Week 11, 2019

Week 11, 2019

I spent last weekend learning a new budgetting software. I have decided to switch to YNAB (You Need a Budget) after reading the book. The plan of this program really makes sense to me, making sure to budget between now and when your next paycheck is due really makes sense to me. So I have changed our plan for how we pay for bills. This month will be another giant one for debt payoff numbers because I am paying all bills due between now and the 15th when my next big check comes in.

I also loaded all of my debts into Undebt.it, which for $12 a year syncs with the YNAB numbers and payments so I do not have to double enter anything. This makes my life WAY easier.

We have had quite a few expenses this week. Hubby told me that he needed new tires on the car he uses for his delivery job. That ran us about $400 and drained the money we had set aside for Car Repairs.

We also were given a go kart that hubby is fixing up, so we put about $30 into parts to get the engine up and running again.

Hubby also finally got the parts put on my car to get it to pass inspection, so we funded an inspection and registration renewal on my car.

When I was setting up YNAB I noticed a transaction on our mortgage account that said “Escrow Refund.” The last time we got one of these, we ended up getting the review statement a few months later and found out we were actually going to owe more money in, our mortgage payment has gone up over the last couple of years to make up for shortages and we have not gotten a refund check since the first year we lived here. I knew our review came in March so I waited patiently for the letter, which was uploaded this week and we received in the mail as well. Turns out that since we changed our homeowners insurance we actually did receive a refund AND our mortgage payment is going DOWN by $100, which will help fund some sinking funds each month and to payoff debt.

I really like the plan of YNAB and the sinking funds. I do not like their recommendation of keeping everything in one account though, I opened separate savings accounts with Capital One to keep the different sinking funds in. I have one for Andria’s Homeschool Curriculum, Car Repairs, and one for all of our digital subscriptions that we pay on a yearly basis.

We are already making the plan for next month and what we need to do to help fund our trip to Missouri coming in May. The plan for groceries will be to stay as low as possible on groceries each week to help for groceries on the trip, we are also planning foods that won’t cost us a lot, like sandwiches, for in the car on the road. When we go we stay on my in-laws property, camping, and everyone that goes splits the cost of groceries.

We will also be holding our snowball payment until after we get back to make sure that we have enough money to fund gas and such while we are gone. We will be cash flowing this trip for sure! I think this is the first time that we will be making this trip without using credit. I will not even have our cards with us!

Going into the last week of the month, I have all bills paid or budgeted for through the 15th of next month except our mortgage which will come out of my paycheck on the 19th, it is very freeing. We have been able to fund Jonathan’s early birthday present of a new Xbox, and anything we make in this next week will be thrown into debt.