Renting

I got my first taste of rental house shopping yesterday. Yuck.

There was finally a house listed in Filer, in our price range, so I hurried to look. Yeah, not worth my time. She had it listed as a 3 bedroom. Well, in my opinion, you can't count a large laundry room that lacks a door, etc. as a bedroom. At least where I come from you can't. And especially not for $750.

That was just one of the things on the bad list for this particular house.

Back to square one.

I think we will just stay put for a while longer. We're saving a minimum of $1000 a month where we are right now, and we'd only be saving $400 a month if we rent. We're going to reorganize and such to make it work better and stay put.

I feel like a kid though. And an adult at the same time. What a weird place to be.

The house we love is still in the running, I think we will just have to wait a while longer.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this...

The Waiting Game

So here I am, STILL living with my in-laws. They are so wonderful about it all, I'm just READY to have my own house again. We haven't had any luck with finding another place to live. We've been talking with the guy who is selling the house we love, but he keeps changing his mind on things and it doesn't look promising now. There are no other houses in the area that we really want to buy. And there are NO houses to rent in our budget either. And it's not because I'm being picky. I would live in a trailer house at this point if there was one available.

Home Sweet Home!

The positive thing to this is that our savings account keeps growing and growing!

Speaking of growing...(nice huh?) we planted our garden and it is AMAZING! A little big, but so far we are handling it ok. We have 4 150 ft. rows of potatoes. A 125 ft. row of various veggies (lettuce, onions, cucumber, tomato, jalapenos, peas, and green beans). 2 75 ft. rows of corn. And a 50 ft row of pumpkins, squash, and cantaloupe.

I am out there everyday weeding it! It's so fun to watch everything growing and thriving. This year I am going to learn how to can stuff. I want to be able to put back a bunch of food to last us through the winter. I will have to use the farmer's market to get enough, but by buying in season that should work fine.

I would like to cut my grocery budget in half, or close to half at least. Hopefully this will be a good way to do it.

I have to admit, I really enjoy when life is simple like this. When I simplify my life I am a better, more calm person. That's better for my kids and my husband (and my in-laws!). This school year I am going to cut back on what I volunteer for. I was way over-committed this last year and we all suffered for it.

We're learning and growing. We're saving money. We're keeping hope alive that we'll get a house soon. God is good!

So now what?

I hate making decisions.

I hate it even more when I make a decision and then need to change my plan.

I think that may be where we are right now. Only thing is, I'm not totally sure. We were so excited to be putting all our money toward our last debt, and watching the color sheet on the fridge fill up. And then the neighbor gave us a tour of his house. And we LOVE it. And it meets almost all of our criteria. And he wants to sell it this summer.

So now what do we do?!

If we send everything to our student loan, there will be no down payment to buy this house. We still are not sure if the house will be in our price range. It is possible though. So for the moment we're left putting everything into savings again until we can decide what we should do.

Now every time I open the fridge, I look longingly at the thousand dollar bills on the color sheet. Then I count in my head how many we could color if we sent the money in. And then I go to bed every night thinking about how beautiful that house is, and how nice it would be to have our own space again.

I guess I will just have to wait this one out.

From Frustration to Finally

We've been a little busy lately turning this

Into this

and then this

Sorry for the bad pictures. I really need to learn how to load pics from the camera onto the computer.

So, it's been a bit busy and I've neglected this thing a bit. Let me tell you, I've had a lot to say though.

For starters, I've been so frustrated with our finances. And our lack of a house. And my car.

a.k.a. the money pit. 

It's spent more time in the shop in the last week than it has with us. And $1400 later, it's running good again. So much for our savings plan.

That's where all the frustration has been. Our savings has done more shrinking than growing in the last month and I was not responding well to that. But you can't avoid things like cars getting fixed, dental work, and doctor visits.

Last weekend was my lowest. Kris has been gone all the time working, and I was sick of nothing to show for it. I decided to look for a house. Thankfully, I didn't get very far before I was reminded via Pastor Jerry to stay the course. Back to waiting I go. But this time with renewed hope.

And for good reason. Something awesome was about to happen! Kris got his biggest paycheck yet, and we made our first large payment to the student loan! Finally! This is really going to happen!

We made a picture of our debt so we could fill it in as we go and see what it really looks like. This will also allow the kids to participate and see how it works. Each of the bills represents $1000, totalling the amount of the debt.

I'm happy to say that 3 and a half of those are now filled in! Hooray!  :)

Hoarders

I like to keep my money.

I've been holding on to my allowance for a month and a half now.

I'm also enjoying watching the balance of our savings account go up and up.

We are living off very little of our money, and saving everything we can. The plan is to pay off the student loan as quickly as possible. But we've been putting the money in savings so that in case a house comes up, we will have a down payment ready. We figured we could put it toward the student loan if no houses come up.

I've felt really uncomfortable with this idea. Well, I love the idea of storing up cash. Hoarding money sounds fantastic! I just don't think it's what we should do right now. Where's the faith in that? It's like saying we believe God will take care of us, but we've got a savings account built up in case he doesn't.

I think we're going to just throw everything into the loan and see what happens. It feels like God's getting ready to do something big, and I can't wait to see what it is!

Now, where's my checkbook?

It's Elementary

I'm pretty technical about some things. My checkbook is one of them. I balance it at least every two weeks and make sure it is reconciled. I have a certain system for how I keep track of all our money. I've used computer programs, the kind that tell you where your money is going and all that, but they never do exactly what I want, so back to my notebook I go.

The only problem with this is that I seem to have a small problem doing math. Actually, sometimes it's a big problem. Even when I use a calculator and pay close attention, I inevitably make simple math errors. Seriously, like at least once a month.

My latest error was last payday, two weeks ago. I was so excited to pay someone who had just done something for us. It had only been a week and a half, but it was a significant amount and it meant we owed someone money, which I hate. So when I balanced the checkbook and paid the bills last payday, I was bummed to find that we were still $200 short of paying them. Drat. Kris was level headed and told me to relax. In two weeks we'd have it, no big deal. It's true, payday was today, and we had plenty to cover it.

When I reconciled the checkbook today though, it came up $1000 off. It didn't take long for me to find the error. At one point two weeks ago I was supposed to subtract $180 and apparently I subtracted $1180. So all along I had an extra $1000 just sitting there! Not a bad problem to have really, but I couldn't believe we had the money for two weeks and didn't realize it!

At least it was an error to our benefit, they aren't always.

There was that one time when I apparently made up a $500 deposit that didn't actually exist. But I'll save that story for another day.

Maybe.

Insurance Day

I spent a lot of the day in bed today. After 11 days, I'm still sick.

Kris spent a lot of the day figuring out our life insurance policy plus our health, dental, and vision insurance for the next year.

I'd rather be in bed than try to figure all that stuff out. He kept asking me questions, and I kept returning blank stares. Poor guy, I am not any help at all.

We did figure out how much we need to take out in our life insurance policies. We had to pull out the Dave Ramsey dvd and watch that one again since all our stuff is still packed away. Now we're just figuring out who to buy it through. It looks like we may do a combination of Kris' work and an outside company.

I'm so relieved to be finally getting life insurance though. Before Kris got the job on the helicopter, it didn't seem to bother me much. His job is so much more dangerous now though, and I've had a hard time with the fact that we hadn't gotten around to it yet.

We're still going to keep the hefty health insurance this year. Around here you never know what might happen.

(no, this is not current, it's from last year)

I wonder if Kris is still open for suggestions, we may need to raise the amount in our FSA...