Establish a system for cleaning up my debt and building wealth

1) Set up a filing system using the David Bach worksheet. (Oct)
2) Schedule my debt snowball
3) Schedule a financial date with myself where I monitor and pay my bills, calculate my net worth once a month.

I’m actually on my way with this. I have started using the bill pay service through my bank and I have automated an extra payment to one of my credit cards. I do need to do some more organizing. As matter of fact, I am going to be setting up a file system based off a worksheet I got off of David Bach’s website.

Day 8 – Sat.
I was hungry – in the mood for Chinese food for lunch. I knew I didn’t need on 2 counts 1) weight 2) money, but I really wanted some pork fried rice – so I headed out and when I got there – they were closed :(. Which was weird – it was noon, 1 pm and they were closed. So I didn’t get anything to eat – headed home and made Totino’s pizza. Later that evening – for dinner I did go to the Huddle House, Hashbrowns all the way, 2 biscuits, and impulsively I got a piece of Cookies n Cream cheesecake (which was not worth it :().

Huddle House – ~$8.00
Total:

Day 9 Sunday
Great day! I didn’t spend any money eating out :)

Total: $0.00

Day 10 – Monday
There was a hurricane a’coming so I decided to stay put around the house rather than tooling around town looking for food….

Total: $0.00

Total for the 3 days – ~$8.00

I’ve had some success and some not so success days,

Day 5
I ate breakfast at home so didn’t need to stop and get anything. I basically had a snack from lunch pulling from stash of peanut butter crackers and I had to buy a coke from the vending machine. I had dinner at home -homemade soup. Overall pretty good.

Coke – 0.65
Total – 0.65

Day 6
This day was rough – we had a torturous meeting and all I wanted to do was get out of the building. So I had lunch at Sonic – #1 combo with the Sonic cheeseburger + bacon….hmmm…it was good, but it cost.

Coke – $0.65
Sonic – $6.14
Total – $6.79

Day 7
Today was just crazy – so I ending up grabbing lunch at McDonald’s
Big N Tasty Value meal + cheese -

McD – $5.51
Total – $5.51

Total for past 3 days = $12.95

Total Spent over the total of the challenge so far = $23.70

Seems like I’ve spent a lot but if my average is correct I’ve saved nearly $30 (26.30). If I can get my habits under control – I can save even more.

I slipped :(

breakfast @ McDonald’s & lunch at Quizno’s. I brought my lunch but I didn’t want it when it came time for lunch – so I went to Quizno. A little self control will have to applied in addition to the habit changes…

McD – $4.43
Quizno’s – $5.67

Total: 10.10

Day 3 was a success (mostly). I managed not spend any money at a restaurant. I ate my lunch at my desk (which consisted of just nuts – not that I didn’t have other options – that was what I was in the mood for) and a coke. I did buy my coke from the vending machine though got to work on that part. I realized yesterday that biggest hill to climb are my habits. I have going out to eat and eating out of the vending machine so ingrained in my daily routines that I have to keep telling myself no (don’t go to vending machine, no don’t think about a chocolate milkshake from Wendy’s) :.

Vending Machine (Coke) – $0.65
Total – $0.65

Pressing forward!

Day 1: *
The first official day of my latte challenge and it did not go so well. I had to run some errands yesterday morning and I was planning on getting back home so that I could attend church (we were having a conference w/ workshops) so rather try to get back and make something – I decided to stop at Sonic and get something to eat. To make matters worse I didn’t even go to church :(. Then later that afternoon I was doing some house-work and my brother offered to bring me something to eat – so of course I took him up on that -
Sonic: $6.03
BK: $5.00
Total = $11.03

Day 2:*
I was out again this morning – I wanted to go the store before the after church crowds. I bought myself a few groceries, snack items, lunch items to deter me from straying next week. But on my way from the store, I hit up Hardee’s. My plan was to get a Strawberry biscuit (they are so good) unfortunately/fortunately the drive-thru line was super long and b/c it was raining I didn’t want to get out of the car. While I sat in line I remembered I’m on this challenge and decided to forgo the biscuit – so I spent nothing :)
Total – $0.00

So for the past week or so I’ve been reading Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach and I really like it. It was in the start of reading this book that I realized I may not be the “Total Money Makeover” type gal…after reading about 1/2 of Start Late, Finish Rich I realize there is another way to get rid of debt and build wealth. With Start Late….it just like TMM lays out a simple plan for tcb. I already want to try the principles before I finish the book – so here’s what I’m going to do – I’m going to try the Latte Factor for the next 1 to 2 weeks – we’ll see how consistent I can be. I already know what my Latte Factor(s) are – fast food and junk food…I probably eat out at a fast food restaurant 5 days a week 2 times a day so 10x per week @ an average of $5 per meal = $50 a week…wow that’s $200 a month…wow. Then I visit the vending machine at least 1 time a day for a coke and candy – so that’s another $1.35 – so I’m putting the kibosh on those habits and see if I can notice the difference..obviously there’s going to be a savings, but I want to “see” the savings….I’ll report back on how I did at the end of next week. Peace & Love!

I’ve been thinking about what this goal meant to me for a few weeks now and I decided that “Going all Dave Ramsey” is not really the goal. My primary objectives are – get out of debt and build my wealth. And while Dave Ramesy’s method will allow me to do that I’m not sure it’s the system for me. I’ve read the book, listened to the shows, like the concepts, believe that many people have used the system and it has worked for them; but I’m not 100% convinced that debt is bad – yes some debt is bad (credit card debt, car loans, etc..), but in some cases debt can be good – when you use it to build wealth. I think that thought in the back of my mind that debt is not totally bad keeps me from getting “gazelle” intense. I want to be debt free in regards to bad debt, but I fully intend on one day owning my own franchise possibly multiple franchises and the ones I’m most interested in will require huge capital investments of which I know I’ll need financing for.

I’m currently reading David Bach’s Start Late, Finish Rich and he solidified something I’ve been struggling with and that is saving while paying off debt. Bach contrary to Ramsey believes it’s ok and probably a good idea to save while paying off debt. Ramsey believes you should throw everything you have, sell stuff, never go out to eat whatever it takes to pay off your debt and then begin to save – his thought process is logical. Once you’re not shelling $1000 a month in unnecessary bills you can save much faster. But, I can be impatient and I would love to see my savings grow while my debt decreases.

In summary, I realize that I probably won’t subscribe 100% to any one person’s particular system, but rather expose myself to many systems taking the best of each that work for me and create my own frankensystem.

Still working on this one. I’m current on all my bills now – my tax refund really helped get me together and gave me a boost on getting my emergency fund started. I finished reading the Total Money Makeover just today…hooray. So officially I am on baby step 1 – $1000 emergency fund. I am getting much better about spending my paycheck on paper first. I’m not perfect at it, but much better than I used to be.