It’s a new month and time to check in and see how we’ve all be doing on our 2009 goals. I don’t know about you, but this has really helped me stay accountable to myself and to everyone else for that matter. Although things aren’t going exactly as I had planned, we are still taking steps forward.
Here is how we are doing so far:
- Our federal tax refund came back and we put it to good use! A huge portion of it went to our debt, bringing it down to $13083.17 with a total of $6592.72 paid since January (38% of our goal)! While we should be closer to the 50% mark at this point in the year, I am most definitely not complaining!
- In addition to a lump debt payment, we added a big chunk to savings. We originally wanted a total of $4000 in our savings (Max out of pocket for health, vehicle maintenance, home maintenace, etc.), but we’ve changed that up a bit. We’ve decided instead of having our full max out of pocket for health expeses set aside that we would put $500 instead. I know that that is a far cry from the original $1500–but at this point our debt snowball is of decent size that when a medical bill arises we can pay it and we used that extra to get our currrent debt number down. Also, we still have the base emergency fund of $1000. We also had in mind to set aside $1000 for vehicle maintence. My husband recently had to have some work done on his truck as well as a new set of tires. After everything was said and done, there was close to $700! So, our new amount that we are shooting for (as long as no other expenses come up) is $2300. We are 70% there.
- Our garden is in full force. You can see all my garden updates here.
- As of Friday morning I start Jillian’s 30 Day Shred. It arrived in the mail today (I got it for free with my swagbucks!) and I’m dying to start it! And I just may be dying when I start it.
Everything else is going really well! 2009 has been a really productive, memorable year so far–and I’m anxious to see what the rest of it brings. From here on out, the 2009 Goal Updates are going to start being bi-monthly instead of monthly, hopefully that way I will have more to report.
How are you doing?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Congrats! Looks like all your hard work is paying off!
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I'm always signing in with the wrong google account. It's me from Eat at Home.
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You guys are making some amazing progress!! It is so exciting
I'm glad you do these monthly updates, otherwise I would forget to do mine! LOL! Each time I see your's I think "oh yeah, another month HAS ended!". How are things coming for the possible addition?
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Sound like yall are doing the Dave Ramsey thing!?! I just started reading his books and got a couple of his dvds. The only hard part for me is getting the hubby on board. Sounds like it's working for yall, great job this month!
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Good luch with the shred. …especially the sitting down on the toilet part after having done it…:)
I'm hanging my head in shame over our lack of sticking to our snowball…:(
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Woo Hoo! Good for you! You have done really well.
While we had to stop our saving/debt reduction plans temporarily we still made some progress in honing our budget. I can't seem to get the Mr. Linky to work for me so I'll leave the link here.
http://gettingfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/06/finding-freedom-friday-2009-goal-update.html
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Looks like you guys are doing great! You've paid off $6,600 in five months! That's amazing! Keep it up!
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WOW! Great job on your reducing debt! What a blessing!
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PRAISE GOD for you progress and for sharing it with so many! Press ON!
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It is great to see you progressing. I love your blog BTW and mean to stop in more often and participate. I am a long time DR fan and followed his TMMO plan to a tee when I was single. I'm having a very hard time working the plan with our farm finances but am slowly making progress. I've been paying almost triple payments on my student loan to eliminate that and then we'll move on to the other student loan and hubby's truck. Your garden is awesome, looks like you're really going to save on the grocery bill come fall. Keep us posted on how the shred workout goes for you, it sounds very scary in a fun kind of way.
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