Finances Archives - Journal of a Busy Mom

Reasons to Save

February 13, 2019 By Ligia

I am currently working through The Financial Peace Planner by Dave Ramsey. Right before, I had read through his Financial Peace book and More Than Enough both by Dave Ramsey.

Currently I started the section on saving. Thankfully, we are debt free and are building our full emergency fund.

He says there are 3 reasons to save

Emergencies
Major purchases such as cars or furniture
Wealth Building: giving, retirement, estate planning

My 2019 Financial Goals are based on these three reasons.

The Key to Saving is SACRIFICE. You have to be willing to give up something now so you can have more later. Quote from the FPP.

I feel that saving isn’t taught enough. I recently saw my Social Security Statement and it blew me away. From 1990-1995, right before I went to my four year college I made $46,000. I had nothing to show for it. I had to get student loans and work 3 jobs in college so I could afford to go. If I had even saved 15% I could have had $7,000. If I had saved 20%, which would have been easy to do when you don’t have bills, I could have had $9200. Still not enough to avoid debt, but it would have helped. So I am teaching my children to save. I talk about saving and all time.

So here are my 2019 financial goals:

Replenish my emergency fund. We had a set back last year so we used up our emergency fund. This year, I am on a mission to save it back up. I have several goals along the way including doing a NO Spend February. I guesstimated that if we only pay bills we could save $2,000 this month!
My daughter and I will be taking a trip in 2021 when she turns 21. I am opening an account at ally.com and start putting money into it so that we have a good chunk saved. It will be a joint account so she can start saving too. Again, teaching her to save for what she wants.
My third goal: To fund my accounts by selling things around my house. I have alot of stuff. This is why I am doing the Decluttering Diet. I will purge and sell. My goal is to have several garage sales (I actually enjoy doing them) and sell things online. If I can sell $300 a month that would be a nice chunk of change for our funds.

So, first step is starting the Decluttering Diet. Just this first few weeks I have already accumulated a lot of things for our first garage sale. This first week is just the detox. Every month after that I will be focusing on a room maybe even two.

Second step, is to cut back in our budget. I was going to do a NO Spend February but that fell apart. BUT! I am still doing a low spend February and trying to living out of our pantry as much as possible. Its a challenge but so far I have saved alot. First week I only spent $60 at the grocery store. And last week I spent around $112. Most weeks I spend $200.

Third step will be selling. I have so much homeschool curriculum to sell. I think it is at least $700-$1000 worth of curriculum. If I can sell most of it that will give me a good jump start for our savings accounts.

So for now, I am saving for emergencies and big purchases. Once I have funded all my emergency fund, I will move on to savings reason #3 which is build wealth and give.

Ligia

This is the Year to Declutter

January 26, 2019 By Ligia

I am excited to start the Home Decluttering Plan this next week using the amazing book by Jennifer Gifford from Clean and Scentsible.

She has it all set up on her website too, here is a link to that. In fact she has these amazing worksheets to go along with the plan. I am starting one month later. So my “January 2019 Tasks” is becoming my “February 2019 Tasks”.

The books starts off with a 31 Day Detox. Since February is short a few days, I am starting THIS Monday 28th. Will you join me?

The goal of the Detox is to GET STARTED! It give you a job everyday with a 15 minute work goal.

This weeks jobs:

M-Paperwork
T-Front Entry/Mudroom
W-Purse
Th-Cleaning Supplies
F-Fridge/Freezer
S-Pantry
Su-Free For All

I might swap Friday and Saturday because I am also starting a 31 NO Spend Month using Ruth Soukup’s book and the first 2 days she has you cleaning your pantry and fridge/freezer. Here is her book:

I am mildly scared because I am trying to do BOTH books at once. I think, though, that they overlap wonderfully and I need to do this for myself and my family.

Ligia

My 2019 Goals

January 11, 2019 By Ligia

I was talking to my son about goals verses resolutions. I think resolutions are too vague. Like “I will exercise more this year” or ” I won’t eat cake everyday”. Whereas goals, are broken down and measurably.

I have been writing goals for a while. Since 2015, I’ve keep a binder that has all my goals. Okay, that is not that long, but in 2015 I found Money Saving Mom and she had a really cool system for goal writing. I bought her older course on Say Goodbye to Survival Mode and worked through the steps. Here is a link to her newer course. Say Goodbye to Survival Mode.

Later, I found Ruth Sukup, from Living Well, Spending Less. She has a whole planner system and her Crushing It Central that I really love. She inspires her readers to Think Big. Here is a link to her website. Living Well, Spending Less.

I just finished her 6 Day Bootcamp to help me start working on my 2019 goals. I dont use her planner, but I do use some of her pages. I created my own goal sheet to set up my goals and I really like it. (below)

Really, my system is a mesh of both gals. I took Crystal’s method of breaking down the goals, but Ruth’s method of choosing just 3 Big Goals and a few other “wishlist” goals.

So here are my Big Goals for 2019:

Build our 3-6 month emergency fund. Last year, we had to use up our emergency fund, so this year my big goal is to build it back up. Everyone is different in how much they need to save. I wrote a barebones budget for a month and then multiplied it by 3 and then 6. I then averaged it out to get my savings goal.
Spend more quality time with my family. Okay, this one seems vague, but I have written specific “goals” on my goal sheet like Date Nights, Game Night, etc.
Grow my tutoring business. For 5 years I have been tutoring children with dyslexia in my home. This year, I want to learn to be a remote tutor. Along with that, I need to build a second website for that business. To draw traffic, I need to become certified through Barton Reading and Spelling. This is the program I use to tutor. So I have three goals within this goal: Build website, learn remote tutoring, and get certified.

There you have it my 3 Big Goals. I have several little goals that I am still working on accomplishing, but these are my three big goals.

Here are my little goals:

-Read the 24 books on my reading list

-Be a spiritual mentor for my niece

-Do the Decluttering Diet this year

-Start saving for our European Trip with my daughter in 2021 when she turns 21.