Paying Off the Debt

Just wanted to report that we finished off our 6-month emergency fund this month!

We are now saving to replace my husband's 1989 truck that has over 240,000 miles on it before moving on to Baby Steps 4, 5 and 6.

Two weeks ago we sent in our final payment on our car, making our goal of being debt-free by our final Financial Peace University class! I know that if we had not had the concrete goal we would still be paying on it. It was so nice to celebrate with everyone at our closing dinner.

We had a potluck dinner before viewing the final lesson together. My husband has a co-worker that makes cakes so we asked her to make us a credit card cake that everyone could cut a piece out of for dessert. Everyone loved it! Here's the cake:

It sort of seems anti-climatic to be debt-free now. Maybe it hasn't sunk in because I haven't had the chance to enjoy NOT writing that monthly check.

We are now started on our fully funded emergency fund. We have a little over half of a month's worth of expenses so far. I'm anxious to watch that balance grow.

Well, once again it's been several months since I've been here. It's been a busy time. I'm still taking classes toward an accounting degree. This semester has been particularly tough.

A couple of weeks ago DH and I chaperoned our youth group on a trip to NYC to work with The Relief Bus. It's a mobile soup kitchen based out of Newark, NJ that provides soup, bread and clothing to the poor and homeless in NYC. They also refer them to shelters, job opportunities, health care and counseling centers. It was a really neat few days. It was awesome to see the youth in our group (2 of them our own) step out of their comfort zone and reach out to those less fortunate than themselves. We were all blessed, probably far more than those to whom we ministered.

And some exciting news for us: In 3 weeks DH and I will be facilitating our first Financial Peace University class at our church! This has been a dream of mine for a long time and I'm so excited to finally be getting to do it. We have 20 families signed up so far. I am really looking forward to it. If it changes one family's life as much as it has ours, it will be so worth it!

We are getting so close to being debt-free (except the house)! I can't wait!!!

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 dog had puppies and they said they'd only charge us half-price, I started saving my blow money. Slowly, but surely, it added up until I had just enough by the time the puppies were ready to come home.

I couldn't make up my mind which of them I wanted. There were 2 girls and a boy in the litter. I was pretty sure I wanted a girl, but which one? On the way home from church one night DS#3 mentioned that he really liked the boy puppy and if we didn't take him, his girlfriend's parents were going to keep him just because he was so lovable. I told him that I didn't have a name for a boy though. I had a couple of names picked out for a girl. DH replied that I should name him Dave Ramsey since I listen to him all the time. And so that is how Ramsey became a part of our family.

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 an important topic that most kids are not being taught at school or at home, that I had a burden to do it. I am hoping that they will finish this class with a sense of how to manage their finances while in college and as adults.

So far, the kids seem to be enjoying the class. The first lesson focuses on materialism and how we are more than just what we own. Next week we will get into the basics of personal finance and budgeting.

Last week I was extremely nervous, but this week I was surprised to find that I was fine. It doesn't make much sense since last week the class time was taken up mostly with the video part of the lesson and this week I had to talk the entire time. I'm hoping that each week gets easier. It's a subject I feel passionate about, so I think that helps tremendously. I am hoping to help just one teen avoid learning lessons the hard way, like we had to.

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 of geocaching until about a year ago. I thought it sounded interesting so I did a little bit of research. Now, I am a big fan of the TV show Amazing Race, but we could never do that together because we would either kill each other or get divorced. Too much pressure! But, geocaching I thought we could handle.

So I found someone that wanted to upgrade to a better GPS unit and bought their used one from them for us to give this a try. We are now hooked! All it costs us is our gasoline and money for a meal if we decide to eat out.

For those that don't know what geocaching is, it's a sort of treasure hunt. We go to geocaching.com and download coordinates for the caches we want to find into our GPS unit and off we go. We drive to the area where the cache is hidden and then follow the GPS to within a few feet and then the hunt begins.

A cache can be very small (think medicine container) or rather large. Quite often they are in ammunition boxes. When you find the cache, there is a log to sign and goodies that you can trade. We carry a bag with odds and ends in it to leave in the caches. Quite often, I get a Happy Meal at McDonald's so that I can leave the toy that comes in it.

We have found 75 geocaches so far. Right now we are working on a series of caches for which we will earn medallions when we are done.

A few of the kids have gone geocaching with us when they were able and have enjoyed it also. It's a great recreational activity for the whole family. It gets you out to places that you might not otherwise ever see and you get exercise while doing it.

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 on the interstate and his engine blew! He said that oil sprayed everywhere and the compartment filled up with black smoke so that he couldn't see to pull over. He slowed and edged over until he felt the rumble strip and managed to get off the road. By the time we'd gotten to where he was stranded, he had the car at a salvage yard and made arrangements to send them the title to scrap it. So he is without a car once again. This was the 6th car since he started driving 3 years ago that has bit the dust!

We are still whittling away at debt. We have just over $6,000 left on the car and then we will be on to working on a fully-funded emergency fund.

I did quit my 2 evening jobs. It was getting to be too much with taking 2 classes and DD's volleyball season starting up. I got to figuring that by the time I bought my dinner those nights and took into account how much I spent on gasoline, I really wasn't making anything anyway. It's been a huge relief. I am still doing bookkeeping for one library as a side job though.

Guess that's all I can think of that's happened lately. Hopefully I'll get back here before Lux has to tell me it's time. :-)

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 in both eyes. He had set the bottle up on a pillar above him and when he grabbed the bottle it tilted and poured in his face. He was alone but managed to flush his eyes and dial 911. The ER sent him to a specialist who assured him that the vision would return in 48 hours. 48 hours later the vision was worse. The vision in the right eye was totally gone and the left eye could only see vague shapes. He was referred to a 2nd specialist who also could not find any reason that the vision had not returned.

Finally, on the 3rd week the vision did start to come back slowly. They still wanted to know why it was taking so long to heal so we made a trip to the Cleveland Clinic to be seen at the Vision Clinic. By the time we made that trip the vision was back to 20/20 and only some cloudiness remained on the cornea, which we were told would clear up. I'm thrilled to say that it is all totally clear now. Some of you may remember the accident this same son had a month before his high school graduation when he fell asleep at the wheel, rolled his vehicle 5 times and was lifeflighted to a major trauma center. If anything is going to happen in our family, it will be this child to whom it will happen.

The funny thing is that at the time of the accident he already had an interview set up with the ambulance service that took him to the ER for the following week. He went to the interview BLIND and they HIRED HIM to drive ambulance! I told him that he is the only person I know who could pull that off! By the time he was scheduled to begin work his sight was back.

Now for our 2nd Murphy visit: On July 8th someone hacked into my email and from there, got into my Paypal and Ebay accounts which I haven't used in years. They proceeded to order an iphone and a Louis Vuitton wallet for a combined total of $1500. The Paypal account was hooked directly to both of our checking accounts, but I found out just in time to put freezes on them so that no money was ever removed from our accounts. The crazy thing is that the Louis Vuitton wallet was actually mailed to me from Australia! I refused the package and sent it right back on its way to Australia. I filed a police report but hear that they seldom actually ever do anything. We had the address where they requested the iphone be delivered. It was a medical building in Memphis, TN.

I am happy to report that, besides the mortgage, we are working on our last debt. We owe just a bit over $7,000 and hope to have it paid off early next year, if not before. I am working 2 nights a week and applying all of that income toward this debt. I can't wait to start on a fully-funded emergency fund.

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".

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 to do that. Then we'll be whittling away at the car.

Is anyone planning on attending Dave Ramsey's Town Hall for Hope on April 23rd? Our church is hosting it. I am in charge of getting it all together. I've never done anything like this before, so I hope I'm doing everything I need to do. I have no idea how many to expect. I just hope it's more than just my husband and me. LOL

I'm still working on my accounting degree. I only have another month left of this semester. It will be nice to have a summer break.

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 (except the big mortgage) at the end of next year. That really encouraged me. That's not THAT far away!

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 went into his payroll department and was told that he can't stop his contributions until the beginning of the next quarter.

It's just very frustrating to finally have him on board and now we can't do this. It will really slow the debt snowball down. I guess I'm just anxious to get it done and get a fully-funded emergency fund.