Wednesday, January 11, 2012

2012 Family goals....

The week After Christmas , we took some time to try and enjoy relaxing...and it lasted maybe 2 days.... until we came across some Kitchen cabinets that were on sale and then..... the craziness picked right back up!
One of our New years goals was to finish old projects and update the rest of our house... instead of putting them off ... So we splurged ALOT and met with a kitchen designer and got right to work on designing a kitchen with more cupboards, I'm going from 1 kitchen Drawer to 9!!! Is that not amazing! and more counter space.... YAHOO!!  Its not my dream kitchen , but for the space we have it will work for alittle longer , until we pay off all our student loans ...Goal #2 for the new years ( later to be discussed). So as for now we wait for our custom corner units to come in and then the work will begin...
Until then we got started in the bathroom , I'm really bad with before pictures ... but we had the old 80's vanity mirror that opened up and a really really bad light above it.. the cupboard were half painted and the paint was not so good and needed some touch ups... and we had no storage .... so we painted the vanity.. took down the mirror and added a new light, changed the light switches, added floating shelves and updated the colors... the only things we wait on now is...on our new tile for the floor ( which we will have to put in this month) ... But it was actually a pretty cheap and fast update!!






So we are feeling well on our way with the new Reno's...  but our goals for this year regarding the Reno are....
. painted and finish the stair well
. Repaint the babies room and finish
. Change out the 3 other doors upstairs
. change the rest of the lights
. Stain the deck we built last year
.all new baseboards
. possible carpet change
.....and well I know will think of more .. I'm sure I will paint a couple more walls.. I have an addiction to adding and changing things in our house...

As for goal #2 ... we have decided to stay in this house and STOP looking at other ones until our student loans are payed off.... I don't want this post to come off about money. I understand everyone has different situations ... really this is more of a way for me to admit to someone that this is something I'm working on.. maybe that way we will stick to our budget better and have more motivation to put everything we have to paying it off... I need to be accountable to someone and I guess its whoever reads this....
We have been wanting to pay off our loans forever.. but it just started to seem like it was something we just had to live with ( we have loans so does everyone else, you need them to go to school, so I guess we just need to live with it and pay them off with minimal payments ) and that is what we did .. Bradshaw started to work full time along with me working and we started to bring it pretty good money.. BUT we kinda forgot about the loans and enjoyed our money. We always made our payments and added alittle extra here and there.. we always kept our debt down and never took out car loans .BUT it still felt we never got ahead!!! WHY!!
So last night we sat down and put a total down on JUST loan payments and it came to over 1000.00$ a month!! then our bills ... cable,insurance, rsp, state farm....and so on came to $1200.00 and that's not including gas , food, basic needs!! Ok again no everyone is in different situations and this is NOT meant to offend anyone... BUT for us this was a shock.. that is a big chunk of money to pay each month to LOANS and THINGS!!! so we decided it times to give up all the things we have "enjoyed" for the past 3 years ...and really put our self in full speed and get to work and PAY off the loans !!! so we can start being alittle smarter about our money!

So I'm telling everyone today.... that we will be living on our house until we  have our 40 THOUSAND dollars in student loans PAYED off .... but for this year our goal is to pay half that by next Christmas .. make our monthly loan payment into half.... so first off is our $3000.00 loan payment..... some of the things we have decided to change to make this happen ( thanks to another blog post of someone who totally inspired me with there loan journey... we will be staying in alittle more... ( don't worry we still have a entertainment slot for our budget, its just half what it was before) were going to be alittle wiser with things we buy.... our states trips I'm officially saying  good bye to .. unless it a family trip with other family member's!! so we have limited our self to 3 times a YEAR!!! a year people ... that's crazy for me.. I use to go 3 times every 2 months!
I'm making a meal plan to stick to so our grocery budget is not being waisted and we will not be eating out .. unless its a date and its in the budget! I have to say I even made bread a couple days ago cause we were out!! and to my surprise it worked and tasted really good .. which is kinda a down fall cause all 3 loaves are already gone !! anyways its a start .. I'm excited to get started and I'm even more excited to tell you when we have our first loan goal payed off!! It makes me want to work super hard!!

Goal #3 Re read the book of Mormon.. Bradshaw parents gave us all a challenge for Christmas to read the book of Mormon.. and highlight anything to do with the savior.. so off I go on working on that.. Hayden also got a little Book of Mormon for Christmas and he also is joining in with Bradshaw and I...

Kids Goals
#1 " my goal is to give my money to the bishop " Hayden
( I guess he is working on tithing)

#2 " To be nice to my brother and not hit him" Hayden

#3 " to  get my money in my jar for my monster truck" Hayden

#4 " to eat healthy good food , and clean up my toys  in the house" Hayden

Our goal for Grayson is to get rid of the soother...and get him in a big boy bed!! and honestly I think I'm most scared for this one!!!

2 comments:

Amie said...

Good for you guys!! Michael had about 65 thousand in student loans and we were able to pay almost half of it off since JUNE!! I cannot even believe it was possible. Pretty much all our extra money goes to Student Loans!! This post made me want to do one on reflecting how we spend our money... we could do SO much better. How exciting that you guys are doing renos!! Thats awesome that you have a home to do that to!

Just Rhonda said...

I need to be more focused on paying our loans!!! It's my goal this year too!! Good for you!!