Tagged with: FPU
Dave Ramsey talks about the basic 5 that you need to cover in your budget before anything else: food, clothing, shelter, transportation and utilities. We were so excited about being debt free that we talked about paying off the student loans with the funds from selling the big house before funding the tiny house project.
In November of 2014, my husband Zac and I paid off the last of our credit card debt. We paid off just over $23,000 in debt last year. So why on earth would we open a new credit card?!?
Did you know that $2,000 invested today with a yearly growth rate of 9% will be worth $62,818 in 40 years? Did you know that $2,000 in 1974 had the same buying power as $9,603 does today?
We have been using the envelope system for one year. The system has worked incredibly well for us but at the end of the year we re-evaluated and made a few changes.
Our ultimate goal of being debt free has not changed. I've been avoiding writing about any of these topics for a few weeks because I didn't want to admit that we aren't following the program exactly... but the fact is, we're not, and I'm not being honest or transparent if I don't share that part with you.
Our family has been on a debt reduction journey this year. It started with the Financial Peace University Home Study Kit. We watched the nine video lessons in January of 2014 and decided to quit dating our debt snowball and really commit.
I'm not saying be a minimalist, but seriously, we had so much stuff.
This past summer we decided to do a major de-cluttering of our house, and I was astonished at how much crap we had stored in places we forgot existed. I had an entire Rubbermaid bin full of purses stashed in the far corner of the crawl space. Upon opening this bin I was immediately reminded that I absolutely cannot live without these purses! (Even though I had been for two whole years... amazing how that happens.)
In my last post, Using a Budget to Get Out of Debt, I shared how we built our budget. However, I didn't share specifics on the amounts we spend because it is different for every family and if I shared those amounts right away you would have said, "there's no way we can live with an $80/week grocery budget" and quit reading. For this post I want to share the ways that we save money on everyday expenses like fuel, groceries, and insurance so we can keep our budget at a minimum and put the maximum amount of money possible toward debt.