Budget & Debt Snowball

As promised, I want to update the details of our budget meeting and debt snowball. Probably, our debt snowball will be on pause for a little bit while we get ourselves together, but I will keep everything update as neccessary.

Budget 12/1/13:
Phone bill for November $400 (putting my cashed out sick days onto this immediately, $170)
Car for November $180 (paying this week with my last Nov. paycheck)
Water for November $60 ($30 today, $30 with next bill)
Electric for November $299 ($75 today, $225 with Kyle's first paycheck)

Tires for Kyle $300 (Kyle's first paycheck)
Spark plugs, brakes, oil change for me $100 (Kyle's first paycheck)

Regular expenses:

Electric 70
Water 70
Gas 180
Sewer 20
Auto/Home ins 125
Fuel 200
Life insurance 37
Alarm 37
Internet 75
Hulu 8
Car 180
Gym 25
Host Gator 10
Pets 75
House Supplies 50
Phfa 54
Food 300
Phone 400
-------------------
$1916

We have decided to stop paying the credit cards for now because there's a lot more important things on our plate at the moment... like eating and keeping the lights on. Also, as soon as we are caught up with the phone bill, I'm going to see what I can do about making it cheaper. I may be going back to an inexpensive phone for the moment. You'll notice that our mortgage isn't included in this budget and that is because we are in the process of a short sale. I don't have the energy to talk much more about the house; it has already sucked more life and energy from me than I'd like to admit. You can use google if you are curious about all that a short sale entails. As soon as Kyle gets his first paycheck, we are going to catch up our utilities, take care of some neccessities, (such that I have on my list: new tires for my car, house repairs, get all of our pets to the vet) and then as much as we can is going to go into saving up 3-6 months of rent for our new place in Philly.


Also, here is our debt snowball... We are going to begin working through this, smallest to largest (because we all need wins to keep us going... at the point that we get intense, interest rates don't matter...)

Medical bills:
$60
$60.34
$61.88
$99
$100
$150
$164.25
$395.72
$532
$1000
--------------
$2, 623.19

Credit:
Lindsay $281
HSBC $387
Capitol One $348.70
Belden $469.55
Kyle Best Buy $579.31
Express $590.32
Usaa $600
Capitol One $610
Alana Best Buy $789
Boscov's $798
Lowes $959
Chase $988
Citizens $1900
-----------------------
$9, 299.88

Other:
Car $2600
PHFA $3672.25
-------------------
$6, 272.25

School:
Racc $789
BTI $2755
School $45,000.00
----------------------
$48, 544.00

All Together: $66, 739.32
Paid: $24, 480.07

More to come later with our daily update. Thanks for tuning in!

XO.

The Fadigans Move Forward...

This is my first post from the mobile app. Hopefully, it turns ok. You'll have to let me know, because I probably won't see this post from a desktop until tomorrow morning. 

Anyway, Kyle and I had our first budget meeting in a very long time. Although, a little frustrating trying to stretch every dollar, it felt really good to be working on the problem together. I was very grateful that he was so understanding and thoughtful about his input. No fighting this time. I will post the details of our meeting tomorrow, as my notes are away already and I'm in the bath. I really just want to give you a run down of the new features that I will be running on Girl Forward that highlight mine and Kyle's journey as we restart our debt free goals and spiritual/mental/physical strengthening. 

Kyle and I decided that we are much more likely to follow through with our goals and plans if we had an audience and readers to be accountable to. With that in mind, I'm going to be faithful to record our progress here. This is tentatively what the blog schedule for posts featuring Kyle and me will look like: 

First of the month: monthly budget and debt snowball progress. 

Weekly ( I haven't decided which days yet) : Mine and Kyle's health numbers, body fat, weight, inches etc. We have made a committment to ourselves and each other to get into better physical shape. Not only are we going to work out but I'm going to research between two plant based diets and see which one works best for us. Also, weekly, I'm going to include progress of house projects as we attempt to fix up the house for resale. Sundays, I'll update each of our take away from the morning's service. 

Daily: We figured if we had to be honest about what we were spending our money on, what we were eating and doing with our time, we'd be more intentional about all of it. So daily, I'll post mini updates of all of those things. 

We have lived a prodigal life for the last five years; our unrealized motto being 'Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die' .... I have no desire to live a frivolous and wasted life any longer. Neither of us do. Kyle says we had to learn things the hard way so that we'll never do it again. His words are true and I am interested in righting our ship to the proper course. Desperately, as apparently is needed. 

Please stay with us as we sort through our mess and learn to live well.