Living Like No One Else

I love Dave Ramsey. He's opened my eyes to how much debt hurts your long-term financial future and he's opened my eyes to how quickly you can get out of debt with some determination.

When Nick and I got married we had about $1,000 in CC debt between us, which really isn't that bad considering how high the national average is per person. We also each had a car loan and each had a student loan. We did work hard to pay down the CC fast, but it never dawned on us to try to pay down the other loans early. That is, until I read Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness After reading the book I was suddenly inspired to have us dump our remaining debt (just one car payment and 2 student loans at this point). It took me a while to get Nick convinced, but eventually it happened.



First we paid off the rest of the car (my Neon), then we started chipping away at the student loans. Mine was the smaller of the two, so we worked on mine first. We finally paid it all off last fall - 4 years early! Then we started working on Nick's student loan. We had some set backs along the way when various large car repairs came up, but last week Nick paid off the remainder of the loan using a big chunk of our tax refund. WOOHOO! We're (almost) Debt Free! Now all we have left is our mortgage (which we just refinanced to a lower interest rate, saving us $100 a month).

Last week we also were dealt another financial blow by the Jeep. We've been saying for months and months that we're going to get rid of it and finally buy a minivan, but it took longer to pay off the student loans than we had hoped. We spent $900 on that Jeep in February and when the check engine light came on again a couple of weeks ago and we were told it would be another $500-$800 to fix we said "enough!". Nick and I had a financial pow-wow and came up with a plan.

Dave Ramsey talks about living like no one else now so that you can really live like no one else later. The last thing a newly out of debt family wants to do is run to the nearest bank and take out a several thousand dollar loan for a car. So we're going to live like no one else. We've become a one car family. Yep. We've slapped a for sale sign on the Jeep (and have had 3 people look at it in the last 4 days) and are making due with just the Neon. Good thing we bought the narrowest car seats on the market and can fit all three in the back seat!

The grand plan? Sell the Jeep (it'll make a great car for someone, we just don't want to keep spending money on a car that is too small for us) and do some serious saving in the next 2 months. We have a target date of June 1st; by that day we want to have purchased a van either totally for cash or pretty darn close to it. If we have to borrow a thousand or two, it's not the end of the world. We'd be able to pay that down completely in a matter of a few months.

Who'd of guessed our new "family car" would be a tiny, yellow Dodge Neon? Not me! But I'm willing to live like no one else right now so that we can live like no one else later!

March for Babies update: Two friends have stepped forward and committed to walking with team Three Cuties, so we're back up to 6 walkers! Yay!! Now to just chip away at that lofty fund-raising goal I have...
 

Christmas On A Budget

If you participated (or are still participating!) in Cans For Comments last week, please either leave a comment here or e-mail me (threetimesthegiggles@gmail.com) your tally of comments/cans! I want to post an updated total tomorrow or Wednesday and include links of all the blogs that participated (or are still running it!) in Cans For Comments!

 

Last year I did some super savvy Black Friday shopping. I had never been shopping in the morning on Black Friday before and found it rather entertaining and exhilarating! Last year I managed to get gifts (and good ones at that I must say!) for 15 people (some "people" were couples) for under $230. Yeah, you read that number correctly. Now, I will say this - last year we did not buy gifts for the boys. We figured they still were pretty young and wouldn't notice (let alone care) if some of the dozens of gifts they got were not from us.

This year the boys will be visited by Santa and will also have gifts from us under the tree. Does this mean our budget will balloon out of control? No Sir! If anything, we may actually come in under our budget from last year! Allow me to share my "secrets" with you.

Tip #1: Buy used! Honestly, I think that kids under the age of 6 or 7 at the very least do not notice or care if their gift is in the original packaging. If anything they like it better when it's not in the box because the toy can then be played with immediately. (Parents, isn't it so obnoxious to have an excited kid breathing down your neck while you're trying to un-twist the 30 twist ties holding their doll or Little People into the box?!)

This fall I have snagged 3 great gifts for the boys at a consignment sale and also through a local triplet mom (she was selling stuff her trio had outgrown). Check out these gems! (Please ignore the loveliness that can be found in our basement and garage!)

This is a Fisher-Price (I think) trike that can be transformed somehow to a bike! Thankfully the user manual is taped to it. I picked this up for $10 at a consignment sale.

 

This is a Little People castle complete with a huge bag of accessories and parts! I scored this for only $8 at the same consignment sale I picked the bike up at.

A couple of big, pop-up play tents I snagged from a fellow triplet mom. She actually threw them in as a "bonus" when I bought what you see below...

This giant tunnel thing, plus the above tents, was only $25! I looked these things up online and they all would retail for over $100. They're all in fantastic condition and if they already survived one set of triplets I have hope these will last longer than 2 weeks (which is how long the one we bought from Target lasted).

I can not wait to give these to the boys! They're going to have a blast with all of them.

Tip #2: Plan, plan, plan your shopping. Did you know that most retailers now release their Black Friday ad early? I've been looking at BF ads for well over a week now and new ads are constantly being added. You can view BF ads here: http://www.blackfriday.info

Wanna know how much of a dork I am? I have a spreadsheet this year. I've made a list of stocking stuffer ideas for the boys, a list of people we're buying gifts for and then a list of gift ideas I've found in BF ads (I include in that list where the item is on sale and for how much). This list will make my Black Friday morning an enjoyable one! I'll have my top choices mapped out and then have back ups just in case the item I want is sold out by the time I get there (which happened a couple of times last year). With any luck I'll once again take care of 95% of my shopping in just 3 hours and come home under budget again!

Nick and I have always been budget conscious when it comes to spending, especially at Christmas time. Even when we were DINKs (Double Income No Kids) we didn't spend a lot. This year our entire congregation will be encouraged to spend less money on Christmas and instead give more money away. Did you know that the amount of money American's spend on Christmas could provide clean drinking water for the entire world? Sick huh?

With that in mind, I invite you to watch this little video clip and consider what your family, group of friends or church could do this Christmas. (My mom's group is all pitching in $5 each to adopt a family in need in our community this Christmas! $5 each isn't a lot, but multiply that by 48 and it's substantial!) For more about the Advent Conspiracy click HERE.

Great For Day Cares

Normally on Wednesday I would have The Video Clip of the Week, but I'm experiencing technical difficulty with that today. Hopefully it'll be up tomorrow morning!

One night a month we load the boys up and head down the street to Sam's Club. We only pick up a few select things that I have done a careful price comparison on. Some things definitely are cheaper to buy at Sam's, but the bulk of our groceries and paper products are actually cheaper if you shop the sales, use coupons or buy generic at a regular grocery store.

While wandering Sam's club the first time a few months ago I started noticing that a couple of the things we were buying were being advertised as "Great For Day Cares". I guess it would make sense that we would be buying these same items... looking at our home you would think we were running a day care. So what "day care" items are we buying? Giant boxes of Goldfish (of course!) and 6 pound cans of fruit. Yep, fruit. Typically we go with good old fruit cocktail, but this month we changed it up and went with pineapple, which the boys love too!

It got me thinking, what other things in our home could be advertised as "Great For Day Cares"? Probably our Choo Choo wagon could. A woman who runs a day care once asked me where I got it. I'm willing to bet our Little Tikes Slide or Step 2 Coaster could be to. In fact, they probably are advertised as that somewhere! I wonder too if our Pit of Despair would be "great for day cares". Ahhh the life of a family with multiples!

As a quick side bar, I know many people are fascinated by our tight grocery budget and probably are wondering what it is that we do buy at Sam's... We buy a 5 pound block of cheddar cheese, a 9 pound box of oatmeal, a large box of French Toast Sticks (the boys love these for breakfast) and the aforementioned box of Goldfish and 6 pound can of fruit. All of that typically lasts us the whole month. We also occasionally feed Nick's gum chewing habit by buying a box of his favorite gum - usually works out cheaper than buying it in a regular store, but not always.