In church right now we are discussing working on getting our house in order. Not necessarily our actual house (although for some people like me, that may be part of it). It means getting your life in order. The main point being, how can you truly serve God if you have all these other distractions going on. I mean think about it. Are you really focused on God and getting closer to him when your children are disruptive, or your house is dirty, or you can't find your water bill, or your finances are out of whack and you don't know if you are going to be able to pay rent this month? The answer (at least for me, and everyone else I know) is a big fat NO! SO you have to get your house/ life in order so that you can truly focus on God and the things that he needs you to do.
So I had to sit down and look at the areas of my life that I need to get in order and get on schedule to make my household run smoother and help hubby and I be focused on our main priority: God.
Getting my house in order for me is finances, organization, cooking, cleaning/ laundry, and personal maintenance. I didn't include anything spiritual yet, because that's the point of getting my house in order. I can't even focus on God, cause I'm so stressed about other things. So I listed each category and reasons why these are out of order, and what I'm going to do to fix them.
Finances:
Whats Wrong: no real budget, bills are getting paid but balances are not decreasing, no real money going into savings each month, output is waaay to close to what we bring in.
Solutions: We sat down and created a current realistic budget. this way we could see exactly what we had left at the end of the month, and what we could change to increase that. We also took all our debts, listed their monthly payment amounts, interest rates, and total balance owed. By doing this we were able to pinpoint which debt we wanted to pay off first. its a loan that has a high monthly payment and an extremely high interest rate (basically 80% of our monthly payment was going towards interest). We decided to take that one and use the overtime money that my husband gets every month (pretty much as much as he chooses), and pay an extra $200/m towards the principle. doing this will cut the balance in half in a year.
We also have 3 credit cards and two store cards that we pay a total of $250 per month on. Now this is more than what the monthly minimum payment is for each card, but we need to do more. In December hubby gets a bonus from his job. We are going to take a portion of that bonus and pay off the cards. (the rest of the bonus goes in the savings for things for the baby and general savings). Now we know that we have to use the cards in order for them to stay active and for the companies to not close the cards or lower the amount we are approved to use. In order to prevent that, we decided to use the cards to pay our utilities and miscellaneous bills (IE: electricity, water, cable, cell phones, Internet, and student loans). We will use the store cards for any clothing or household needs that come up, but it has to be within the amount budgeted for that within that month. Once we do that, we pay the balance off each card in full each month (before interest charges) using the money we were already using to pay those bills. The $250 we were paying on credit card payments each month will now go into our savings account.
Oh speaking of student loans. they are in default (bad, bad, I know, I know). Well I talked to the loan reps yesterday and we are starting the payment plan to get them out of default next month. These payments are high and are one reason why we had to alter our budget, but it is worth it to get hubby's credit back in order so that when we refinance this house or buy another house, we can get more bank for our buck. lol. Also of course we just want hubby's credit to be good overall. Plus this payment plan is only for 9 months and then we will be able to go back to his previously lower payments.
I still have to figure out how to lower our food budget. I know I will be cooking more, but groceries are expensive too! I will be searching for things online and report back. I'm also gonna start printing coupons.
Another thing that affects our finances somewhat is my job. We talked about it and decided that even though I don't like my job, it is the best thing for our family right now. I work from home for the government (not gonna say what I do), but I get to write off the square footage my office from my mortgage, my computer, a portion of my Internet, electricity, and water bill. I also don't have to buy work clothes, or use my gas. so we save on gas and on mileage and wear and tear to the car. I'm also more likely to buy lunch when I am around a group of people going out to lunch, so this makes me stay home. So with all of that, we decided its way more cost efficient, unless I find a great paying job, for me to stay where I am now, after I come back from maternity leave.
We are also in the process of trying to find a home based business to start so that we can generate more income and have more tax write offs. I will report back with what I have found.
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