May Income Statement

I really have to say, at this point, after doing this for a few months, that I really don't understand how we keep having such large net incomes. It isn't like we are gaining $2000 a month. I suppose it is from our bank balances, but even those aren't really that high. We each maintain about $350 in our accounts throughout the month. Maybe it is because we get paid at the end of the month, and haven't spent that money on bills yet when the statements are mailed? It does make sense that the end amount is $400 less than the beginning balances, because I think I got paid an extra $400 at the end of April, which we saved to pay for our hotel in May. I don't know... I just don't want to give the false impression that we are rolling in dough or that we aren't busting our budget every month, which we usually are.

Extra revenue: Birthday money

Expenses:
Yay low power! We over paid cable last month, so it is a little under this month. Termite due this month. I think netflix was double paid last month, or else I just missed it on my statement.

Debt:
Standard stuff here.

Variable:
Restaurant was high because we were out of town and had a couple of unplanned lunches. Most of our meals during the trip were covered by one relative or another. Supplies were high ... I have gotten into CVS ing. Unfortunately, some trips I get out of there for under $1, some are more like $20.

Additional expenses:
I spent almost $200 making my cousin's programs for her wedding, but my aunt offered later to reimburse me for that, which was great! That will show up in July, I think. The rest of the expenses for the wedding included our hotel, parking at the airport, and some last minute outfit additions.

Fund activity:
I have been struggling with how to handle planned expenses in the budget. I keep a separate spreadsheet with the tallies for our funds. Most things I just leave off altogether, like the boy who cuts our lawn, or our cleaning people (which my mom paid for as our Christmas gift). But I feel that I need to keep a true account of our expenses, and I also want to celebrate the fact that we actually were prepared for some things. The money isn't technically coming out of our monthly income, it is coming from our savings funds for that purpose. So, I have added "fund activity" at the bottom of the IS.

This month we took from two funds: I show the balance of the fund, the amount removed, and the new balance.

From repairs, we paid for our roof repair (YAY!) and also 2 new tires for my husband's car, since one was completely flat. From pet, we paid for my dog's boarding for our trip, which somehow tripled in planned amount, because he also had a checkup and some medicine added on.

April Income Statement

April Income Statement

Revenue:

I got an extra week's paycheck at the end of the month, which was actually brought forward to pay for the hotel in May. My inlaws paid my husband back for his expenses to travel there.

Fixed Expenses:

Power is finally going down a little bit. We couldn't find the cable bill, and even though we pay the same amount every month, my husband overpaid on purpose. Insurance is super high because we got charged 3 installments on our auto insurance and my husband and I both got life insurance. I had thought we would be charged monthly for that, but we were charged quarterly.

Debt:

We paid the planned $2000 to the last credit card, as well as the $800 for the travel expenses which were put on the card.

Variable:

We were able to include a travel fund again. The pet amount includes the $150 for the fund as well as $200 spent at the vet on the dog for his shots and grooming. We forgot to take cash. I sorted all the funds out in May. I keep a separate spreadsheet with their ins and outs and actual totals. Supplies was high this month. We did some work on our basement, which required some supplies and I needed some supplies for other projects. Bank fee was the finance charge on the credit card. My husband's discretionary was super high. He got his WOW renewed for 6 months. He also cancelled a subscription, but in the process had to pay for several issues at once. Or something.

Savings:

Not surprisingly, we had nothing for the sinking fund this month. $900 in the bank account was earmarked for repairs.

April special circumstances:

A couple of my husband's charges from his parents carried over onto the April statement. We owed $2000 to the federal taxes. We moved money out of savings to pay for that. Then we got $874 back from the state. I want to pay back the $2000 to savings, but as of yet we have not. I have really just been holding my breath to get through May, but now will look at that.

UGH

Work has blocked blogger. This is new this week. I cannot post or read any bloggers from work anymore. How annoying.

We got our roof fixed. I don't have to worry about that anymore. It is done. I am glad. Onto the next thing.

My cousin called me up last minute and asked me to make wedding programs for her. At first I was going to say no (mostly for the time crunch), but I ended up saying yes. I have already spent maybe $75 on supplies, and I have run out of ink so I need to buy more. This is money I hadn't planned on spending. This is going to have to be her gift. Tight month gets tighter. We leave next week.

We are on track to pay off the credit cards mid June.

March Income Statement

March:

Income: Standard.

Fixed: Power is still high. Trash bill this month. My husband says they are redoing the trash system here so that it will be included in property tax and will also pick up more recyclables, which will be fabulous. They tried this last year, and it failed, so we are hoping it passes this year. Water was high. We have some plumbing problems we haven't addressed yet, and some leaky toilets. But, it's only like $5 more than usual... Our insurance (car) was crazy low this month. With all the roof stuff, my husband also spoke with them about some discounts he thought we should be getting, and reduced our price. I guess they were crediting us back or something? I really don't know.

A note on Bally's: I have started going back. I am trying hard to lose weight (for the wedding, and pre-baby) and am working out 4 days a week now. 2 at Bally and 2 at the gym at work. I'd like to also do wii fit on the weekends, but haven't gotten to do that yet. It's been pretty busy. I have lost 4 pounds so far. So, I am keeping Bally's for now.

Debt: Paid off my credit card. I now own a lot of veterinary work and all my dollstuffs and my transmission. Only $1000 to cc5, to allow for us to save for the roof repair. Minimums all around.

Variable: My car renewal was due. Two cats got shots. The repair is for the power guy who came out when my house lost power. I spent some extra money going out with work and friends this month. Bank fees are finance charges, as usual. Our Misc. was high this month, too, and I don't remember why now. (my book is downstairs)

Saving: $59 to sinking fund. $900 for the roof.

Highly unusual expenses which get their own category this month: My husband spent money to be with and help out his parents. They paid him back for this (but not until April). I bought and mailed invitations for my cousin's rehearsal dinner, which I had budgeted money for. I also bought shoes for my dress.

And, we still made it out with $20 to spare.

Mid month update

Happy tax day!

We had to pay $2000. But we are also getting $800 back from the state. Had to dip into savings for this. I think this has something to do with our mortgage set up right now. If'n we refi soon, maybe it will straighten itself out. I have tabled the refi for now.

We have had an estimate for our roof, and another one coming next week. They think it was a bullet! I forget exactly, but it was around $850. The people coming next week can also do our siding repair (which is probably from settling), so I am waiting to see what that looks like. We have about $1000 saved for this, and I want it done already.

Counting down to my cousin's wedding. I get an extra paycheck this month, which should cover the hotel. We also have $200 in the travel fund, and the $400 in the sinking fund to cover any other expenses. I don't expect many, but we will have parking and miscellaneous spending. I still need to get a gift, too.

My husband needs new tires. Like, one if his tires is literally completely flat. I still haven't worked out how we are going to pay for this.

The good news is, my husband's boss called him last week and gave him a promotion and an 8% raise. It seems to amount to about $360 more take home a month. It was shocking how quickly I found places for that money to go. I had so many things I wanted to fund, and hadn't yet, that the whole thing is not going to debt repayment, as I might like. Starting in May, We will begin a car fund. Both our cars are old, and I am holding my breath that they will both make it another year (let alone long enough to save for another one). My husband's car is ten years old and has over 150,000 miles. I gave us each a raise in our personal money. I think we deserve it. We have had very little fun money. Now we are up to an amount we can actually use for something we want. I doubled what we are saving for our lawn boy - both because we are going to start needing him again, and because I expect his rates to increase again this year. The rest seems to be ironing out things that were getting ignored in the budget, such as the bills being charged on our cards and the quarterly bills. It doesn't last long. But it is good to have. I am just disappointed, because somehow I thought we could get our debt repayment up to 2900 a month, but I guess that was not a realistic figure. I was not accounting for things properly.

I am also struggling with the fact that I am "saving" about $500 a month into these funds. I could pay things off faster if I didn't. But I feel better knowing that we are building money towards these things, should they happen. Our travel and pet funds are about to take another hit. The repairs we have are outpacing what I am saving for them by far. I have decided to put caps on some of these things. If I manage to hit the cap, then I can cut back the saving there until I have to use the money.

March budget

Here is my March budget. I couldn't find the one I printed out in February, and I think I messed with the spreadsheet a lot since then, but this is still pretty close to our plan.

Fixed

I was still anticipating a high power bill. Lower cable. I added the server back in - They were offering us half what we were paying before and we were having a lot of trouble with reliable connection from home, so we were considering going back. As of this writing, we still have not, but I have it in there just in case. Our trash bill was due this month. I took out some of the other quarterly expenses because it was just confusing me. Both on the budget and the bank account. I know you are supposed to save the month's portion each month, but it is just not working for me, so I am going to try to just recognize the bill when it comes due. I also removed the bills which are charged to my husband's card, because now we are just paying on that card, and I don't really have to account for the extra to keep the balance even. I will either add those back in when his card is paid off or encourage him to have them taken from the bank account instead.

Debt

I struggled with this a lot. I had wanted to pay my credit card off in Feb and then put $2000 to my husband's card. We would have had it paid off in May then. With the various crises that arose, I felt it more prudent to hold some money back for a couple months to help pay for stuff. So, we planned to pay off my credit card in March and only $1000 to my husband's. Minimums on all else.

Variables

My car came due, so I had to pay my taxes and emissions. I was so aware of it because of the budget, I think this is the first year ever I had it done weeks ahead of time. Two of our cats were due for shots, so I upped our pet allotment to cover that. I added a new fund for repairs, with the $400 held back from debt for the month (plus the $500 from last month).

February income statement

February income statement

Revenue

I got an extra week's pay in one of my paychecks. My husband deposited some birthday money. I believe some of the bank balance is for our March mortgage, but I am not quite sure. It just seems high to me.

Fixed

Power was super high. Just look at that. Ugh. We had some snow and some very cold days. We are finally seeing the lowered cable price, though that does include a partial refund for the month, so future cable should be around $80. I still think that is super high for the basic stuff. We had our termite bill for the quarter.

Debt repayment

Just when I thought #2 was paid, it hit me with a $5 interest charge from the previous month. I now have that paid off again. I own my carpet (#3). We paid off most of cc#4 which is my main card. I was going to pay the whole thing, but then the fiasco with the roof, and I opted to save some money for that instead. That was a very hard decision to make. Minimums to all else.

Variable

Most of these are discussed in the cash jar post. Some highlights: Pet. Is very high, because we adopted our dog, and purchased items for him. This figure includes the money we also still set aside for the pet jar. The only thing I can say for myself, is I did that all with cash. Mostly money from my extra paycheck that month. We bought our convention tickets for this summer, so that is set. Bank fees are finance charges. Other than the dog, we really stuck to (or below) our budget for this month.

Savings

We added $120 to the sinking fund from the cash jars for the month. We saved $500 towards our roof repair, instead of paying off a credit card.

Looking back, I am not sure I calculated the bank balances properly, and we way overspent on the pet category (and power!) but we came out positive and did really well overall, I think.

March cash jars and memoriam

March was hard. That may have something to do with my lack of updates this month. Again, I hope to get everything caught up in the next few days. We don't have a lot of money left over, and it is actually more than I initially thought. I think in part, the fact that it was a five week month made it hard to get through. We also had some "lost" money, where we pulled money from whatever jar had it and we now don't know where it went.

The month started with my husband getting his crowns. Luckily, we were able to use our health flex card to pay for those. So, we don't feel the hit from that, but it used the most of our health allocation for the year.

Two of our cats got their shots. My husband forgot to get cash from the jar for that, so he used the debit card. He also spent more than I was expecting.

Then my husband flew off to Texas to take care of his family for two weeks. His mom came through her lung surgery and the biopsy said it isn't cancer.

We had someone out to look at our roof. The roof of the house is in good shape, but the porch roof needs to be replaced. The insurance won't cover it, but it will probably cost less than the deductible anyway.

Our house lost partial power last week while I was here on my own. I was freaking out, imagining walls getting knocked out and rewiring and cost and everything. I had an electrician out, and had to pay $120 for that. He determined it was a problem for the power company. They came right out, dug up my front yard, and did something to cause the power to come back, and I didn't have to pay anything further.

This was a "make it work" month.

Jar~~~~~Used~~~~~Left
Gas~~~~~~125~~~~~~~~0
Grocery~~~378~~~~~~~~20
Take out~~60~~~~~~~~~0
Misc~~~~~47~~~~~~~~~3
Supplies~~24~~~~~~~~~26
Unknown~~~~~~~~~~~~10

Add to sinking: 59

Flu and roof

I have the flu. This sucks. I have to take several days off work. I don't want to waste time off on being sick!! I have fever and aches and insane coughing. Not sleeping well. My mom keeps yelling at me because she thinks my doctor is wrong, so no sympathy there. My husband says he is getting sick, now, too, so no help there either. Stealing my thunder.

The roof insurance adjuster came out today. He says that other than our porch which is rotten, the roof is actually in remarkably good shape. The flashing is missing on that pipe, but that is an easy fix. He found a couple of spots where the shingles are coming up. The good news is that this is probably going to be a $500-1000 fix (the porch and the damage in the bedroom ceiling) instead of $4000. We also have an area that is worrying me- where siding is pulling away from the house and there is a noticable gap. I don't know if that is something the same person who fixes the roof can do.

January Income Statement

Revenue: In addition to our income from our jobs, we also discovered we had an $1800+ balance in our bank accounts. We had gift money as well.

Fixed Expenses: Power skyrocketed to $300. Comcast raised our cable bill. We hadn't canceled the server.

Debt Repayment: I now own my computer, phone and work clothes! We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 and a huge amount of the balance on 3. The rest of the cards and loans got minimal amounts.

Variable: My husband's car is the main expense here. He had to register it, and before doing that, had $700 of work done on it. We did put that on the credit card, but I am sorry that we did. I feel we are having Karmic retribution now (see previous post). Travel is our plane tickets for the wedding in May, which we paid cash for. Bank fees include finance charges and a late fee incurred while I juggled around our new payment schedules. My "doll" budget includes the money I spent from my discretionary jar, an order made this summer that was sent off backorder, and some eyes and faceups (in cash) for my BJDs. I believe the rest of these expenses, including our sinking fund, were discussed in the Jan cash jar post.

We had a net income of almost $2500. Overall, a win. While we would not have come out positive just based on our income, I increased debt repayment and some other expenses upon learning we had more money to work with (as can be seen if you look back at the original budget). So, as the income increased, so I increased the outgo. This gave us a great starting momentum.

Challenges

The January income statement is done, I just haven't gotten around to scanning it. I am still tweaking the March budget, too.

Some things have come up. This is what Dave Ramsey calls Murphy.

The good: I got a dog this weekend. Um. I know I said I wouldn't. But I knew I would know the right one when I saw him (on the internet). I had let some others pass me by, but this one I couldn't. I hate going to pet organizations ~ I always want to take them all home, so I guess it is good I stuck with just one. He is a rescue - he was surrendered to animal control. He is a silky terrier, registered with AKC with papers. Blows my mind. He is house broken (YAY!) but we are having some problems with him chasing the cat. I hope this will settle itself some soon. The cat is staying upstairs, and sometimes under the bed. We have him confined downstairs. I paid for his adoption and his things at Petsmart in cash, though. In future budgets, I will raise my pet allocation and I also will have to board him in May for a few days, so will have to account for that as well.

The rest:

My mother in law was diagnosed with lung cancer. She has to have surgery to remove part of her lung. She has never smoked and is the healthiest, most in shape person I know. My father in law is a disabled vet, who just went through an amputation. My husband has to go out there to take care of his father while his mother goes through surgery, and then possibly both of them. Luckily, his parents have since offered to pay for his flight, and he can work remotely, so that takes the financial strain off of an already stressful and emotional situation. From what I understand, her prognosis is good.

Our roof. We have a leak which really appears to be a lost flashing. The water comes in down one of those silver pipes that sticks out of the roof, then drips down and there is some water damage in the ceiling of the bedroom below. We have gotten a ton of rain in the last year, and that is how we came to notice it, though there was previous damage in that spot. We put a bucket in the attic and went on about our lives. Meanwhile, we had our gutters cleaned a couple months ago, and the guy alerted us that there is damage on the roof of our porch. There is a huge crater in the roof (we can see it from a window) and the wood underneath is rotting - all the way down to where you can see the rot on the ceiling of the porch. On the one hand, it is just the porch and I don't feel it is an emergency. On the other, it could be an indicaiton of further problems we can't see over the main house. You just never know with insurance companies, and I have never had to deal with them before so I didn't know what to do. Roofs are always the huge scary expense. It turns out that while our deductable for most things is $1000, like we thought, it is $3800 for hail or wind damage. That is how most people have been getting their roofs replaced. This is a HUGE additional amount of money. The insurance company is sending someone out to look at it. I guess what we do from there depends... If they will cover it and redo the whole roof, I have to find $3800 somewhere. If they don't cover or won't do the whole roof, we will just fix the porch, and I have no idea what that will cost at this point. I have chosen not to pay off cc4 this month ($500 extra payment) and to pull $1000 from our debt repayment the next couple months to help cover. We will pull the money out of savings and pay it back. This really throws a wrench into my payoff plan, though.

Dentist: My husband needs two crowns. Luckily, insurance is going to pay for 80%, but that still leaves around $500 for us. We will use the med card for some of it. I guess when my husband finds out when he will be out of town, he will schedule around that and we can go from there.

February budget, a little belated

My husband finally got my computer working. He says it was a bad stick of ram which corrupted the hard drive and os. So he took out the ram and we had to order a recovery disk, because apparently computers don't come with them anymore. We had to wait for that to arrive, then install it and I have spent the last couple of days trying to set my computer back up how it was, less some ram. In the end, a $20 fix.

The budget:

Income - My mother gave me money to pay for my holiday gift, and when I opened it, there was quite a bit extra in there. A nice surprise. It goes straight to the credit cards, and puts me quite a bit closer to my April 11 goal. Another $200 from birthday money for my husband (which he has STILL not deposited).

Fixed Expenses - Our power bill jumped up to almost $300 in January, which blew me away. I knew it was going to go up, but really. So I budgeted the same amount for February. We cut our cable back a level so my guess for that is $75. At the time I made this budget, my husband had still not canceled the server service, so I was anticipating another month for that (as it turns out, we were already paid through March).

Debt Repayment - We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 in January (YAY!) and only had $212 left on credit card 3, so will pay that off. That brings us to cc4 which will get the anticipated $1500 plus the $2000 from mom. That brings it to within $600 of being paid off. Minimum payments to cc5 and the loans.

Variable Expenses - We had some expected expenses this month, so I reduced our grocery money from $500 to $400 since we had so much left over in January. (My husband: Is this like the government where I have to use the money even if I don't need to or I lose my budget?) We have a convention we go to every year, and if we bought tickets by Feb 15 (we did - paid with debit) it was $140 for both of us. Price goes up every month afterward. My husband talks about going back to school - his job will reimburse him. But he tends to be pretty lazy about getting things done - like actually applying on time. I think that cost him his admission last year. He told me when we were going over the budget to put in his admission fees, so I did. He has still not applied as far as I know. It's on him. I am not going to hound him like I am his mom. If he wants it enough, he will get off the computer games and do it. The money is there.

Where's the budget?

Well, it's written and saved on my work computer, and we are living it.

However, my home computer decided to die now that it is paid off. I don't think we got the coverage on it. My husband has been half heartedly messing with it, but I am at least temporarily without computer. Which means no scans. If work settles down, it is possible I can scan it there, but it has been crazy busy.

Is it really that hard to put a receipt in a jar?

We are entering the last day of January, and I am excited to say we made it through our first month. I will have a full income statement report later in the month, when the rest of the statements come, but I thought I would highlight what we can assess now. Overall, I am proud of our first month's effort.

We ended up with quite a bit of money left in the cash jars this month, I was surprised. The jar I was most concerned with was the gas jar, but in the end we still had $10 in there. I really thought I was going to run out of gas money. I haven't had a full tank all month, and gas prices went up a bit, but I have filled about $20 a week all month. My husband - who works from home most days - only had to fill once.

We only ordered in twice - pizza once and chinese once. We got the chinese on Thursday when we didn't feel like cooking, it was the end of the month, and we still had money. That cleaned out the takeout jar, which I also used to go on two lunch dates with friends this month - spending $6 on one and $5 on the other.

Supply money was spent on much needed furnace filters, lightbulbs, and some shipping supplies (as I have been selling some doll items). We were left with $6 and some change in that jar. Miscellaneous was spent on a birthday card for my cousin, post office, the work lunch (I opted out of a second work lunch) and my husband's emmission inspection. There was $10 and some change left in that jar. Our grocery total was $183 under the budget, which was excellent! I guess my husband had a point about the holidays hiking the amounts, plus we did not go to costco this month, which is $100-200 normally. He was very good about only going to the store once a week, which I also doubted, and did a very good job tracking our food purchase and use. I will also admit he spent the most on the trip that I accompanied him. This is why I have to stay out of the store.

Where I have run into trouble with him is in replacing the money with a receipt. I was missing a Kroger receipt (which I later found in the kitchen), the pizza AND Chinese receipt, and an indication of his emissions expense. It took a while to figure out where that money had gone. He is also griping about having to use cash instead of his debit. I like not using the debit - especially while we are getting out of debt - for two reasons. First, I think you spend less, and second, you have a visual indication of how much money there is left for the month. When I went to staples to get shipping supplies, I had $20 with me. I had to make that stretch. And there were several things there that I know would have found their way into my cart if I was using my debit or credit card.

I still have money in my discretion jar, and he does not. It is discretionary, so no receipts required, so I have no idea where he spent that money (he had some money in his wallet that he had added to the jar, so it ended up more than $13). I have $13 of my $25 left. I spent it on secondhand books - one being Financial Peace, and a couple of book club books. HOWEVER, I did paypal a few things to my bank account. So, I spent more than my limit, but I knew I had the money in my account to cover and I did not charge them. My husband also charged $700 in car repairs this month as well. A bit of a setback.

The extra amounts have been added to a "sinking fund" which is an envelope, because my husband recycled the jar I intended to use. But that is ok, because I wrote the amount for the month on the front of the envelope. We can use this money for our hotel in May, for Christmas, for surprise expenses. Its like an emergency fund for our emergency fund.

Cash Jars: Budgeted: left over:
Gas 125 10
Supplies 50 6
Miscellaneous 57 10
Grocery 500 183
Takeout 60 1

Sinking fund January total : 210

A little history

While we certainly are responsible for a good share of our own debt, we have had plenty of bad luck which has contributed as well.

When we got married, we were each homeowners living in different states. We got married with $32000 credit card debt between us. That was all our own faults. I moved in with him. I was unable to find work teaching there, though I had plenty of interviews. My house didn't sell for over a year. We were paying two mortgages on basically one salary. I did have a part time teaching job, later added aftercare, and for a while had two additional part time jobs. I eventually burnt out and dropped the other two jobs. We were very very poor. I was pretty miserable, and it did not make for a good start to our marriage. There were many times I almost just came home. I guess ultimately, that is what I did. After another school year started, and I still hadn't gotten a job, I started looking at jobs back home. I applied for one, and within the hour the principal had called me to come for an interview. I booked a flight home and went in for the interview. I had a whole portfolio of student work, etc, which I had been promoting with all my might in umpteen interviews in the last two years. The principal opened the portfolio, and the first page was my teaching certificate from the state. He said "That's all I needed to see," closed the portfolio, and offered me the job on the spot.

I moved home with my parents - of course my house had just sold (I basically broke even, not incluing all the empty mortgage and utility payments). Within a couple months, my husband had found a job here and we moved him down. Throughout this time, we had managed to pay off both our cars, his student loan, and a nice chunk of the credit cards. We went house shopping and found our beautiful house. But we had the problem of his townhome. As we had lived there, we had watched the units around us foreclose and sit empty. We knew there was no way we would be able to sell it. We knew we couldn't carry it. After a lot of considering, we ultimately decided to sell to homevestors. I still believe this was the best option available to us, and am glad we did it. However, it left us with a >$40000 mortgage. I still had $10,000 left over from the sale of my house minus the downpayment on the new house and we put that toward the townhouse mortgage. My dad covered the rest, and that is the personal loan that I pay $560 to every month. It is still at least half what we would pay if we still had the town home, not including the headache.

The summer after we bought our house, our a/c blew in the midst of 115 deg weather. That was about $1000

A couple of years ago we refinanced our mortgage. We did have two loans (which was making me crazy) on 6.5 and 7.5 % I think. We were able to get an interest only loan with our interest at around 1.5. Our payments are only around 500-700 but we still pay the same $2000 a month. My dad put us onto this, I think he wanted us to pay the minimum and pay off our debts but that terrifies me, because eventually the market is going to come back, our interest rate will go up, and we will have to refi again, and we have to be able to afford that payment. However, we are able to pay off much more of our principal each month doing this. We have paid off $20,000 so far in that time. They gave us more money than the original two loans. We used that money to pay off credit cards (yes, I know now that was dumb but it felt good at the time). I fully intended to keep the cards paid off at the time, but we started to run into another bout of bad luck.

First, my car needed new shocks or struts or something which cost $1000. Then, a few months later BOTH our cars needed transmission work. Mine needed a whole new transmission aroun $2500 and my husband's needed a part - about $800. This all went on the credit card. Then we began a two year tour of Animal Emergency Rooms. First, my cat. She had feline leukemia. I was told she wouldn't make it to adulthood. She lived over 5 years without ever being sick for a day. Then she started having seizures. We had several trips to emergency rooms for this, and she was on phenobarbital. Then she started losing alarming amounts of weight, even though she still ate just fine. We managed to keep her relatively stable, until we lost her in April.

In January, my dog was diagnosed with diabetes. We had several emergency room visits for that, plus bi-monthly visits to the vet for glucose testing. He was on insulin and some other medications. When by April he still wasn't stabilizing, we had to go through further diagnostics, which revealed a tumor on his adrenal gland. If they had told me they could operate, I would have, but they basically told me he would not be with us much longer. This was the same day we later lost my cat. It was a horrible day. After that, he only had one more emergency visit for a sugar low, which they kept him for a whole weekend. He died in November. I don't want to add up all the vet bills over the last couple of years, but I am sure it would be close to $10000.

The night before I started my new job, my car was robbed in my own driveway. From what I can tell, they only took my phone, charger and Ipod, (and a lot of loose change) but they really could have gotten a lot more. (They even went through my new bag of work clothes, but I guess they didn't like any of it.) We did replace the phone and the charger, but not the Ipod. I asked for it for the holidays, but did not get it. I have some Amazon gift cards that I may use toward a new one, I haven't decided yet. I haven't felt the same about our supposedly very safe area, though.

So, we have a bit of credit card debt again. I do also want to mention that I have never been a minimum payment person. We were paying $2500 to our credit cards alone until I switched jobs and we couldn't afford to anymore, and now I have budgeted us a little differently. As I said, I am not taking advantage of my interest only mortgage. I always made payments to the student loans, even when in deferment. I have never had a creditor call. It is all just spending more than I am paying, and living beyond my means, along with a bit of bad luck.