While I am on the topic of money, I wanted to share that Money Saving Mom has a great link to a free Ebook on how to save for an emergency fund.

Dave Ramsey of Financial Peace University recommends saving $1,000 fast. This emergency fund tides you over so you can pay off your debt. Once you have the $1,000 you begin your debt repayment plan throwing as much money as you can to your debt. Meanwhile, your $1,000 helps you not to have not resort to credit cards.

I am downloading this free ebook now!

By the way, it is only good until December 31st!

Ligia

Well, I am getting geared up for a New Year. I just finished a mini course called The Best Year Ever Mini Course by Living Well Spending Less and it inspired  me to start looking at our budget and finances a little more closely. The author talks about telling your money where to go- a tip from Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. So, in order to figure that out, I felt I need to dig deeper. I haven’t done this in a while, so here goes:

I am starting with: Monthly Bill Worksheet.

I am using a Monthly Bills Worksheet from an eBook I purchased a while back called from Debtor to Better. There are so many free ones online to choose from just like this one. I googled “monthly bills worksheet” and got tons of nice ones. Basically, I am listing all our bills, the amount, and due date. This will help me to see where our money is going. These are the “fixed” bills. The bills that pretty much don’t change and are month to month. This also helps me to figure out what bills need to be paid in what paycheck.

My next step will be to work on trying to get some of those bills lowered. Perhaps the phone bill or cell phone bill? Definitely the internet bill.

Finally, I’ll see if there are any bills we can get rid of.

Next on the financial makeover list: figuring out those pesky once a year “subscriptions” and “dues” and getting those all written down and organized by month so they don’t surprise me.

Ligia