Paying Off the Debt

Introducing Ramsey...

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:33:02 PST

We added a new member to our family in March. His name is Ramsey and he has really livened up our household. He's a 4-pound Yorkshire Terrier. When we got him he was only 1.6 pounds, so he's really filled out since then!

I have always wanted a Yorkie and so when DS#3's girlfriend's...

Generation Change

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:51:52 PST

Last week I started teaching Dave Ramsey's "Generation Change" curriculum to the teen Sunday School class. Now, if you knew me, it would be a big surprise that I would volunteer to do this because I am a very quiet person that rarely, if ever, speaks up in class. But this is such...

New Hobby

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:21:47 PST

DH and I have stumbled upon a new hobby that we enjoy. It's even better because we can do it together and it's not very expensive.

I was wracking my brain for a birthday gift for him last spring and a friend suggested a GPS unit so we could go geocaching. I had never heard...

Blown Engine

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:10:37 PST

LuxLiving tells me that I need to update, so here I am. :-) I do mean to post here more often, but it just doesn't seem to happen.

We are doing fairly well. We did have some excitement this past Tuesday. Son # 2 (of course!) called and asked us to come pick him up. He was...

Murphy Strikes

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:53:26 PST

Thanks to LuxLiving for checking on me. We are alive and well. Last month was a bit of a strain, mostly emotionally.

On July 2nd our middle son (19), who is an EMT in a city 2.5 hours from us, was cleaning some basement walls in his fiance's house and ended up spilling ammonia...

Another One Bites the Dust...

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:56:54 PST

And another one's down! We paid off the 2nd mortgage today! The car loan is the next one to go.

It feels so good to have that pesky little payment behind us. I had to log onto our bank account just to see those nice little zeros beside the words "Loan Balance".

Update

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:22:43 PST

Thanks to Aleta for the nice comment you left on my last post. That made me decide I needed to drop in here and do an update.

I am excited to announce that we should be debt-free by the end of this year!!! We will be paying off the little mortgage this month. I am really excited...

Encouraging Figuring

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:39:46 PST

My last post expressed my frustration over not being able to snowball as much as we thought we could from the beginning of this year. Well, I decided tonight to run the numbers I am going to be able to apply toward our 2 debts and found out that we should still be out of debt...

Frustrated

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:02:05 PST

DH and I are going through FPU and we had decided that we are finally ready to take the step of stopping our retirement contributions temporarily so we can apply that money to the debt snowball. I had no problem stopping mine at work since I'm the one that does the payroll. DH...

Long Overdue Update

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:17:37 PST

Wow, has it been a long time since I've written on this blog! Lots of changes for us in the past 7 months.

DS#1 is in his last semester of college. He is pursuing an art degree. DD#1 is taking a semester off of college and working to save money. DS#2 graduated high school and...

Giving YNAB Another Try

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:30:31 PST

I found my access key to download YNAB to my laptop. I thought I'd give this another try. I like the concept of it, but just never stuck with it long enough to make it work.

I have my budget entered and now I guess I need to go back and enter in my transactions for at least...

Bad Day

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:21:35 PST

Today was not my day. It started out by me forgetting to take my lunch to work so I had to end up buying a slice of pizza while I was on the road doing a delivery.

Got to the library. Got out of the car and slipped on the ice and fell flat on my left side. Both hands were full...

Priorities

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:28:31 PST

As I was working in Quicken tonight with DH's profit share check I was listening to my songs I've bought on ITunes and Casting Crowns song, "American Dream", came on. I had to put aside what I was doing for a while and listen to it.

What we discuss here about personal finance...

Profit Share Check

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:30:31 PST

Today DH received his spring profit share check. I am sending half of it to our gift savings account to cover gifts for the year and the rest is going in the house repair fund toward the new roof.

I would much rather apply the entire thing to the mortgage, but I know that we...

E-mealz Review

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:44:01 PST

I had mentioned e-mealz in a previous post. It is a site that, for $5 a month, provides you with menus and a grocery list for your dinners for a week. You pay for 3 months at a time and a new meal plan is posted once a week. My plan is available on Friday so when I log in I...

Think I Finally Figured It Out

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:09:58 PST

I think I finally figured out DH's retirement website. What a pain that thing is! I see when I logged on that they are in the process of developing a new site. Thank goodness!!!

I have been wanting to reallocate his investments for ages, but each time I finally managed to log...

Upgraded

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:41:48 PST

Last night I took the plunge and upgraded to Quicken 2008. I had been using the 2006 version. It's going to take me some time to get used to the newer version, but so far I really like it. I like to be able to access different pages through the tabs. Reports are easier to access.It...

Yet Another Home Repair

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:45:43 PST

2 days ago the motor for our coal stove's exhaust fan seized up. So last night after work DH stopped by to pick up another. Almost $300 later we now have a functioning coal stove again without fear of a houseful of smoke.

I can't complain because it's the first repair we've...

Weight Loss Update

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:03:06 PST

As of tonight, I have officially lost exactly (and I mean to the 10th of a pound!)......35 pounds!!! I needed to lose .6 this week to get there and that's exactly what I've lost. I have gone from a size 18W to a size 8/10, depending on the make of the pants. I still have 22 pounds...

Getting a Little Nervous

rduell@hotmail.com (rduell) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:07:47 PST

I'm getting a little nervous about only having $1000 in my emergency fund. I know the reason that Dave Ramsey recommends that amount is because most emergencies will be under $1000. But with the car repairs (if the insurance hadn't covered them) being over $500 just for struts,...