what's in store for 2009?

I don't know...I hope that we can continue to make it.

I want to keep working on the stockpile.

I want to come up with a better way to organize my coupons.

I want to find more ways to get the things I use/need cheap and especially free.

One thing I am excited for in 2009 is paying off my car. Yep that is the goal for this year. I will have that car PAID IN FULL by the end of 2009. One more step toward being debt free.

I just paid off my credit card again. I had charged a bit and just sent the payment in for that to be paid off once again. Dh's balance will be paid off next month. His balance is from paying his life insurance in full so we could get the discount on that which saves more even figuring in the interest from charging it. While paying off my credit card feels fantastic each and every time, nothing can compare to the time I paid it off completely after working on it for months and months. Now the little bit I charge is paid off within a month (sometimes 2) and it feels good but not as good as the initial payoff. At one point my credit card balance was over $3000. I know a lot of people have more than that but to me that was just crazy. It took a lof of discipline to not charge and to get that sucker paid off. I can only hope (ok well I guess I know) that paying off my car will give me such an adrenaline rush of accomplishment, especially that I will be paying it off early.

One thing that kinda hurts the budget but not kills it, is the fact that our bank was bought out this year and our payment will go up on the mortgage due to their escrow requirements. They are requiring more of a cushion in the escrow account than our previous bank did so our mortgage payment is going up by $16 a month. That is really not a budget killer because I put away an extra $30-$40 a month anyway and I budgeted all of our other bills high so we do have extra saved for emergencies or in case one bill is higher than I budgeted for. I am going to have to adjust the budget though by $5 a paycheck because I want to keep putting away that little cushion.

This is what our budget looks like:
Mortgage $580 (including taxes and insurance)
cell phones $95 (actual bill is $92)
Electric $125 (actual bill is $72-$105 normally..this includes our water and sewer as well)
cable and internet $100

household bills $900/month

Our new house payment will be $596/month so I will adjust what I deposit each week from our paychecks up by $5/week and we will be set.

We used to budget out for our car insurance and LP fuel for the winter and we still do but we don't do it monthly anymore. We use our yearly tax return for that $1000-$1200 for fuel, and $650 for our car insurance for the year also we try to pay our life insurance premiums each year out of the tax return. Whatever is left from our tax return each year goes into savings for a home improvement project or for something else.

We have talked about adjusting our withholdings and getting more money back throughout the year from our paychecks but we enjoy the little "windfall" in the spring so we will keep doing it how we are for now. I will look at it again this year at tax time and see if we should adjust.


I am hoping to hit garage sales again this year but not so much for the kids. I need smaller clothes for me and I am hoping to find some good bargains. I will again be holding a garage sale during the city wide sale weekend but I will also hit sales that weekend because my brother and I are taking shifts at my garage sale so we can each hit the other sales. I have already collected 6-8 boxes of stuff for my own garage sale. Stuff the baby has outgrown, clothes that are too big for me now, dishes that I don't use, toys the kids don't play with, clothes that are too small for hubby now, and miscellanous things from the house.