How did it happen?

    Welcome to my blog about how I am going to get my family out of debt and trying to do that in 3 years time. First a little bit about us - I am a female in my mid-30's, my husband is in his late 50's and between us we have 9 children. His children are grown adults so that is a bit easier and only 2 of my children live with us. My other four are in our lives but not in our home.  So I was thinking I am sure at some point in time most of us have that moment, where we look at our finances and wonder "How did this happen? Where did I go wrong?". We went from no debt to struggling to make ends meat. Well this moment happened for me a year ago. I sat down to make a budget, but that will only work if you follow it. Now here I am a year later and not any closer to being debt free and in fact I have more debt than I did a year ago. My husband just tells me  I support whatever you decide on this dear. I love him for being so sweet. Our monthly income is more than enough but we just can't seem to make it work. Always borrowing money from family or just living paycheck to paycheck to struggle during the week.

     I finally sat down to take a good long hard look at my finances and to be completely honest, I did not like what I saw at all! I know the monthly income is more than enough to cover everything I need to pay for a month and leave some left over. So I setup an Excel Spreadsheet that listed all my bills for the month with due dates, minimum payments, credit limit, actual payments made, and debt per item. Somethings will "never" fully be paid off (IE. cable, phone, insurances). Still I listed everything so I knew everywhere my money was going for the month. I also found this great app called Every-dollar (which is an app for your phone or can be used on the computer by Dave Ramsey). You can list each bill separately or you can group them all together under a common category name. I personally listed separately so I would know exactly when each credit card was paid off.  I personally want to see each card or bill paid in full so I can feel like I might actually be getting somewhere.

   Well I discovered that my cell phone is paid off this month (woo). My last car payment is at the end of Nov. (yes), and I should also be able to pay off 1 credit card in November. So between those three things being paid off I will open up about $310-$325 in two months time. This is great news! My family has over $62K in debt - most of it is Credit Cards (blah!). I have way way too many credit cards in my name only. My poor family struggles because of me - that was a hard thing to realize. My husband does good at trying to remind me not to complain when we don't have money for something we want or need. He is right, I can't complain as I got us here and I need to get us out of Debt. So I am slowly making a change to it. I have picked up 2 extra days a month at work no it doesn't seem like much; however, when you are working a rotating schedule  (4 on - 3 off followed by 3 on - 4 off) that 1 day extra on a short week makes a world of difference in your check for starting and managing a budget to become debt free. When my 3-day week check goes from 37.5 hours to 50 hours that is a big difference in net income.

So that I don't have to include it in my budget the medical insurance is paid for before i get my check, I have 401K taken out before I see my check, and I pay child support on 3 kids - which is also taken out before I see my check. I $10 put into a different bank to pay on the credit card with them so my payment at the end of the month before due date is in half! This way I don't have to struggle to make $80 just $40! So I still need to cover - 1.) Credit Card Debt, 2.) Legal Fees, 3.) Personal Loans, 4.) Vehicle maintenance (gas, oil change, air in tire), 5.) Groceries/Child care items (wipes, shampoo, etc), 6.) Misc.

We are cutting out fast food except $3 a week in case our son gets french fries from McDonald's. We do what we need to for him and his sensory issues. All meals otherwise will be made at home. I am giving up my once or twice a week Burger King visit to have eggs in some form at home. Our neighbor is giving us FREE chicken eggs in exchange for a bag of dog food that I get from work. So I help them and they help me. He even said if at some point I want it I can have goose eggs to eat ( I am a little reluctant there).

I am starting this budget movement now! October 17, 2018 is my new money life birthday. I will make changes now but I won't really start to push and enforce this until December 2018. Since the $310 is no longer being used then in December I can pay off TWO credit cards in December. So by the start of the year I will have paid off my cell phone and phone insurance, my car, three credit cards; to open up about $430-$450!

I will be following to "The Snowball Effect" budget plan. So I will be starting a savings account for emergencies every month I will put in $80-$100. Let's say I only open $430 - $100 (savings) = $330 for credit cards. With that money I can pay the minimum payment plus use the $330 to pay off one credit card in January (pending tax refund for 2017 is already received). The Snowball Effect budgeting style is where when you pay off one debt then you take that minimum payment in full to apply to the next piece of debt. Since I need to get credit cards paid first that is where I will start. Once they are all paid off I will take the available money, put some into savings and then take so much from what is left to pay on the Legal Fees and Personal Loan debt amounts. With using Tax Refunds and good chunks of money each month I should be able to pay all the debt off by January 2022. I know I am reaching for a possibly unobtainable goal but I am going to give this my best shot and full attention. My family should no longer have to suffer in debt because of my bad decisions.

This where I will stop for the planning as I need to get this far following this first. Any questions feel free to ask. I don't know everything and don't claim to. I do know this plan can work and I will stick with it. I am going to search for other ways to make some money to apply to my debt and I will post those as I find them. So I hope you're in this for a good eye opening process to become financial security.