Big Boy Room!

Saturday we started working on Rowan's new room. We made some progress, but there is still some work to be done.

Before Picture

This room was simply our guest bedroom. We had never painted it anything other than the cream it was originally painted. This was the before we tore the bed down picture. We actually started painting with the bed up, but then quickly realized our flaw.

Halfway Picture

We started painting Saturday afternoon during Mr. Rowan's nap. We managed to get the blue done then. Saturday after Row went to bed, we painted the bottom green. We left it over night, but we both decided it needed a second coat to look acceptable. Today we put a second coat on both the green and blue, and this was the final product!

The white stripe will be bright orange when we finish our paint job. The room is going to take on a safari theme with a striped comforter, and a brand new twin bed for our little explorer! We are already starting to call it his "Big Boy" Room, and he seems pleased by the idea!

2010 Financial Goals February Update

2010 Financial Goals February Update

February saw us reach another one of our goals. We are bopping right along with these.

Goal 1: Save enough to replace our 1994 GMC Pickup Truck by Aug. 1, 2010. Done as of February 14! Yippee! We purchased our new to us truck and sold our old truck on the same day!

Goal 2: Pay off one of Alex's student loan by March 1, 2010. Done as of Feb. 8!

Goal 3: Write a will to make sure everything is covered should something happen to us, but it won't, because we don't die! Still haven't done anything on this one.

Goal 4: Buy enough life insurance to bump us up to 10 times our salary each by Dec. 31, 2010. We have found the company where we are going to purchase the rest of our life insurance through. Alex filled out the paperwork tonight, and I just need to sign it tomorrow, and we will hopefully be all set.

The purchase of the new truck definitely gives us a new energy. As soon as we can knock out goal 3 and 4, we have a couple more goals to tackle financially. The work is never done:-)

We Did It!

On Saturday we bought a new to us truck with 100% cash! What a feat this is for us, and this was one of our big financial goals for 2010! I am ecstatic, and I know Alex is thoroughly excited to have upgraded his vehicle.

New Truck

Alex bought this truck in 2002 before we were married. When he purchased this truck, I was a permanent fixture in his life, but not a fixture to help make those kind of decisions. He needed something that was more reliable, so he bought it on his own. Had we only known how long he would drive it:-)

Old Truck

Let us fast forward 2 years to our wedding. We got married, moved here to town, and quickly added up our credit card debt from college. I was thrilled to have a small amount on a card that I paid off every month. But, Alex was a different story. We started adding up his cards, and I might add it is fair to say he had no idea how many credit cards he had, let alone how much he owed on any of them:-(. When I was done totaling his cards, he owed over $20,000, and he had not a single thing to show for it. Fast forward 2 years, and I had managed to get our butts out of credit card debt, and we built our house! We had since paid off his truck, but I had totaled my car. In our naivity, we bought a brand new car (remember we were young and stupid).

About a year and a half ago, I found some information on Dave Ramsey, and I really started to understand how a family's finances should work. We'll just say that I had no idea what a budget was:-o I switched us to a cash system for our discretionary spending, started a spreadsheet budget, and started tackling our car debt like crazy. It took me right at a year to pay off $9,000. Remember we were paying 2 sets of graduate tuition throughout this as well. It was at this point that we realized we were ahead-kind of. We were in a place where we could begin saving for a new truck. So in July of 2009, we started putting all of our money we were paying on our car into a savings account marked truck. Anything extra we flung into savings. We continued to live on our budget and pay our minimums on our student loans-our only debt at the moment other than our mortgage. Eight months later-we have a truck that is 100% ours! It feels amazing. Our work is not done, though. At this point, we intend on tackling our student loans to get ourselves completely out of debt except for our mortgage!



We didn't get here overnight, and I am really proud of Alex for being as patient as he was. I know he was ready to just go buy a truck, and I know I had moments where I thought I would just go get a loan, but the wait was worth it. Our marriage is less stressed as money is not really a point of discussion anymore. We have figured out how to live within our means, and it is exciting!

2010 Financial Goals January Update

The month of January has flown by which means we need to look at our goals and see where we are. I am so sick of paying bills right now that I could scream, but we did make some dents in our goals, bu then we still have a ways to go.

Goal 1: Save enough to replace our 1994 GMC Pickup Truck by Aug. 1, 2010. Still working on this one. We didn't actually add anything to this in January as we had to pay Alex's last tuition bill this month. He will graduate in May with his masters!

Goal 2: Pay off one of Alex's student loan by March 1, 2010. Done as of Feb. 8!

Goal 3: Write a will to make sure everything is covered should something happen to us, but it won't, because we don't die! Our financial adviser gave us the name of a lawyer who writes wills, but I hate to say we haven't done anything else with this.

Goal 4: Buy enough life insurance to bump us up to 10 times our salary each by Dec. 31, 2010. We made a spreadsheet with our various policies and listed out our totals each. The determination is that we both need a lot more to have 10 times our salary. We are in the researching phase at this point.

It doesn't look like we made much progress but January was a weird month. We had Row's birthday, bought Row a big boy bed, paid tuition, and Alex traveled to Cleveland. All but the trip to Cleveland was paid for in cash, so we can feel okay about that.

We should get a tax refund the end of this week, and we intend on putting that money away for the truck. That should move us closer to our goal of paying 100% cash for a new to us vehicle!