No tax return!!!!

The average tax return for 2011 was $2913
(The average in 2010 was $3129).
If we assume our tax return was $3000, we could bring home an extra $250 per month and end up with no tax return. 
If we invested that $250 for 30 years and assumed a 10% return,  that would result in $565,000!!!!

Don't let the uncle Sam use your money and pay you back in April!

Tacos and toothpaste

Most people heare the term budget and they think "restrict my spending".  The problem is, your income is what really what restricts your spending.  If all you had was $3 and needed toothpaste and wanted some tacos for lunch, deciding which to spend your money on isn't restricting you.  Its the $3 you have that is restricting what you can spend money on.  All a budget does is allows you to decide where you want to spend the income you actually have.

What credit cards do is allow you to get the tacos and the toothpaste, when you really don't have enough income. 

Decide what you want, the tacos or the toothpaste.

What is your plan?!?!?

The process of getting out of debt has taught me many things, but none more do than the power of planning.

The Bible even talks about it in Proverbs 21:5 NIV

The plans of the diligent lead to profit
as surely as haste leads to poverty.

I have learned that planning is critical to everything you do.  If I don't plan my exercise routine, I will never follow through. If I don't plan my meals out in advance , I'll settle for eating out somewhere.  If I don't plan my evening after work, I'll waste it watching something on tv I don't care about.  If I don't plan a specific time to read my Bible, it gets pushed aside for all my other "important" tasks for the day.
 
If I don't plan my spending before I get it, I'll waste it away on little things and wonder where it all went.

What kind of plans do you need to make?

Back from the debts

It's been a while since I've posted but my goal is to get this up and running with consistent posts. 

Our status on debt reduction:  We have around 8k left to go on a student loan and then we''ll be debt free.  We started this journey in October of 2010 and we'll be finished in October 2012!  2 years of planning, sacrificing, and getting made fun of and we will be done with part of the journey.

Up next:  Emergency Fund of 3 to 6 months and then on to saving for a house.  Now that we have 2 incomes, these steps will move much quicker.

Shout out to the guy that pushed me to get this going again!

Saving Money on your Cell phone bill

Every week, I am going to post a tip on saving money in your budget. This weeks topic is your cell phone bill.

Cell phone companies are constantly changing rate plans and data plans, so make sure you check to see what the latest is. Also you will want to check your phone records to see how much data and how many minutes you CONSISTENTLY use. If you are consistently below the data or the minutes by a significant amount, you are wasting money by having the higher plans. You don't want to change if you think there is a possibility of going over, the charges for going over are re-donkulous!

My wife and I saved $15 off our ATT wireless bill recently by increasing her texting plan to unlimited. ATT's new plan gives free wireless to wireless (to any carrier) if you have the unlimited texting plan. This plan costs $20 and my wife was paying $15 for 1500 texts. The saving comes from reducing the rate plan to the lowest one available which saved us $20. So we payed $5 more for the extra texts, but were able to save $20 by reducing the plan. So our total monthly savings on cell phones is $15. This may not sound like much, but if you do the things I'm going to tell you about each week, you'll be able to save hundreds of dollars off your monthly budget.

Sold!!!

I'm going to start the blog off by the most recent event that came about. Then I will revisit all the event that led us to the point we are at now. The decision to attack our debt and become debt free start in September of 2010. We are currently at a point where we just have student loans from Danielle's schooling and our home loan.

This past weekend I put several things on Craigslist to get some more traction with our plan. Yesterday I sold a mountain bike for $20, a lawnmower for $65, and today I just finished a deal to sell our two carseats and bases for $60. We are planning a garage sale in a couple of weeks and I figured these items would do great on Craigslist. I still have a bistro table and chairs as well as a ladder shelf for sale......if you are interested.

Selling items that you don't need is a nice way to get some traction if you plan to pay off your debt.