house here (camp) we take care of it and have housed his four wheelers in our garage in the summer and so he does our electrical work, it has taken time and it gets done when he has time and comes up this way….but it has saves us so much MONEY!!!! He said that he has most of everything that he needs to get the job done… lets go with $200 just in case.
* Dry wall the kitchen, Master bathroom and have some drywall fixed….Husbands father does it for a living so we will just have to pay for the materials, we should find out about how much that will cost this weekend.
*Kitchen cupboards, counter tops, have a pantry built or buy one. We really don’t know how we are designing the kitchen, husband should be coming home this weekend and we plan to take a trip to home depot and have them help us come up with one of two designs and we will pick the one that best fits in the budget. We hope to have most of the kitchen done for $5-6k we will see…lol
So there you have it...
This is what our "The Money Pit" looks like on the outside now :O)
New porches, siding on the house and garage, windows, new roofs on the porches and on our garage ( which is on the back of the pit) and also had insulation but under the siding because there wasn't any!! Oh also two new set of doors.
This was the "The Money Pit" almost before...the porches are new in this picture. They were falling in and HAD to be taken care of ASAP...it only took us 4 years to get that done...ugh.....when your broke your BROKE!
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Craptastic Day!!!
So I was going to write about our financial plan, but had such a craptastic day that I just had to vent a little. So today I burned some boxes in our burn barrel, like I have done tons of times. I really don’t even want to admit this out loud, but here is goes…..I accidentally set a small wild fire!!!! I feel like the worse person that ever walked this earth!!! I was even keeping an eye on it!! Yes the fire department was called, and I did have to give my name, the guy was super nice about it all. I cried all day about it…ugh! And leave it to the teenage neighbor boy to put it all on facebook. It could have been really bad, there is so much dry weeds and an old falling down house, just thinking about it makes me sick! I was going to take pictures…but I really don’t want anyone to see me! So there you have it, my very craptastic day.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
From the Beginning
My husband and I were married at the very young ages of 18 (me) and 20 (him). Just reading that brings a shocked look to my face! I had worked for under a year before we had our first child. I have been a SAHM for 9 years (8 months before I had given birth). I’ll just put it out there, I haven’t ever really had a job and have get to go to collage. So at 19 I had out first DD (daughter) age 22 for our 2nd dd and age 24 when I had out last and final dd . Yes you read that right, THREE daughters…..you can say it….teenage years are going to be a blast!! When my oldest daughter was 1 we bought our house we are living in now, a very large (3 thousand square feet) falling a part needs more then a little TLC house. We bought this house for 21k and taking out a loan for 31k , I was 20 and he was 23.…..yes so very very young! For the first five years that we lived here we did very little to the house in way of fixing it up. Why? Well, because we were so broke. Fast forward to today, we are 28 (me) and 30 (him) with our daughters 8,6, and soon to be 4. In the last year of my husband having a well paying job we have gone full force into fixing our “Money Pit” . And when I say a well paying job, I mean when you were making $24k a year with a family of 5, anything above that is great! My husband is now a truck driver and is gone for 2-3 weeks at a time, more 3 weeks then not. This job is a short term one (he has been working there for 3 already) we hope for him to come off the road from this job into a local one in the next 3-4 years. But until this house and our debt is done sucking money from us this is the job he has to stay in for now. And as you can imagine in those years of not making ends met, we racked up our fair share of debt. So there you have it, my whole adult life story…in a nut shell anyways. We have a plan that we have set in motion which I will share with you in my next post.
Here is a picture of "The Money Pit" and in all fairness to “The Pit” this is what it looked like when we were having the old siding taken off, but this gives you an idea of what we have been dealing with.
Here is a picture of "The Money Pit" and in all fairness to “The Pit” this is what it looked like when we were having the old siding taken off, but this gives you an idea of what we have been dealing with.
Friday, March 9, 2012
First blog post!
So I had been toying with the idea of starting my own blog…and here I am with my first post! So a little back story..My husband and I married very young had children young (three daughters) and bought a house young, seeing a pattern here hmmm….. So really right there that had the world against has..lol This blog will be my ramblings about remodeling a 150+ year old home on a budget, frugal living, having kids, becoming debt free and whatever else I can throw out there, which knowing me will be a lot. ( lets remember that my husband is a truck driver!) And if I never get anyone reading my blog then at least I have a place that I can get it all out there! And if you really want to see what my life has been like watch the movie “The Money Pit” because that movie pretty much sums up what our life has been like for the last 7 years…yes I said 7...I will write more about that later.
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