Thursday, January 12, 2012

here we go!

new year.
new goals.
new time lines.


as you know by now, we moved into our friend's basement in november.

it has been going amazingly well!
which is awesome, because it is 4 adults and 4 kids in one house.
that is a lot of bodies.

the reason that we did it is to save money to be able to
-pay off our line of credit-
and
-save to buy a house-

we sat down at the end of december and finally worked out a budget.

we are following Gail Vaz-Oxlade's book 'Debt-Free Forever'
we haven't really read the whole thing, 
but after watching many episodes of 'Til Debt Do Us Part' while on mat leave
i really liked her percentage pie chart on where money should be going.

here is Gail's:

we rejigged ours a little to be able to pay down more debt 
and because our housing costs are significantly lower right now.

here is ours:


nice huh?
we had to move a little more into life because life includes day care and allowances and cell phones and such.

but we have our plan now.
we initially thought that it would only take 6 months to pay off our debt, but now it looks like closer to 10.
we think we forgot to factor in day care costs... which are costly!*
$700 for 4 weeks!
yikes!

but we love knowing that Isla is well cared for and that she loves going.
(i am also aware that some day care is waaay more costly, so we are thankful for that too!)

is anyone else sticking to a strict budget this year?
or at least attempting to?
any tips or spending secrets?



*Thom thinks that we actually had planned on not saving during this time, just putting all our extra money straight onto the line of credit

2 comments:

Meagan@ Keeping up with the Jenks' said...

Congrats! Hubs and I follow Dave Ramsey's advice for being debt free and after a year of it, we paid off both our cars! Good luck, it is so worth it!

Anonymous said...

Kate! I love Gail vaz oxlade and use her budgeting tips :) I check out mrsjanuary.com for shopping deals on groceries as she does a summary Thursdays. We are sticking to a strict budget this year bc of jeff's new job and my mat leave. I motivate myself by reading minimalist blogs and buying with cash. It really seems to work when I need it to. --nico