Yes, we could have done for ourselves what the Debt Consolidation Co was going to do for us, but I was sure they would have more success negotiating with the credit card companies than I would and I knew I wouldn't have the will-power to set the money aside each month on my own.
So now we are on our current debt repayment schedule and should be making our last payment on Dec 19, 2010. And I can not wait until that date! We will be DEBT FREE!!
Until then, we watch every penny that comes in and know exactly where it is going. We are living paycheck to paycheck- it is tight but we have been able to make it, at times barely, but we are hanging in there.
We have made some frugal changes because we HAD TO instead of because we WANTED TO, but we have made them and we are happy with them. Next week I will be writting some posts related to these Other Frugal Changes we have made.
Grocery budget changes, Alternate streams of income, & Simple Frugal Habits that all help us to save money.
Showing posts with label frugal beginings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frugal beginings. Show all posts
Sunday, November 16, 2008
My Frugal Story- Part Four
The new job was great. It was something he knew he'd enjoy doing, it was 5 minutes from our house, and the hours were early enough that he'd be home in time to get the kids off the bus. The one glaring negative was that the salary was HALF what he had been making. My "extra" income was now needed to make ends meet. I thank God that he hit me in the head with the frugal blogs when He did, otherwise, I may have passed on this job if i had not been in "debt payoff mode".
So now the challenges began. We had to rework our budget to accomodate our new income.This was not easy. And we had to get "caught up" on bills we had not paid when my Husband was out of work. No matter how much I cut out budget down to bare bones, there was no way to do this, the numbers just didn't add up. I wrote letters to all my creidt cards, the heating oil company, and others, explaining my situation and that I would pay my minimums and what little extra I maybe able to add, when possible, until I was caught up.
This is where my hatred of credit card companies really began to come to a head. Through all of this they were very unforgiving. They raised my interest rates to the hightest legally allowed, due to my missed payments. This made my minimums much higher than before, and on our new lower income, these higher minimums were impossible for me to pay. As I tried to "work with" the companies, they contimued to charge me "late charges" because I wasn't sending in the full minimum (even though I was sending them money every month) .
By the end of 2007, even though I hadn't charged ANYTHING to my credit cards in 8 months, my balances were now higher than they had ever been. By March of 2008- I could take it no longer! We now owed almost $20,000 ($5000 more than a year earlier) and we hadn't charged anything in a year. I had to do something. So when my tax refund came I used that pay down some of my cards and get back to being able to may the minimums so no more late charges would be added. But really, it was too little to late, and we needed to do something.
We contacted a Debt Consolidation Co. and have been working with them ever since.
So now the challenges began. We had to rework our budget to accomodate our new income.This was not easy. And we had to get "caught up" on bills we had not paid when my Husband was out of work. No matter how much I cut out budget down to bare bones, there was no way to do this, the numbers just didn't add up. I wrote letters to all my creidt cards, the heating oil company, and others, explaining my situation and that I would pay my minimums and what little extra I maybe able to add, when possible, until I was caught up.
This is where my hatred of credit card companies really began to come to a head. Through all of this they were very unforgiving. They raised my interest rates to the hightest legally allowed, due to my missed payments. This made my minimums much higher than before, and on our new lower income, these higher minimums were impossible for me to pay. As I tried to "work with" the companies, they contimued to charge me "late charges" because I wasn't sending in the full minimum (even though I was sending them money every month) .
By the end of 2007, even though I hadn't charged ANYTHING to my credit cards in 8 months, my balances were now higher than they had ever been. By March of 2008- I could take it no longer! We now owed almost $20,000 ($5000 more than a year earlier) and we hadn't charged anything in a year. I had to do something. So when my tax refund came I used that pay down some of my cards and get back to being able to may the minimums so no more late charges would be added. But really, it was too little to late, and we needed to do something.
We contacted a Debt Consolidation Co. and have been working with them ever since.
My Frugal Story- Part Two
As I began to make these changes. I was also regularly reading several blogs that really lead me to change the way I looked at Debt and Money. It was at this time that my Husband and I sat down, and over a few weeks and many discussions, we decided we needed to change our financial ways, and set up some long-term goals. This was the spring of 2007.
The first thing we wanted to do was increase our income in order to be able to pay off our credit cards. I had just heard about a possible part-time teaching position that I might be able to start in the fall, which I jumped on. Even though it didn't pay alot,and I would lose nearly 1/2 my take home pay to daycare and gas. We figured whatever money it brought in was "extra" and would go right to paying down our credit cards.
The second thing we knew we had to do was STOP using the credit cards. We could never get them paid off if we continued to add to the balances. We are not extravagant people and the balances on our credit cards were from things like abit of over spending at holidays, or b-days. Some of it was from tution payments when I first started working on my master's degree. Over about 5 years we, as a family, had accumulated about $15,000 in credit cards debt. (My husband had another $10,000 in his name from other adventures)
We set up a "payment plan" and had a 2 year goal of having this all paid off !! By using the additional income I would be making, cutting out a few "unecessary extras" and sticking to a budget it could be done! We were making really good progress from May 2007-August 2007, and then the unthinkable happened....
The first thing we wanted to do was increase our income in order to be able to pay off our credit cards. I had just heard about a possible part-time teaching position that I might be able to start in the fall, which I jumped on. Even though it didn't pay alot,and I would lose nearly 1/2 my take home pay to daycare and gas. We figured whatever money it brought in was "extra" and would go right to paying down our credit cards.
The second thing we knew we had to do was STOP using the credit cards. We could never get them paid off if we continued to add to the balances. We are not extravagant people and the balances on our credit cards were from things like abit of over spending at holidays, or b-days. Some of it was from tution payments when I first started working on my master's degree. Over about 5 years we, as a family, had accumulated about $15,000 in credit cards debt. (My husband had another $10,000 in his name from other adventures)
We set up a "payment plan" and had a 2 year goal of having this all paid off !! By using the additional income I would be making, cutting out a few "unecessary extras" and sticking to a budget it could be done! We were making really good progress from May 2007-August 2007, and then the unthinkable happened....
My Frugal Story- Part One
In the spring of 2007, when I began my frugal life, I decided it would be easier for my family to adjust if we made only a few changes at a time, and we should start with small changes. After reading the 25 Ways to Save Money post at Frugal for Life I decided we could do three of them, right away.
1) I replaced my old lightbulbs in our most used rooms with CFL Bulbs. We changed the living room, 2 kids rooms and the kitchen. Since they are expensive we figured we would replace the other rooms one at a time over the next year.
2) We bought and installed a programable thermostat. And we set it's schedule to very low temperatures. Since it was spring, this wouldn't save us any money for at least 6 months, but I felt is was another "painless" step we could take right away.
3) I diluted all liquid soaps by 1/3. I added water to bottles of shampoo, hand soap, laundry detergent, dish soap, anything liguid. Some may think this reduces their affectiveness, but no one in my house even noticed. And all our stuff (hands, clothes, dishes) were just a clean. We still do this today. I also cut dryer sheets in 1/2.
This is were our journey began.. three little changes that would be the begining of a new lifestyle.
1) I replaced my old lightbulbs in our most used rooms with CFL Bulbs. We changed the living room, 2 kids rooms and the kitchen. Since they are expensive we figured we would replace the other rooms one at a time over the next year.
2) We bought and installed a programable thermostat. And we set it's schedule to very low temperatures. Since it was spring, this wouldn't save us any money for at least 6 months, but I felt is was another "painless" step we could take right away.
3) I diluted all liquid soaps by 1/3. I added water to bottles of shampoo, hand soap, laundry detergent, dish soap, anything liguid. Some may think this reduces their affectiveness, but no one in my house even noticed. And all our stuff (hands, clothes, dishes) were just a clean. We still do this today. I also cut dryer sheets in 1/2.
This is were our journey began.. three little changes that would be the begining of a new lifestyle.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
What has inspired me to write this bolg
I began my journey into the Frugal world about 2 years ago. I googled "How to save money?" and google gave me several links to "frugal" websites. The first one I clicked on was called Frugal For Life (which, sadly, is no longer written). It had a post titled 25 Ways I Save Money, and listed 25 ways Dawn saved money. She listed things like swtiching to CFL bulbs, and lowering the heat and wearing layers instead. At the end of her post she had a link so that others could list their 25 ways they save money. At the time I found it, there were about 20 links. It took me about a week to read though them all and every day a few more would be added. It gave me so many ideas about ways I could easily save money that I got a small spiral notebook and began to re-read the lists, this time writing the ideas I thought I could do right away. Over the next week I will share the early part of my frugal journey, and what I am up to now.
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