It has been a LOOOOOOOONG time since I felt like posting on here, but I am going to try and be a little more frequent. I have fallen off the debt bandwagon a wee bit but am in the process of getting back on. Don't get me wrong, we never quit paying down debt like we have planned, we just haven't been as diligent about not charging the debt back up. I updated the amount of debt paid off on the left if you want to take a look.

Looks like my fiscal year end bonus will be given out 8/11 but that will go to pay down the credit card debt that we charged back up in the past few months. This bonus was never figured into the debt paydown plan as it was intended to be used as part of the YNAB buffer....guess that is going to be delayed a while longer.

Our biggest problem right now seems to be getting a handle on cash flow. We have enough to meet all of our commitments, just not WHEN we need to meet them. I have dreams of developing a full month's buffer needed for YNAB, but that just isn't happening. I find myself dipping into and then replenishing our savings several times during the month. How do I get away from that? It is very nerve wracking and drives me crazy.

On the personal front, I have broken my Mt Dew free streak. I had gone almost 1.5 years without a Mt Dew, but one day I decided I could have just one. Well, several weeks later, I am having at least one per day and hiding the fact from my DH. Shameful and unhealthy addictive behavior, but at this point I don't care.

More about my other failures later....

Man, it has been forever since I had a chance to post. Last week was just INSANELY busy at work. I had very little time to even think straight, much less fill you in on anything. Then, the weekend was gorgeous so we spent most of it cleaning, working outside and spending time as a family.

Today I am suffering from the weekend spending hangover. Spent WAY too much money and I feel like I lost all my control. The worst part....I am the one who spent all the money. There were trips to Target, grocery store and the craft store that together totaled over $200. My available flexible cash for 2 weeks was $50. See the problem? I am going to have to take another loan from the savings account to cover the expenses. Makes me want to cry. I am going to look at my purchases tonight and make the decision on whether any of it can be returned. The groceries were something that we needed, but most of the craft store purchases were wants, not needs. All of the stuff from Target was household stuff that we needed, but we could have probably gone without for a while.

Well, last weekend my OAMC session went fabulously. We put together 17 meals EACH so that should take us most of the way through the month without having to grocery shop, besides bread, milk and eggs. We spent about 6.5 hours between the shopping and the assembly, which is pretty good for that many meals, I think. Last time I did it alone it took me almost twice that.

We have been eating a lot of PB&J for lunches and have managed to only eat out a handful of times in April. I am going to try to do a better analysis tonight when I import all the final April numbers into YNAB.

I scheduled a big transfer from our credit union to ING this morning. This will affectively move our entire freedom/EF account to the higher interest bearing ING account. If it is just going to sit there until we need it, might as well be earing a better interest rate that 0.75%. I will still be keeping track of it via the old spreadsheet method, but now it is just in a different place. Here is the best news though....I have paid back all of the money that we had borrowed from the freedom account in the form of overdraft protection. We were over $800 short, and I have managed to pay it back in about 3 months. However, we are still $1500 short in the long term savings account, but now I will shift my attention to paying that account back.

That is the long and the short of it. We are still hanging in there, but just barely. The debt is going down, but our daily expenses are not. Have to get them under control or we are doomed to repeat how we got here.

This week has been a whirlwind. I can't believe it is already the end of Monday because it feels like I have been running non-stop. Work has been crazy and will only get crazier in the coming weeks. The weather is finally getting nicer so now I have stuff that I need to do outside in the yard and garden. One more thing that I don't have time to do.

Money wise things have been up and down. I did open an ING savings account yesterday. I will be transferring all the "short term" money that we have been saving. You know, those Freedom Account things. Did an initial transfer of $300 and will be sending about $900 more in a few days.

However, when doing my forecasting for the new week or so, I noticed we are going to be short on cash in a hurry. Even if we don't spend ANY unplanned money, we are going to be $100 in the hole come next pay day. Yikes! Oh, how I wish we already had a buffer in place! That would make this a whole lot easier. I have no idea how people can put together a buffer equal to one months expenses in just a couple of months. Oh wait...those people probably don't have to pay $900 per month in daycare expenses. So far I have not been able to put one penny into the buffer. But I have been able to pay back a lot of the money we owe ourselves due to overdraft transfers. I have paid back $700 in 2 months, which means we are only down $1500. Could be a LONG time before we are operating at full capacity again.

I have made a decision about our cell phones, now I just have to get DH to agree. We can pay the same price that we are paying now and get 300 more minutes by dropping from the national plan to the local plan. The local plan includes 45 minutes of roaming for the times when Scott is out of the calling area on business or something. With the extra minutes we should be able to keep from going over as often as we have the last few months. We have spent over $150 in EXTRA minutes. At 0.49 per minute, it really adds up fast.

The car payment processed through this afternoon, which means we have paid off $157 more on the debt. We have now paid off a total of $1442.30 since March 1st to our outstanding consumer debt. I am happy with this progress, but the total is still scary. We are currently paying $861 per month just to pay off debt. I can think of a thousand things I would rather do with that money.

Forgot to mention that I put our federal tax payment ($1499) in the mail on Saturday. We got $1155 back from the state, so we only had to kick in an extra $344. Tried to carve it our of the monthly budget but ended up having to take it out of the EF instead. Oh well, at least it didn't have to go onto the credit card.

We are going to have to sit down with my parents (when they get back from vacation) to do some advance tax planning for next year. Scott got a BIG raise that is going to hurt our tax position. We increased his withholding which really took a chunk out of our monthly available income but I don't know what we are going to do if we need to pay a bunch in next year. Don't want to pay estimates if I can avoid them.

DH's payday was today and every penny of it has been given a job. And every penny of my paycheck tomorrow has also been given a job. Unfortunately, most of it is going out the door right away. However, for the first time in a while, we are not spending MORE than we are earning. That is the important part. Even though that is a common sense thing, we haven't been doing that in a while which can be evidenced by the debt balance on the left.

I updated the total debt balance to reflect the money that left our account today to pay down the Slumberland and MTU CC. Pretty good payoff for only 6 weeks! Also going out tomorrow is the payment for the Jeep loan, but I won't know the principal paid on that for about 10 days. They only take paper checks and I can't check my balances online; definitely in the dark ages.

Not shown there is the money that I sent to payoff the Wells Fargo card Scott used for traveling a couple weeks ago. Now that card is locked up and won't ever be used again. It will sit dormant or we will cancel it. Haven't quite decided which yet.

My parents arrived in town last night and Caleb has been having a blast playing with them. Everyone went to bed early so I was able to get a ton of stuff done. I re-updated our budget to reflect the latest income and outgo, cleaned up the kitchen, sorted a bunch of papers and avoided shoveling snow. I also listed more than 30 books on half.com. Nothing has sold and I really don't expect much of it to go quickly, but I will have to wait and see.

I am actually considering having a rummage sale this spring to get rid of some of the crap we have been collecting. Usually I just send everything to Goodwill because I don't want the hassle, but I might be able to make a little bit of money that can help fill up our YNAB buffer account. Can't get rid of all the dang baby stuff yet, but when we can that will be the mother lode.

Tomorrow DH gets paid and I get paid on Friday. I have already scheduled several payments that will go out from my credit union's bill pay system. One of the payments will pay off the small amount we have the credit card we did the balance transfer from and the other will pay off the dreaded Wells Fargo card for hopefully the final time.

Also being paid out on Friday are the monthly payments for the Slumberland account and the Jeep loan. SLOOOOOOOWLY seeing progress at the rate of 2.4% per month. At least it isn't going the other way!

But here is the BEST news....I have not had to use overdraft coverage from our savings account for more than a month. I was using OD protection every few weeks and ended up in a BIG hole where I owe $1500 to our savings account. But I haven't added to that amount so I think that in and of itself is progress.

Maybe I will talk my way out of this bad mood yet....

Well, even though I couldn't find the coupon for dinner last night, we still went out to eat for DH's birthday. Since he got to drink free beer and I only got soda, the final bill with tip came to $25. Not too bad, but should be less. It was strange how eating at the restaurant felt like a treat, whereas not too long ago it was an everyday thing.

Tonight DH is going to my parents to go turkey hunting for the next few days. Hopefully he will decide to stay at the house to eat most meals and avoid eating out, but I am not holding my breath. I know the peanut and I will be eating at home for sure. This month so far we have spent about $150 total for food (dining out and groceries) but it should be a lot less as we aren't even half way through the month yet!

Menu planning seems to be helping with the total overall cost of food, but not as much as I expected it to. I am planning on doing a OAMC (Once a month cooking) session with a friend later this month, so hopefully that will help with next months food budget. I am vowing not to do any grocery shopping (except milk and bread) until the OAMC trip. We should have enough in the freezer and pantry to last us until then if we get a little creative.

Did I mention that my DH has a terrible allergy to corn? Doesn't sound like a big deal until I mention "high fructose corn syrup". That one ingredient seems to be in EVERYTHING. As a result, we have to buy mostly high end things like cereal and peanut butter that are made with actual sugar instead of corn sweetener. That definitely doesn't help the food budget at all. We have to be very careful label watchers because they keep changing recipes of products. I end up making all my own marinades, sauces, side dishes, etc. which can be cheaper except for the fact that I tend to have more "staple" ingredients to buy that way. When I have to restock the pantry it hurts!

ETA: We recently found out that DH is also allergic to Nutrasweet and Splenda too. So he is avoiding all sugar free products as well. What fun.

Today is DH's birthday. He turns 32 and we were originally planning a small, informal party for next weekend but he has decided he doesn't want one now. At least that will help with the cash flow issues. He had lunch with his parents this afternoon as they were passing through town and his gift from them was $50. So now he has a little spending money of his own that he can use for his turkey hunting trip this week so that will help the budget as well.

The weekend went pretty well, spending wise. Dinner on Friday night was McD's drive thru on the way to my parents but then they provided the food for the rest of the weekend. We did pick up about $15 worth of beer, but that was it. Of course, there was about $50 of gas that we wouldn't have spent otherwise, but I did plan for it.

The only boo-boo came in the form of easter bunny shopping for DS. Since he is only 2.5 I have never done the basket thing before. So I went to Target and picked up a bunch of stuff for the basket and the egg hunt. Ended up spending about $40 total. OUCH! I will definitely have to do better next year. And he is not getting anything else for quite a while. May have to see what toys that he doesn't play with that I can sell to make up for it. Shouldn't be a budget killer but could definitely hurt it quite a bit.

Want to hear something funny? A few weeks ago we got one of those valupak kind of coupon flyers in the mail so I went through and clipped the coupons that I thought we could use. One of them was for a place here in town called the Nitty Gritty which bills itself as "the birthday place". Basically you get to drink all you want on your birthday and you get a souvenir mug to go along with it. The coupon was for a buy one, get one hamburger deal, so since it is DH's birthday and we had this coupon I thought it would be a good idea to splurge a little. Problem is that I CAN'T FIND THE COUPON! Dang! Of course I didn't file them away like I should have and now they seem to have disappeared. Don't know if we will still go or not. I don't have anything else planned for dinner and DH was looking forward to it. I feel really bad....will have to create better system for handling coupons in the future.

A few posts ago, I was lamenting how much having another baby would hurt our new budget and whining a little about life in general. Well, after many long heart to heart conversations and some close examination of the budget, DH and I decided that we are going to try for another baby this summer. That way the baby would be born in May 2008 or later. This is important because my parents own an accounting firm and the winter months are just INSANELY busy for them. They can't focus on anything else and I don't want to stress them out anymore than they already are.

So, step one in this process is to attempt to secure a spot on the waiting list at our daycare. Currently they are theoretically booked until 2010 for infants, although no one on the list is even pregnant yet. I thought it would just be a "put your name here" kind of thing, but they actually required us to pay the deposit and application fee in full! Are you ready....$325 NONREFUNDABLE, NONTRANSFERRABLE dollars. Yikes! I had to pull money out of our savings account to cover this unexpected cost....guess this falls under the heading of "miscellaneous". The good news is that this fee will cover the first week of care once Baby starts, but what if there is no baby?

In other news, we are headed to my parents this weekend for the holiday. Well, actually we are headed there so they can see Caleb before they head to Key West, Florida for 6 weeks like they do every year after tax season. They have been going to the same place and staying in the same room for 15 years. Have become great friends with the owner and his family and the thought of going there is what keeps my mom sane though the months of February and March.

Caleb (2.5 YO DS) has been asking for the past week to go to Nana and Bumpa's house. He was SOOOO excited this morning when I was able to tell him that we are going there today. He is being so sweet and snuggly lately that I seem to be forgetting his bratty behavior from the past few weeks. I have been trying to be firm and setting boundaries and he seems to be responding well to that. He is whining a little less (THANK God!) but that could just be a coincidence.

BTW, I checked today and the payoff that I sent in the other day has cleared the bank. We will be closing that account today and that feels really good. Any progress is good, but this feels great!

Well, the payment went out this morning to pay off our first debt in our "debt snowball". Very exciting! Of course,I will probably be compulsive about checking my account to see when the payment is actually credited some time in the next couple days. Then we will be closing the account for good. And with all the trouble we have had with this company, we will never be financing anything with them again, no matter how good the terms are. Just isn't worth the effort. Besides, we are supposed to pay cash for everything from now on anyway, right?

I spent some more time with YNAB this morning and I think it is starting to make a little more sense. Still not entirely clicking, but I am going to have to bend the program to my will until I can get to the point where we are working under "Rule 1". I don't know how we are supposed to determine what our "extra" money for the month is when I seem to need every penny left at the end of the month for the beginning of the next month.

I sat down and did an extensive cash flow analysis (meaning I wrote all my bills on a calendar) and it looks like we are eventually going to get ahead, but it won't be until about the end of June that we start seeing a balance building in our account. I don't know why, since our costs are generally fixed, but it shows I am going to be down to nothing at the end of this month and probably next as well. I guess there is just a lag in the results.

One of my first priorities is to pay back money to our savings account that we have "borrowed" in the form of over draft transfers over the last several months. Right now we owe ourselves $2,060. So before we start building our buffer, those accounts need to be flush. I am going to do that by only budgeting the money that we receive as paycheck each month and then any additional income we get (i.e. daycare reimbursements, gifts, etc.) toward these accounts. We should be back to the actual numbers in about 4 months or so.

Yet another monster post. I can't seem to be brief, even when talking to myself.

I have spent the last several hours with my new budget and software (YNAB) and I think I am going slightly nuts. First off, I picked an awful month to start budgeting. There is income coming from some unusual sources that is making the numbers screwy, like tax refund, expense reimbursements, extra paycheck this month, etc. So I have an unusual amount of money to "spend" and I don't want to put it into the wrong places. If I do end up with a bunch of "leftover" money at the official end of the month I am definitely going to be paying back the money that I owe the savings accounts. Borrowed WAY too much from them over the last couple of months. yes, I am paying it back to myself, but it still needs to be done.

Since it is almost the end of the month, I am trying to get a handle on our actual expenses. Biggest shocker is food. We spent over $600 on food, both in groceries and period dining out. Last month we spent $500 for the same thing, but we ate out A LOT more ($430 worth). I thought that we were going to save gobs of money by staying home more but that doesn't seem to be true for some reason. I don't think I went overboard on the food buying but maybe I did. Will have to take a closer look.

April should prove to be a more "run of the mill" month. Two pay checks, maybe a couple expense checks, but nothing we can't handle. We still aren't going to be working with a "buffer" that YNAB seems to love, but that is going to be quite a while coming I think. We have a long ways to go and a lot of debt to pay off at the same time.

My mind is really spinning right now though. I am trying to figure out some historical numbers from MS Money and that is proving to be a nightmare as well. I can't get a read out of a single category for the past 12 months for gosh sakes! I just want to know a trend for how much money we spent on food. Shouldn't be all that hard. Argh! The new software (YNAB) is going to be much more powerful for that kind of thing, but I have to get the numbers in there first.

This afternoon our new water heater is being installed. Our existing one has been making continually more noise for the last several months and we have put off replacing it as long as possible. It has gotten so loud that you can hear it while you are in the shower 2 floors away. You can even feel the vibrations through the floor if you are standing right above it (in the kitchen). Just crazy loud. Also, the current one was the piece of junk model that our builder stuck us with. It only had a 2-year warranty but now at only 5 years old is falling apart.

Since both DH and I are engineers we have been very anal about examining all our options from every angle. We looked at a tankless model, standard models and high efficiency models. The problem is that we have a gas heater that has to be power vented through the wall. Pretty much the most expensive standard type you can get. We decided on a middle of the road option that is priced reasonably but is energy efficient at the same time. And oh yeah, has a 6 year warranty.

The bad news is that it is setting us back about $1000. The good news is that we are using money we had in our emergency fund to pay cash for it. That is definitely a step in the right direction.