Day 13: something i'm proud of

this time last year, Thom and I made the decision to move into our friends' basement.

we made this decision to be able to pay off our line of credit and save for a down payment on a house.
i was just back at work (and pregnant!), Thom was at Stats Canada and Isla was just starting daycare.

it was a bit of a crazy time, we are so thankful to our friends for inviting us into their home and sharing their space with us (two families and one kitchen!!)

in the span of 8 months we were able to pay $8000 off of our line of credit and save for a down payment on our house (which we purchased in May and moved into in July).

it was a miracle in our lives

our house officially ours!

a few months prior to that i had been looking at our situation and our finances and seeing that it did not add up to us having a house anytime in the near future (or even not so near future!).

it was through the love and kindness of our friends, our diligence and budgeting, and most importantly the grace and favour of God in our lives.

and i am proud of that.

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