Budgeting.

Budgeting is hard.  Growing up, it wasn't necessarily something I had to do.  My bills were all paid for and if I wanted something, I saved up for it using money from my job.  But I didn't have to budget.  And goodness, do I wish I had known how back then!  Life would be much simpler now.  Adulting is not fun.  Moving on...

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Last fall, I started a new job and my husband and I decided it was time to really start budgeting.  Before, we kind of just kept tabs on what our bank account looked like and if we got into trouble, we would dig into our savings. Not the best method for living, but we were a young married couple with no idea how to manage our income and expenses. So after about 2 months at my new job, I discovered a handy little tool on Microsoft Excel 2013. Excel has different kinds of budget spreadsheet templates! What?! I was so thankful to have found these because it has made a huge difference in how we manage our money.


This is what a typical month on our budget looks like. Now I know that some of the lines seem high. Who needs $150 allowance each month? Our family apparently. My husband is really good about only using a portion of his allowance, and saving the rest for later in the year for gifts and things. I'm a little more of a wild card and can guarantee that I always go over my allowance. That is why I added a separate line this month for food allowance. I am always grabbing lunch or breakfast at work, so rather than cracking into my fun money, this will help me to stay under budget. As for the other items, we typically go over on our Family/Date Night fund. Let's face it, grabbing dinner to go is much easier than cooking when you have two little ones. This is an area we need to work on as a family. As for the other lines, we rarely exceed. This is because we "over-budgeted" for everything. This may seem odd, but you really just never know what is going to happen. Our cell phone bill could be more one month than it was previously. I personally would rather be prepared with wiggle room than caught without it.


One line that is up for negotiation is the Debt Payoff line. The amount depends on how much extra income we have come in. Previously I wrote about getting extra money for mileage from our jobs. This is where that money would go, depending on what else we were looking at for the month. We set a reasonable amount to pay off extra, and just go for it!


I really hope you all will look into these budget spreadsheets on Excel. They are so handy and they give you a better idea of what you have coming in and going out each month. The one we use lets us compare our Actual Income vs. Projected Income. This tool alone makes a huge difference! Our projected is always less than our actual, which makes keeping our budget in check much easier. Take a look if you have Excel on your computer! 

--chloe.

App of the Week: Ibotta.

Ok I LOVE Ibotta! It is such a handy little app! Basically it’s an app that gives you a bunch of coupons for different stores. Some coupons you have to watch a short video in order to claim, but it’s totally worth it! Some of my favorite coupons are for diapers, and with two kids, I need all the diaper coupons I can get! 

Here’s how Ibotta works: you go through the list of items that have coupons available and you claim the ones you want to use. Then you go do your shopping and all that fun stuff. When you have made your purchase, you upload your receipt and Ibotta will give you rebates back. For instance, if you have a $2 coupon for pizza, after you scan your receipt into the app, Ibotta will “reimburse” you the money! Easy! Sometimes you may have to scan the barcode for the item itself, but that’s not a hard task. Ibotta also gives you chances to earn bonus dollars if you redeem multiple coupons!

To get the money that you have been reimbursed, you have several options. You can link your PayPal or VenMo account, or you can choose different gift cards for stores like Amazon.com, Best Buy, or even Starbucks! How cool! For our family, we are going to do Amazon.com gift cards to help pay for Christmas gifts (you guys will learn just how obsessed we are with Amazon over here)!

If you don’t have the Ibotta app, you have to get it! It’s so simple and it really adds up quick when you have a lot of grocery shopping to do! Here’s a cool thing too: If you sign up for Ibotta using my code (nclbxgp), you will get an extra $10 when you redeem your first rebate and I will get an extra $5! What?! So let’s help each other out on this money saving adventure! Happy rebating!

--chloe.

Extra Income.

Debts to Pay	June 14, 2016
Doctor Bill A	111.97
Doctor Bill B	204.82
Doctor Bill C	231.20
Doctor Bill D	2,422.48
Student Loan D	2,765.51
Student Loan B	2,787.87
Student Loan F	2,998.40
Student Loan A	3,517.61
Student Loan C	4,495.04
Student Loan PX	7,861.52
Student Loan G	8,161.63
Student Loan E	8,320.70
Car Loan	13,181.02
Mortgage	52,189.46
Total	109,137.26

 Amount Paid Off This Week: $408.37
*Current chart shows adjustments for interest, pay downs, and pay offs.*

Today I want to talk about extra “income” and how that works in our home. The way our budget is set up, we can enter our projected income, or a rough estimate of what we will bring in for the month, and our actual income which is the solid numbers. We tend to underestimate on our projected income because it helps to build a tighter budget. However, with that in mind, our projected expenses still exceeds this number. But that’s ok. As long as we aren’t going over our actual budget, this is fine for us.

My husband and I both have jobs that will pay us for travel. It isn’t much, but when we are both traveling a few times a month, it will add up. Of course we use this money firstly for maintenance on our vehicles, but since our cars are both reliable and we take good care of them anyway, there isn’t much that needs to go into this particular fund. And we also budget these sort of things anyway, so that gets us a little ahead of the game. So what do we do with the remainder? We have a separate line in our budget just for additional debt payoff!

Our budget already has lines for the bills and debts we currently owe on, but with extra money coming in, we can pay these off much quicker by designating extra money this way. So for the month of June, so far we have $160 of extra income in the debt payoff fund. Using this money, I have paid off one bill entirely, as well as paid $40 extra on Doctor Bill C! So just this week alone, we have been able to pay off $408.37 (minus adjustments for interest on loans)! That is so exciting!

App of the Week: Receipt Hog.

Alright, let's talk about money saving apps!  There are so many out there!  Some are good and others, not so much.  The one I'm going to talk about today is amazing!  It's called Receipt Hog and it's available of the App Store.  I love this app because it's almost like a little game.  Basically what you do is upload your receipt to the hog and it gives you coins, tickets for the prize spinner, or drawing entries!  The more receipts you upload, the more coins you get.  After you have saved enough coins, you can redeem them for Amazon.com gift cards or PayPal credit!  I have been using Receipt Hog since November 2015 and am saving my coins to use on Amazon for Christmas gifts!  One downside to this app is that not every receipt will qualify, but those are few and far between for me.

Ever since we started budgeting our finances, I have been adamant about saving every receipt.  It helps me stay accountable to my budget and gives me a better idea of where my money is going. 
Since I started using this app, I have been able to keep even better track of my spending.  I save all of my receipts from the week, and then the following Monday, I scan them into Receipt Hog.  This helps me organize my budget more easily.  Plus it's fun to watch your hog get fatter!  At the end of the month, I can archive my receipts on the app so that I can have a fresh start for the new month.  I keep my paper receipts, however, because they come in handy at tax time!

I highly recommend Receipt Hog to anyone interested in organizing their budget as well as earning a little fun money!

Snowball Effect.

So if anyone has ever tried to follow the Dave Ramsey steps for getting out of debt, you know that one of the first things to do is make a list of what you owe and break it down by smallest amount to largest. Ramsey also suggests leaving your mortgage as last on your list. This is a good idea because if you tried to pay that off first, you would drive yourself insane!

 

Debts to Pay	June 9, 2016
Doctor Bill A	111.97
Doctor Bill B	204.82
Doctor Bill C	331.20
Doctor Bill D	2,422.48
Student Loan 1	2,763.18
Student Loan 2	2,785.52
Student Loan 3	2,998.40
Student Loan 4	3,517.61
Student Loan 5	4,495.04
Student Loan 6	7,861.52
Student Loan 7	8,157.74
Student Loan 8	8,320.70
Car Loan	13,385.99
Mortgage	52,189.46
Total	109,545.63

Here is what we owe currently. It is ridiculous! Now keep in mind, we are not very old—mid-20s actually. These debts were all racked up in the last 7 years. Just like the debts can snowball upward, they can also snowball downward. This means that by paying off the smaller amounts first, we will gain momentum to be able to pay off the larger ones. For instance, on my list, Doctor Bill C is a monthly bill of $56. I can either choose to continue paying it out over the next 6 months, or I can make extra payments to knock it out sooner. Instead of $56, I round up to $60. By doing this, we give ourselves an extra $60 a month for the next debt. Makes sense, right? We write it into our budget to pay a little extra each month, so that we can pay things off quicker. This may not be an option for everyone, and for us, it isn’t always either (more on this later). But when we can, we pay more.

Baby steps is what this is all about. I’m not some financial wizard. I do have basic accounting skills (thanks mom & dad), but I’m definitely no expert. However, I know that I want my family to live free financially. I would like to be able to save more and pay less. You don’t learn to run before you learn to crawl. It’s the same with finances. By making little changes here and there, you can learn to make big changes in the future.


--chloe.

A Vow.

For richer or poorer…

This was a vow my husband and I made to each other on our wedding day back in 2013. And currently, we are living in the latter part of that vow. Don’t get me wrong; we aren’t so broke that we can’t afford to live. No, we are more than blessed to be able to pay all our bills on time and still have money left over for the little things. Things like pizza (which is so very important to me).

Unfortunately, we are saddled with a huge amount of debt, like many in our generation. We have student loans for days, a mortgage, a car loan, and other smaller debts like doctor’s bills. These are things that although we wish we didn’t have, we needed at the time we took them. Looking at the list of debts we owe, the only ones that I honestly don’t regret are our car and our house. We needed a place to live and buying was cheaper in the long run than renting, and with two kids, we needed more space to drive around in. As for student loans, heck, I wish I had never taken them out. And don’t get me started on how ridiculous my medical bills are (that’s another story for another day).

But, it is what it is. We currently owe over $100,000. That amount is staggeringly awful! So how do we handle this? One debt at a time. Our journey to becoming debt-free will not be an easy one. Especially for me since I am the world’s worst impulse shopper. But I have figured out ways to bring this number down. My husband and I know that we cannot afford to stay in this kind of debt forever. And, God forbid, if something were to happen to us, we don’t want to leave our kids with this burden to take care of. So, as we go about our lives trying to pay off what we owe without driving ourselves insane, join us! We will share our tips for paying things off, as well as be open about our debt. I’m of the opinion that we are to share in each other’s joys as well as our burdens. For once, I’m looking forward to being able to pay off what we owe!


--chloe.