This past weekend, Amanda brought her pop up camper and set up in the front yard. Haley came and spent one night with all the kids sleeping outside, everyone else spent 2 nights. Looks like they had fun!
Wordless Wednesday- Camping
Reply
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Budget Changes!
I have been talking about changing our budget for several months now. One of the major things I was waiting on was the house refinance. One of the biggest changes that I am able to make at this time is how I fund both the gas and grocery budget. In the past, I have split this cost between my two checks, starting in July I will fund both of these up front from my first check in the month! Our new budget starts July 1st and I am trying my best to get everything wrapped up and paid for prior to the end of June.
Here are the new numbers:
Mortgage: $938
Van Payment: $ 345
Pool: $40 (This will cover our yearly dues, in addition to allow for spending money while the pool is open in the summer.)
Clothing: $150 (increase of $50)-growing children is the only explanation I have for this.
Groceries: $700 (increased from $600) I simply can not feed us for $600 each month.
AAA/Insurance: $72 (increase of $25, to cover new van with additional required insurance.)
Gas: $350 (decease of $50 a month) The rationale behind this was that with the new van, I should be able to reduce the amount of money we are spending each month that are directly auto related. Out of this budget, I do pay taxes on the cars, tags/registration, routine maintence, small repairs and of course gas. I will wait until the end of the year to evaluate this category again.
Look for an update on my goals in the next several days!
Mortgage Refinance- COMPLETE!
Background– I have lived in this house for 22 years as of next week. The original house mortgage was at the interest rate of 9.99%. This mortgage was sold and re-sold so many times that I lost count. The last company that we ended up with was called “OCWEN”. When interest rates headed down in 2007, we decided to try and lower our interest rate. At that time, we were told, by the mortgage company, that the only way we would qualify for a lower interest rate was to allow our mortgage to become 3 months behind. I did some checking and because of my previous bankruptcy, the fact that I was a stay at home mom, and Matt work history of less than 5 years, it would be very difficult for us to qualify for a regular mortgage/refinance without a significant cost of $3 to 5 thousand dollars. So we did allow our mortgage to get 90 days behind and were able to lower the rate to 5.99% with a whole new mortgage of 30 years. This has turned out to be a costly mistake. As you know interest rates have dropped significantly again in 2010, however our credit showed a 90 day past due on the mortgage so we were stuck in a not the best mortgage.
Now to the start of the process, we had decided that once we were able to get out of consumer debt except for our mortgage that we would have a significantly higher chance to qualify for a re-finance or new mortgage. I have been watching our credit scores over the past year and had a goal of attempting a re-finance in January 2016. For some reason, or in my opinion, God’s timing, a piece of mail caught my attention the first of May. This was an advertisement for re-financing at a rate of 3.5% and it stated we had already qualified. After some quick checks on the company on the internet, I decided to give them a call. My honest thought was that there is almost nothing worse than Ocwen where you spend 10 to 20 minutes a month trying to pay your bill. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was true, we did qualify and we started the process. On Friday, the process was completed at least for the most part when we received an wire transfer of most of the equity that we had built up over the years. We are still waiting on our escrow money from Ocwen. I am not going to say it is completely finished until this is received. One other piece of information to keep in mind as you read the numbers is that we did build an 800 square foot addition to the house which is currently our master bedroom suite. We did not finance this addition so most of the equity was gain by this 3 year project.
Numbers-
The new interest rate is 3.85%(a drop of greater than 2%), on a conventional mortgage. The mortgage term is 15 years, which is down from 24 years that were left on our current mortgage. One of the biggest surprises was the appraisal value of our house which came in at 140,000. . A decision that we made to withdrawal 20% of equity is probably not one that everyone will agree with. However for us, it has allowed us to have a complete reset of our budget. A final change of plan that occurred during this process, was our very apparent need to purchase a new van. After prayer and number crunching we decided to use some of the equity as a down payment which allowed us to achieve a manageable payment on a very nice family van.
My plan is to share our new budget that will start July 1st in addition to making some updates to my yearly goals/monthly goals during this next week. I hope you will stay around to watch this chance for us to position ourselves in a much more stable position in regards to our budget and savings.
Saving On Saturday
This week I have several things to share!
First up is the garden, I have already been able to make: 3 batches of Cucumber relish, most of which is frozen to be enjoyed the rest of the year. 4 bags of squash to be used for squash lasagna. 2 bags of frozen tomatoes (they first started getting ripe yesterday, so I am hoping that by the end of the week I can add 30 or more bags to my freezer. 1 gallon of pickles, we will be taste testing these to determine if I can make more or not.
We have enjoyed fresh produce almost daily with just enough squash to fry up at least once a week, green beans once a week. I know that if the temps don’t cool off soon and we start getting more rain then I am most likely at end of both cucumbers and squash but I am praying to see much improvement this week. I was so disappointed today that I ended up finding the first batch (6) green peppers that are rotten. We still have several watermelons, a cantaloupe and at least one pumpkin growing!
Next up for saving was my quick trip to CVS on Sunday. I will be really honest and say that I am becoming a little more disappointed with CVS each week. This week I purchased 3 cases of Diet coke and paid $0, out of pocket! The sale was 3 for $12, I used a free 12 pack purchased with coke points, 2 ECB from several weeks ago and the $8 remaining dollars came off a gift card that I received several weeks ago for purchasing $30 of certain products.
Finally, Harris Teeter is running a super doubles event this week. They will double all coupons up to $2, with a limit of 20 daily. I ended up spending $34.08 but saved $74 or 70%. This may sound like a high amount but I ended up with 12 boxes of Hamburger Helper, 4 boxes of Suddenly Salad,4 bottles of shampoo, 4 cans of hair spray, 2 bottles of spray gel and 2 bottle of mouse along with several other items. I am so excited because we use ALOT of hair products around here!
How are you saving money?
Wordless Wednesday- Swim Meet
Breast stroke
Pretty sure this is Lily!
Back stroke!
Matt is the stroke judge…a vary fair one at that!
5 Things Friday
1. The closing on the re-financing of the house is set for Monday morning at 8am. I will be so glad to get this finished. The company that was eager to help and answer questions up front has turned out to have very sad communication skills. We found out the date of closing when an attorney called to schedule with us around 2pm this afternoon.
2. With the rain the last several days, our garden may not fail! This evening we picked another batch of green beans (plan to use on Sunday), several cucumbers (made another batch of cucumber relish) and more importantly we found a pumpkin, several watermelon and a cantaloupe growing along side of our green peppers. We should also start with tomatoes in the next week.
3. I have managed to demolish our new food budget of $700 this month. I purchased 40# of ground beef to be picked up in July, which puts me currently at $792 for the month. Uggg when does this get better?
4. If the weather cooperates, we will be spending the majority of the day at the pool tomorrow, I am in need of some rest and non stress time BADLY!
5.Both the girls are practicing piano in the morning before I head to work. I was able to recognize one of the songs that each was working on. I am so pleased and proud of the way they are learning music.
Random enough?
Random Thursday Thoughts
- Matt and I have survived our first week of car sharing. Because we do not feel comfortable driving the white van and the truck does not have working air conditioning, we have been car sharing. The current plan is continue for at least 2 more weeks.
- My summer clothes shopping is finished. I was able to purchase 2 pair of shorts for myself, a t-shirt for Matt, a shirt to match a skirt for Lily, a pair of short for Lily and 3 pair of shorts for Kendall today all for $92 or about $11.50 each.
- We will be increasing our food budget to $700 a month starting in July. Today I used our rewards coupon from Costco help us stay on track for the budget for June. We only needed 3 items but decided to go ahead and buy some extra produce and a couple of fun food items as well. Out of pocket was $23 for 22 items at Costco or $1 an item. No way to match that!
- We are suppose to close on our new mortgage next week so I plan to share more detail and our new budget some time after that.
- I am already working on the new budget but had to adjust both the water and electric bill higher than I anticipated due to the extreme heat (above 90 for the past 10 days with prediction of another 10 days). At this point if we do not water the garden will be start to lose anything that we have. I had planned to water every third day but I may have to alternate every other day in hopes to still get a decent harvest.
- Tonight we made the tough decision to skip a practice. We are in week 3 of 8, with 4 night a week swim practice in addition to cheerleading and piano. Because we have been car sharing, everyone has been out to at least 8:30 each night this week. I am tired and so are the kids, which is evident by attitudes so Zach, Kendall and I stayed home while Lily went to cheerleading only.
- Amanda is planning to bring a camper over next week and stay the week allowing the kids to sleep outside in the camper with her a couple of nights. I am not sure how this will work out but everyone is excited so at least it should make for some good stories in the future.
Wordless Wednesday-Pool Fun
Saving on Saturday- Garden
Today’s harvest
Saving this Saturday is hopefully one that continues all summer long. We are starting to get in some items from the garden. This week, I froze my first batch of cucumber relish and we are enjoying cucumbers and squash on a regular if not daily basis. I am hoping by the end of next week to start freezing some squash as I only have one pack of squash lasagna left. Our square foot garden is the larger and prettiest it has ever been. I am hoping to not only freeze tomatoes but also make some salsa as I have ran out of both of these items.
More Squash growing!
Regular Tomatoes
Lots of cherry and grape tomatoes starting to form.
Tomato and corn plants are the same height in the back. the small corn is what was planted 2 weeks ago.
Cucumbers going down the hill and squash on the side
last bed planted
5 Things Friday Financial
This is a sad and hard post for me today but in the real world things are not always happy and warm. So this is real for us.
1. We are in limbo with refinancing our house. My understanding is that we are actually waiting on FHA to process paperwork and that is currently taking a long time. We have not even been given a time line at this point so we wait.
2. In the past two weeks, the white van has continued with mechanical issues, unfortunately the issues are becoming larger and more expensive each time. After prayer and consideration, we have decided we need to sell the van. In fact, if it does not sell as is in the next couple of weeks, we are going to call a junk yard and sell it that way.
3. The combination of both 1 and 2 also mean that we are looking at the need to purchase a new or new to us vehicle this summer instead of October/November. After some discussion with the mortgage broker, our only option is to wait until the refinancing of the mortgage is complete. The current plan is to purchase a mini van that will not only be my transportation to and from work but also the primary vehicle for us as a family. Currently we are sharing Matt’s van and he will be using his white truck as needed.
4. The white truck is small but will hold up to 4 people at a time. The bigger issue is that neither the heat or air condition is working at this time. Our weather indicates that the temperature will consistently be above 90* for the next 10 days. If and when we are able to get rid of the white van, we are planning to have the air fixed in the truck.
5.I am a stress eater. I have been struggling especially with this over the past week. Yesterday, both Lily and Kendall invited a friend over to play/spend the day at the pool with us. We ended up eating pizza for lunch and hamburgers for dinner. So our entire $40 pool budget for the month of June has now been spent.