Skip to main content

Finally Paid Off That Couch!-Getting Out of Debt

My husband and I started the online course for Financial Peace University at the end of May. We still need to finish the course; we're currently on lesson seven!
We have been on one income for a while because I've been on maternity leave. We had about $700 left to pay off of a couch, which is our smallest debt to get rid of.

I'm so happy that we finally made some progress! We'll be paying our couch off this week! So in just a little over a month, we were able to find the extra money needed to make larger payments!
I wish we would have enrolled in this course a lot sooner!

We struggled with budgeting at first but we're getting the hang of it! We use the website EveryDollar.com, the budgeting website recommended by FPU. It's very helpful because you can see where every dollar goes! It'll tell you how much you've spent and how much money is remaining. It may seem very time consuming to enter what you've paid, but it's probably one of the things that have helped us the most. I initially wasn't going  to enter the payments after we entered the budget, but sometimes we'd forget to pull out cash and would use our debit cards. I'd try to keep it all in my head how much we'd have left over. You can imagine that was very successful haha (I still have pregnancy brain. After ten months postpartum, can that happen??). After decluttering photos from my  phone, I was finally able to make some room for the EverDollar app, something I told myself I wouldn't download.
Baby step number two is discouraging at times because it seems like the sacrifices aren't getting anywhere, but it's definitely worth it in the long run. I can't wait to pay off the next item on our debt list!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Decluttering-Getting Rid of Facebook

I have a month left of maternity leave. To say that I'm overwhelmed is an understatement. I've spent the last year decluttering my house. I recently realized that I need to declutter my social media as well. I don't have a Twitter or Instagram. I only recently got a Snap Chat. I joined a decluttering group about a month ago. At first it was very helpful. I was glad to find other people who were on the same journey as I. I noticed a few shared blogs of their journeys. I thought that was a fantastic idea and shared three posts of my own. It was then announced that posting your own blog wouldn't be allowed. I panicked. I felt like I was in trouble, that I did something wrong. I am in a state right now where I am struggling postpartum so what some may have seen as not a big deal, was a big deal to me. I apologized for sharing my blog, trying to explain that my own posts would be too long so that's why I shared it. But I continued to panic, and with fight or flight, I...

Teachers: Enjoy Your Parental Leave

This time last year, I was planning for every day that I would be on maternity leave. My due date was August 25, so I would only be with my kids for two weeks before I would be gone. I worked tirelessly, uploading lessons to  tes.com , so all the substitute would have to do was hit "play" on the slideshows. I got copies made, planned on speaking with my substitute weekly (which I did), and thought I would also connect with the students somehow if I read their journals and wrote them back, along with their personal narrative essays. I was going to take only two months off so that it would be like I was never absent. I ended up not going back . Prior to all of this, I asked other teachers what they did while on leave. Almost all said that they provided lesson plans and graded EVERYTHING while on leave. I also heard a horrifying story of a teacher mom who was getting phone calls while her baby was in NICU because the substitute couldn't find a binder with copies that...

Seventh Generation Pod Laundry Detergent Review

I've been really interested in simplifying everything we use, including what we use in our surroundings. I've cut down on most things in the laundry room. I purchased some Norwex dryer balls two years ago and stopped using fabric softener. I tried using All Free & Clear, but found it would leave an odd smell to my clothes after. I started using Seventh Generation Dishwasher detergent; I purchased it from Sprouts and it came in a  box and is in loose powder form. It has lasted us quite a long time vs. the Sprouts pods we were using! We are very much all about saving money while using better products for our family, so I thought that if the dishwasher detergent was great deal, then I'd like to try the laundry detergent. I looked up the company and they have a program called Generation Good  that will let you try free samples if you give a review of their product after. So I reached out because I wanted to try them. I'm not getting paid or anything like that, I j...