Cancelled

Do you remember this post about our vacation? Well, as you may have heard, we are trying to break free from the chains of debt. This guy is mostly to blame.

 Don and I have been talking quite a bit about our finances and decided that we really need to attack our debt, because face it, if we are in debt, nothing that we own truly belongs to us anyway.

 I am not counting our mortgage...I am not forgetting about it, it's just not the step we are on right now.

 Anyway as hard as is was, I cancelled our trip to Hilton Head...the agent on the phone could feel my pain as I reluctantly cancelled our ressies. After I hung up the phone,  I felt a huge burden lifted off my shoulders..not to mention that the ressie went right off our Visa..Wahoo!! When Don and I told the kids they were disappointed, but I told them that when Daddy's home for vacation, each child would get to choose a fun family activity. They were very excited about that...maybe even just as excited as they were about the vacation;)

I thought I would share the Financial Peace University baby steps with you and where we are and what our hopes are.

1. Establish an emergency fund with $1,000.00
2. Pay off debt using the debt snowball.(Not including mortgage)
3. Fully fund emergency savings fund with 3-6 months living expenses.
4. Save 15% of your income for retirement in a Roth IRA or pre-tax retirement account.
5. Save for children's college(We will be saving some to give each child but can not fund each of the 6 kids' entire college...there's a great funding program called W.O.R.K.)
6. Pay off home early
7. Build wealth and give!

We are still on baby step #2 but hope to be moving on to step#3 by early next year. It will be a challenge, but I believe we can do anything through the Grace of God. I wish we would have done this before we had kids or at least 5-10 years ago...oh well....we just need to go. go. go!
 I'm a big geek for admitting this, but I LOVE a tough challenge and it hasn't disappointed me yet!
I love to budget and track every penny and I budget several months in advance, I've designed our own custom budget documents to print off. I squeal with excitement when we have leftover money to push toward our debt at the end of our 2 week budget.

I have always gotten a big thrill from getting bargains and using great coupons...it's even more exhilarating for me now.