Our savings plan!

Before I get to why I'm so excited about my bank accounts, I have a really quick update. I get to knock a little off of my old cable, but not because I really did much. I called the company to find out if they could work with me on this old bill so that I could get it paid off, and they informed me that they had actually not credited me back my old modem, so that knocked off quite a bit of my bill. Instead of owing 200, I now owe 114. I'LL TAKE IT!!

Now the FUN stuff!!  We are now the proud owners of 4 bank accounts and brand spanking new cash box! Exciting stuff, right??? I know that I am visual, and I know that, at this point, I cannot be trusted to keep all of my money together without spending it.So we have decided on multiple bank accounts. They currently have no money in them, but no less, I have them setup and ready to go! They are Car Fund (we have been VERY luck to have my husbands for going on 8 years, and plan to drive it until it quits...but I don't want to go into more debt when it decides to die on us), Debt repayment (one of my debts only allows 4 payments a month, and so this one is just necessary right now), primary checking (for obvious reasons), and our sad little emergency fund (that I intend to fill with our next commission check).

Yes, friends, it really s that bad. That is all the money I currently have to my name. Awesome, right? We all start somewhere (she said with a lot of embarrassment) 


We also ordered this cute little thing off amazon for $26:

Or rather, I ordered this cute little thing without my husband having seen it first. I hadn't meant to order a pink one.  I didn't even realize they HAD pink ones, but when I saw that it was also four dollars cheaper than its boring grey counterpart, well... how could I NOT click add to cart???

I had a little balance on our amazon gift card, so it was covered by that.

My plan is to use this for birthdays, money the kids earn, tags, and Christmas envelopes. I didn't think I needed to store these things in the bank, but didn't want to have a largish sum of money just laying around the house either. I feel much better knowing that it will be locked up and somewhat protected (now to find a place to hide it!). Am the only one who is this neurotic about keeping cash in their home??

Finally, we went to the dollar tree to pick a few envelopes and found these awesome, durable, snap envelopes. They seemed really sturdy and were 2 for 1 dollar. I had planned on just getting the plain paper ones, but at 2 for a dollar, why not get some cute ones???!! (I am starting to see why I am in so much debt here...) 

Out of pocket total for getting a bit more organized wast less than 5 dollars. I'm good with this!

Eating an elephant sucks

 I have NO patience. Seriously. None.

It may very well be the reason that I have failed time and time again with this whole debt payoff. I lose focus and motivation and scrap the plan.

I am hoping that this blog and chronicaling my journey will help with that. Meanwhile, I'm not off to a FANTASTIC start. You see, I am days away from having my 3rd child. I am on maternity leave, and without a paycheck for the next 8 weeks.

Knowing this almost 10 months in advance, most people would save for such an event. Did I? Nope. Nothing. Nada. Awesome.

I think we'll be okay if we are extremely careful, but it sure isn't leaving a ton of room for that pesky little debt snowball that I am so excited about.  Even so, I have still managed to take care of a few small debts. I forgot to post this at the end of March, but here is where I landed at the end of the month.

Radiology    0/50
Fines          0/100
Old cable bill  200/200
Hospital    254/339
CC1            0/300

CC2              754/800

CC3             2250/2250

CC4               3000/ 3000

School (mine) 5245/6000

School (hub)      8,580  /17400

Van                    12,500/21,000

House               97,000/99,000

For a total of 

 

I am down a total of $1,151.00 for the month of March.

Trying hard to focus on progress and that whole "eating an elephant slowly" business, but ack. At this rate, it will take way too long.