Fall is in the Air

As summer comes to a close, I have a few things to be thankful for. The most of these is the fact that the girls have been well for about five months! This has been a huge relief to us emotionally as well as financially. Recently, they did have a cold but they were able to kick the fever in four days which is unheard of around here.

So, what have we been up to this Summer? Well, more of the same it seems :). We have been able to pay everything down across the board. No new things have been paid off, but the entire mess is lower. One good thing is that we have been able to keep Terra's check out of our budget so it is truly extra income when it comes in -- which rocks. We also have our emergency fund almost completely built back up :)

Speaking of the emergency fund, there was one thing with Ramsey's plan I didn't think I needed to do, and that was the envelope system. It's a simple enough concept -- you make a budget, then withdraw the money you need for each category and put it in separate envelopes. Then, when you need money for something in that category, you just take it from that envelope until it is gone. I thought to myself "hey, I have Quicken, I don't need this, I can keep track of it." The problem was my rational brain was making that decision, not the irrational, hungry, I want side of my brain that apparently can't estimate well :).

So, after stumbling with a few problem areas in the budget, I pulled those out into the envelope system to better mange things. In particular, the Food (out to eat), Fun, and Clothing categories where the problem children. We would always go WAY over in these areas by underestimating how much we had spent earlier in the month. By pulling the money out ahead of time, it's something you just don't have to think about. If there's money there, awesome. If not, you're brown bagging it. I personally like not having to deal with those receipts as well. I've got one transaction in Quicken instead of 14.

Because of this, we now have a bunch of extra money in the Fun envelope (who says you HAVE to spend it, right?). As that money piles up, we are planning on a cool trip later to take the girls out and pay cash for the whole thing. Amazing what you can do when you plan for stuff :)

I've got three bills in the snowball lined up for the next 6 months depending on how things go, but I think 6 months is a reasonable goal. One of the items in there is my car, so that's got me pretty excited :).

Ode to Being Busy

I apologize if I haven't been keeping up with this as much as I should, but I've actually been busy with a lot of side work to pay for the mess I'm about to describe.

A few posts back, I mentioned getting an 18 month loan at 0% for some medical expenses we've racked up at a local hospital. Well, as of right now, I've paid off just about $1000 of that bill, and have about another $1000 in forthcoming expenses. I've actually been trying to pay the loan and the extra bills in tandem, but I just can't afford to do that anymore. I'm going to try to see if I can increase the credit line a bit and tack the new ones onto my previous loan. It shouldn't raise the monthly bill TOO much, but it will still be very close on the budget. Here's to hoping nothing catastrophic happens (yes, my emergency fund is depleted now too...).

My Father-in-Law wants us to go to Texas for Christmas and is hounding us to figure out if we're coming or not, but the way things look, I don't think we can go -- and all for the sake of money. I'd basically have to start saving what I'm paying in medical bills now to have the cash to go, but since we have the bills and the budget is too tight with them, I'm not sure how that is going to happen. To anyone out there reading this who don't have debt, DON'T GET ANY. Or if you have to, keep it under 25% of your gross. When you lose one person working, it really taxes things. I went from having a few hundred extra a month to put toward debt to going in the red every month. Not a fun place to be.

Looks like I've got a lot more side work ahead of me...

Silverish lining?

Things are starting to look up I think. All but one of the claims I talked about last time have been paid, and the last one is just probably stuck in the red tape. We did confirm that both girls do have the genetic disorder, but at least we know what the problem is now.

Piper had a tube put back in, and I've seen a bit of what that will cost -- roughly $1000. The good news is we're already in the 80/20 part of our insurance, so we'll have the rest of the year to basically coast through stuff.

I JUST did my taxes, and between all the medical expenses and other things, we're going to be getting about $4,000 back. Combine that with the couple side jobs I've picked up, and I'll have just about $5,000 to tackle the latest round of medical bills. I SHOULD be able to pay off the $2500 loan for our last hospital stay, the $1200 or so for the tubes, and get our emergency fund back to $1000. After that stuff is all out of the way, I'll be able to be hitting an extra $150 on the van bringing that payment up to $340. At that rate, I'll only have about a year left to pay to get rid of it. Hopefully, I'll get some more side work between now and then to get rid of it faster :)

Murphy's at the Door

Just when you start heading down a good path, something has got to get in your way. That's where we are right now. I've completely fallen back to baby step 1 (getting $1000 in the bank) due to another round of medical expenses.

The good news is I did get a raise this year. I haven't gotten my first check with it on there so we can redo our budget, but the budget needs some serious work anyway. Aside from the new found problems, the budget was there to just cover all the bases, not to help us get ahead. The new challenge is to 1) fix the budget with new bills and new income and 2) build in extra to the budget to help pay things down.

I was really in a bad place last weekend just trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do to get out of this mess. I have a lot of things coming due all at once, and had drained the emergency fund due to other unforeseen medical expenses. I'm actually looking forward to doing my taxes because I'm going to be able to write off medical expenses this year. We had nearly $10,000 in medical expenses (most paid, some on credit cards, and some in loans). Subtract the $2000 flex spending account, and I'm still left with a healthy chunk to work with. Granted, you can only write off what is after 7% of your income, but that still leaves me with a few grand to write off :).

I'll probably sit down this weekend to redo my budget with the new numbers (I'll get my first check with the raise on the 15th), so I'll put an update here after I'm done. I know I'm going to have to cut things this time around, just not sure what is left to cut :(

November Update

Not much has been going on since I wrote last, aside from picking up some side work. Payments for our hospital bills will start in Dec at around 150 a month, so I've got THAT to look forward to :).

The side work I just did has just about replenished our emergency fund. The good news is that there is probably some more to be had there, so I'm hoping I get some more work from that client. In the mean time, I'm still working on that project I mentioned earlier. Hopefully I can make some progress with it and get it out for all of you wonderful people to try :). It will be a free service that is ad based, so hopefully it will do well. Actually, I really want to be able to sell ad space to people after it takes off (a bit more money there than google ads).

Here's to scheming!

Medical Bills Are Fun

Remember back when I was talking about our hospital visit that we never got billed for? Well, the nice folks over there must have figured out they never billed us and sent us one -- for the expected amount of around $2,500.

I definitely don't have enough in the emergency fund to cover this (or to really begin to cover it), so I'm left with two choices. Get a personal loan to cover it, or use a line of credit I already have available to cover it. In dealing with hospitals in the past, they will usually allow for 3-4 months of payments to be made without interest, but if you need more time than that they insist you go with an outside credit agency of some sort. Since I can't afford an extra $600 a month (blasted current debts), I'm forced to go the route of financing this expense.

I suppose the route I go all depends on the interest rate and terms of the loan I might be able to get. My line of credit is set for 9 years at 9.9% interest. Technically, this is the last thing on my debt snowball, so this $2,500 will be lingering for a while. On the flip side, a separate loan I would get would most likely be on the 3-5 year term and add about as much to my monthly payments as the increase on the line of credit. The only downside to that plan is that this new debt would be at the bottom of my snowball, and would take president over my lowest item now. This in theory should make it go away faster, but then again, it will push off the current loan I am working on eliminating for another couple years. come to think of it, that loan will probably be gone in two years if I keep paying the minimums.

I'm still not sure what to do, but I am leaning toward getting a separate loan. sure, It is a bit psychologically defeating to know I'll be "taking a step back", but then again, I should be getting a raise soon and that will help knock this stuff out.

So yes, Medical Bills are fun. Fun indeed....

A New Month, A New Start

I've managed to partially re-fund our emergency fund with August's leftovers, so now begins the uphill battle to round that fund out to begin to make progress again. Being responsible is hard, but we're slowly doing it.

I've got some quotes out, and Terra is still picking up extra hours, so hopefully this month I'll have more surplus to attack these things. More to come :)

New Month, Same Problems

This month has gone by way too fast. Unfortunately, the extra money I had been looking forward to is being mostly used to break even. Our budget is STILL out of wack -- mainly groceries and gas.

On paper, I'm trying to be conservative to free up money to pay down some of this stuff, but the reality is that I've got four mouths to feed and two cars that need to go quite a ways every week. One thing we are really trying to do is cook more at home and take leftovers for lunch. I've gotten my lunch routine down to a very small amount a day, but it still isn't in the budget. Our emergency fund is still under funded at the moment as well. All I need to do is get ONE thing paid off to gain some traction.

Fortunately (or not) a big medical bill from a hospital here in town has not arrived yet. I got the EOB from the insurance in May showing we owed around $2000. However, it is almost September and I haven't gotten a bill yet. I'm guessing now that it will show up after quarterly review, or at the end of the year when they do their books. There is an off chance some nice person out there just picked up the tab, but that's being too optimistic I suppose. I honestly expect it to hit right around Christmas :).

Throughout all of this, I'm still going to have maybe 600-800 I can put on the Van. Just need to bite the bullet and get that sucker paid off. If anyone wants to use that fancy donate link above, I'd be very appreciative :)

Until next time...

End of July Update

Things have definitely been interesting this month. Tomorrow we get our first big check for my wife, so we are excited. I've actually had some things come up and had to dig into our emergency fund a little, but that's going to be replenished tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have enough left over to actually pay down more on the Van.

The budget really felt some strain this month. Most of which was the extra overhead of two people driving instead of one, but now that we're starting to get checks coming in it is balancing out. After the dust settles I'll post the outcome :).

I'm actually working on a write up between traditional IRA accounts and Roth IRA accounts, so after I've done enough research I'll post my thoughts. Short answer -- Roth's are the way to go. Find out why in detail soon. :)

The Bane of Medical Bills

This always ALWAYS seems to happen. You decide to purchase something large, so you start saving up. You plan, you save, you plan, you save. Finally, you get to the point where you can make the purchase, and BAM -- something unexpected pops up.

For us, this always seems to be medical bills. Granted, with as much as our kids have been in and out of doctor's offices, I should be used to the cycle -- but it still surprises me on occasion. Most of the time, it is more of a "This cost HOW much to get checked??"

We had been saving up for a fairly large playset for the backyard. Our children are starting to get old enough to where one of these would make sense, so we had been planning for about a year. We've had the designs picked out and just had to pick the final level of accessories. Enter new Bills.

All and all, they total of the bills is just shy of what the playset would have cost. On the one hand, it is good that we had the money around and didn't have to get into our emergency fund to pay them off. On the other hand, it is annoying because now I have to start re-saving for the playset.

Ahh, the joys of being responsible.