moolah

A couple weeks ago Josh’s car would not start when he was leaving work. His car sat in the work parking lot for two weeks until he could replace the starter. For two weeks he drove my car to work and I had no car. We got by, it wasn’t terrible. Just really frustrating when I needed the car and he had it at work.

Finally the starter was replaced and his car was happy again, at least for a couple days. It died three blocks from home at a stop sign. My dad and Josh got the car home that night by tapping it with my dad’s truck. So classy! This time it sounded like the alternator. My parents were awesome enough to take the old one into AutoZone for us and have it tested. It tested fine.

The alternator got reattached and the car started. This brings us to last week where the car sat in the garage. Josh got to borrow his dad’s truck while they were on vacation. I know Josh did not want to give the truck up and go back to his car but unfortunately he had to. So Sunday we realized that the car had been sitting all week and hadn’t been driven since the alternator incident. Josh started it up after two tries. Whew, we were both relieved.

Monday morning the car takes two tries to start but then it’s up and running. Josh puts it into gear. Dead. Apparently this is most likely a transmission problem. If you’ve seen Josh’s car you know that it is not worth 50 bucks, let alone $800 for a new transmission.

I know it could be worse. At least we have ONE car. At least Josh works in town. At least I stay at home with Jasper. But I can’t help feel really kind of upset about all of this. We can’t afford to replace the car. Most times we can get by with one vehicle but sometimes we really need two.

When Josh and I were discussing if I should quit my job, one of the things we spent a lot of time on was our budget. In deciding that I would stay at home we knew we’d be following a tight budget. I decided right then that I would start clipping coupons and doing better about planning my grocery list.

Growing up I can remember being in charge of the calculator when we grocery shopped. Everything my mom put in the cart I would type the price into the calculator. This way my mom would know if she was going to go over budget. Since I was well trained as a kid I knew I could do it now.

Last week Josh and I had a little bit extra money so we decided to stock up on a few things. I sent Josh to get a loaf of bread. He came back carrying two loaves of bread and two packages of buns. “They were on sale”, he informed. Ataboy! Now I have a pantry that is slowly filling up with everyday items and a freezer full of bread and meat.

It’s such a good feeling! Plus following the sales and coupons is kind of fun. On our stocking up trip, I saved $48 because of the sales and all my coupons. Score!

Last week was a rough one for the Knight family. Josh was at work non-stop, I returned to work after 10 weeks off and Jasper went to a babysitter’s everyday. We were all looking forward to the weekend for some time to recoop.

Friday afternoon my dryer broke. Friday evening we had to cut our trip to town short because Josh was called into work. Saturday morning we woke up to the furnace not working and our house a chilly 64 degrees. When the furnace guy came to fix it, he broke the part as he was putting it in. Luckily they had another but it wouldn’t be done until the afternoon. We headed into town to get the belt for our dryer. The place was closed. To top it all off…one of the tires on my car has a slow but steady leak.

Normally I would be freaking out but I really handled all of that well. Not sure why but I was able to be pretty chilled out about all of that. I still can’t believe that the furnace thing didn’t send me into a panic. I stayed calm and in the end it was something fairly minor.

Maybe I’m finally able to let go of things. I really have no control over any of that stuff so why worry about it, right? We’ll see how long this lasts!

Buying a house is probably the most stressful thing I have ever experienced. Although it’s a “buyer’s market” right now, the financing part is getting much worse. It’s harder to get good loans no matter how good your credit score is. You also need a lot of cash on hand to pay for all of the fees, inspections, attorneys… Speaking of inspections, our house failed the radon testing. We’re waiting to hear back from the seller that it will be fixed. Needless to say, I’ve been a little stressed. (It doesn’t help that my hormones/emotions are all out of whack.)

One of the simple joys that has made me really happy is picking out paint colors. We’re going to be getting two of the three bedrooms painted, all three bathrooms, and one of the walls in the family room done. When I’m feeling really stressed, I can just pull out the paint swatches and look at all the pretty colors. I think I’ve gone over them a hundred times even though I keep picking out the same colors.

I’m sure once we get things squared away with the loan stuff and the inspections, I will have a lot more fun things to think about. For now, I should probably just carry my paint swatches with me.

I’ve been in panic mode any time I think about my taxes for the past year. I kind of assumed that I would need to hire a CPA to do them so everything was done right. Do you know how expensive it is to have a CPA do your taxes? Yeesh. After some research, I started to consider doing them myself. When the TaxCut program came in the mail weeks ago, I stuck it at my desk to look at it and agonize some more. Last week I finally just decided to go with it. Josh was all for it so I installed the software and started working on our taxes.

It’s surprisingly not that difficult. Sure, there are things that I had no idea what they meant. Lucky for Josh and I, we’re pretty straight forward and don’t have a lot of “other things”. I put in my Knight Light income and deductions and was very happy to have my spreadsheet with everything broken out.

I ended up filing electronically Thursday night and I feel so relieved. I don’t even worry that I screwed something up. I think those software programs are fairly dummy-proof, plus I save receipts. If only I had known how easy all of this was, I wouldn’t have needed to worry for months. How many hundreds of times have I said that about something!?

Josh and I have been watching our pennies for a few months now. Not that we didn’t watch them before but now we’re a little more hardcore. We’re pretty much dumping every extra dollar into one of the many student loans or the d200. I don’t mind actually. I LOVE seeing the loan amount go down. We’re getting really close to paying off of one of Josh’s small student loans. It was the smallest but still, to have one paid off… Well it will feel huge!

We’ve loosened up a bit on the budget and aren’t so “we can’t spend any money”. It’s been nice to get a couple new things for fall and not worry that I shouldn’t. Well actually I do that anyway, but I’m just really anxious to get stuff paid off. I basically have payments worked out for the next year and when things will be paid off. Everything is in an Excel spreadsheet. Gosh, I’m a nerd.

It’s frustrating to still not be able to have a house but when I look at my spreadsheet I know that’s what we’re working towards. It really makes me feel good that we’re doing it this way. I honestly feel like this is the right way for us. I can’t imagine trying to pay a mortgage and all of these student loans. Josh would probably have to put me away somewhere. So as impatient as I am, I am really trying to remember that this is going to be better in the long run.

Talking about money seems to make people uncomfortable which I don’t get. I find it comforting to talk to others in similar situations as I am. For me, it’s nice to know that others struggle to make ends meet. Sometimes I feel like everyone can afford a house and lots of kids with no credit card debt… So this is a warning that I will now talk about money…avert your eyes if it makes you uncomfortable.

Josh and I decided almost three weeks ago to do a “No Unnecessary Purchases” experiment. In some ways I don’t remember it ever not being like this. It’s amazing how quick you can get used to something. The first week was weird but now we simply ask if something is necessary or unnecessary. Honestly though I don’t feel deprived or that I’ve even sacrificed that much.

We had decided right away that we’d each get like 20 bucks or so as sort of an “allowance”. I didn’t want the no spending thing to become so hard we don’t want to follow it. My one unnecessary purchase in the past two weeks was this shirt from Target. It actually wasn’t really that frivolous because I don’t have many short sleeve shirts for the summer and it’s been in the 80′s for the past week. Cute and useful! And although we said no bike stuff, Josh finally purchased his new bike seat with some of his graduation money. It was pretty necessary if he wanted to stop getting molested by his bike every time he rode. (His words, not mine.) It arrived on Wednesday and the boy was beyond happy. However, Josh did choose the $60 seat instead of the few more expensive ones he had been eyeing.

For the past couple weeks the money we have spent has gone towards gas, groceries, bandaids, shampoo, and Claritin (which is beyond necessary after a week of feeling like crap because I didn’t have any). We’ve also had Starbucks twice, I think. Last week I received $35 for doing my niece’s 9-month pictures. The money was unexpected and extra so I treated us to a movie last Friday night. We decided that this weekend we’re going to a Farmer’s Market just for fun and maybe to some thrift stores. I figure why not do a little thrifting to look for some newish clothing for summer. I already decided though that we’ll just take a certain amount of cash on Saturday. This way we can’t spend more than we should. So…it’s not like we’re sitting at home twiddling our thumbs and locking up our wallets. We’re just being extra careful.

It really hasn’t been too difficult to NOT spend money. I think it will only get easier. My weakness is definitely clothes. It’s hard because since losing weight I have fewer clothes that fit well. But I know I can manage. Stay out of the mall and stay away from all of those websites that I love to online shop on. When you know your weakness, you can find ways to specifically motivate yourself. Plus I always feel motivated when I can see actual results.

Because of this non-spending thing (and Knight Light had a good month) we were able to pay off what we had on our credit card (left over from Josh’s graduation extravaganza and Wii!), pay our quarterly car insurance bill without even flinching and all our other monthly bills, put some in savings and we still had money left over. Josh got paid today and he even had to remind me. Normally I am paying bills with that money before we get it!

I spent a little bit of time yesterday on our student loan websites trying to figure out our “Plan of Attack”. (I always have to have a Plan of Attack.) I’m anxious for next month to get here (when Josh’s student loan payments officially start) so that we can really see what we’ll have each month. I tried to figure what we’d have to pay extra to pay off loan A by a certain month. Argh, it is so frustrating and impossible. The whole interest thing sucks. I told Josh we’re going to kick butt paying off our student loans. He agreed and then reminded me how thankful he is that I take care of all of that. I just keep him in the loop and we’re good to go.

So there you have it… The life of a couple trying to pay for their college educations as quickly as possible so they can live their lives with a house, 2 cars, 3-4 kids and a dog.

Edited to add (8:15am): One of my favorite blogs lately is No Impact Man. He is spending the year attempting to make zero net impact on the environment. He wrote this today about happiness and consumption.

Josh and I had our garage sale over at my parents’ on Saturday. Between my parents and us we had a lot of big stuff like bikes, a dresser, two chairs, desks… Lucky for us most of that big stuff sold! I didn’t feel like there were a lot of people coming through but I was really happy with how we did. I thought at worst we’d get around $50 and at best $100. Josh and I came in at $94. We were thrilled. After the sale was over we boxed everything up and took it to our local thrift store. It felt good to get rid of all of that stuff.

Josh and I got a notice from one of his student loan providers last week. The notice was to inform him that he would have to begin paying back his loans next month. I logged into the website to check out what the damage was. I added the payments up and pretty much hyperventilated. Uh, the monthly amount was close to a mortgage payment. We can’t afford a real mortgage, how could we afford this!? Once I started breathing again, I realized we could consolidate a few of the loans together. This lowered our monthly payment but unfortunately it’s still a staggering amount.

After receiving this discouraging news, Josh and I started a month long experiment where we do not spend any unnecessary money. This means no trips to Old Navy, no new shoes (like these that I really, really want) and no bike stuff. We decided that we couldn’t completely cut everything out so we figure that if we’re near a Starbucks we’d allow a coffee or two.

Basically we just want to see where we are at money-wise. This new monthly payment seems daunting, considering that some months we don’t have extra money for anything. (But we do usually allow ourselves dinner out or new clothes here or there.)

The funny thing about all of this is that Josh and I aren’t crazy spenders. We don’t buy ridiculously expensive items and don’t spend money we don’t have. Most of my clothes are purchased from Old Navy on sale, I’ve never bought a designer purse in my life, and our furniture is either hand-me-downs or from Ikea. Our hobbies (bicycling and photography) can be expensive but we don’t go crazy with them even though we’d like to.

Honestly I’m not sure how most people do it. Sometimes I think people look at us and think that we don’t spend our money wisely. Do people think, “Why can’t they afford a house?”. Believe me, we can’t! About once a month I look at our budget to try to figure out where the extra money for a mortgage could come from. You can’t save money that isn’t already there, am I right?

Most days though I really like the idea of living more simply. What can I do with more stuff? Do I really need more stuff? What good will it do me? I also remind myself that not having a house has it’s benefits too. Why do I even need a house right now? I’d hate to move so soon after redoing our bedroom! And really we have enough room for all of our stuff. Things that I don’t have room for and don’t need that often (like Christmas decorations) is in storage at my parents. If something should break (like our stove), the landlord would have to replace it. (Even if it took awhile to get a new one…)

So in Josh’s words, we’re trying to be “fiscally responsible”. Really it can’t be that difficult to not spend money… I mean, I’ve got an awesome husband who I could just stare at all night and we have a Wii. What more do you really need?

“If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.” -Luke 3:11 (The Message)

I recently came across this photoset on Flickr. This young couple and their daughter sold their affordable house to move into an apartment. They went from 1667 square feet to 382, simply to pay off their student loans. It made me think that maybe Josh and I could stay in our apartment for a little longer to try to pay off our student loans more quickly. It’s hard because I’m so ready to have a place of our own but I love the idea of having the loans paid off.

I’ve just been thinking a lot about our spending habits. I think we do pretty well. I mean, we don’t spend money we don’t have (usually) and we don’t go on huge shopping sprees. I do know that we could save more than we do. Sometimes I feel like we just spend money on stupid things. It’s especially hard because we’re trying to figure out how to swing buying a Nikon D200 which would be a good investment for Knight Light. What’s considered a good investment for Knight Light can be hard on the checkbook for Josh and Kimberly… It’s really hard to find a balance and it’s even more difficult when you’re starting a business and need a lot of things in the beginning.

Josh and I are having a garage sale in May at my parent’s. I really am excited about purging and maybe making a little bit of cash. We’ve been through our closets a few times but I’m definitely going to go through them again. Sometimes I feel like we have so much STUFF. Things that we don’t really need but we keep “just in case”. Maybe it’s time to go through things, live simply, figure out how to pay off our student loans sooner…change.