Week 13 : New Outlook

 I am now trying to get back to the rhythm of going to the gym this past week - the same time I am trying to revamp my debt payments. I am hoping for good positive changes will start this time - health and money wise.

J and I are contemplating on getting the next tier of our gym membership. I am currently paying $25/mo (Homie hookup – jk. I tried to cancel a while ago and they locked me in at this rate. It used to be $30), and this will bump it up to $35/mo with more access to their ‘super’ clubs. One of them is really close to where I work at and this is why I am also thinking about upgrading. There is also a COSTCO deal where you pay a lump sum of $650 for 2 years which is broken down to $27/mo instead of the $35 - but I don’t have that kind of money right now to pay upfront.

I know some of you are probably thinking, you should cut back on spending money on that since you’re in the middle of your debt repayment. But right now I just want to be a little selfish and not deprive myself of EVERYTHING – so we’ll see. I am fine with the current membership I have, but it means driving 5+ miles out from work or from home if I want to keep my current membership.

Current Debts:
No paycheck this week and I didn't really log the amounts from last week. Below are the 'current' amounts for each debt.

	Current	Paid	Total
Personal Loan	8,346.00	-	8,346.00
Student Loan	6,688.00	-	6,688.00
CC#1	6,200.00	-	6,200.00
CC#2	200.00	-	200.00
CC#3	-	-	-
TOTAL	21,434.00	-	21,434.00

Starting Debt: $21,434 || Paid: $0 || Ending Debt:$21,434

Weekly Spending:

I don't really have a target amount to spend for the week. However, I will continue to log all my daily expenses under this category. I will continue to try and stop eating out as much. I will start and kind of started bringing lunch to work now so that definitely made a big difference the past few weeks.

Sat - $44 Gas | $35 Drinks
Sun - No Spend Day!
Mon -  $8 Lunch
Tue - $12 Dinner
Wed - $67 Gift
Thu - $20 Gas | $9 Dinner
Fri - No Spend Day!


Weekly Spending Total : $195


Pending Expenses:
Birthday season for us just started. You can probably see the gift purchase from above. I am excited to have almost every weekend of September booked for birthday celebrations, a wedding and other celebrations - but its going to be expensive! I already tried to tally each weekend and will TRY to minimize any kind of expense for the week



I am excited though that there will also be a holiday almost every month - working in the financial field, we pretty much get most of the bank holidays! Plus, since I don't have any left since that vacation... I look forward to long weekends now. HAPPY SEPTEMBER!!!!

July & August 2014 : Month-End Recap

I am combining both SUMMER months. My goals will usually stay the same each month - unless there is already something planned.

Below were the previous goals

• Keep a weekly spending budget of $150 FAIL
• I wasn't able to keep the budget of $150 and still not able to maintain the $150 a week. Some changes were made and I will need to see what I can do to budget my weekly expenses. I know, I know I just need to stop spending - but I have one too many excuses!

• Track my daily spending PASS-ish
• Ever since I got back, I was able to get back on track with tracking my daily spending - but I wasn't able to do this the two weeks I was gone
• I have a spreadsheet that I keep to log my expenses

• Do not use credit cards FAIL
• I unfortunately used my credit cards for a couple of things for this trip wooomp womp 

• Target debt payment amount this month will be $500 PASS!!!
• I paid $2,636 total from the last two months - whooooo!
• Btw that total should be $1000 for August - still a pass *high five*

• Have at least ONE day of no spending per week PASS
• I completely kept conscious of this and it was harder while on vacation

How did your SUMMER go ? Can you believe FALL is almost here *snoopy dance*

July & August Update - Starting New

I am back with a few changes! July was just a bad month for me because of the vacation trip and it completely threw me off the loop with my whole debt progress - just as predicted. But I am now fully determined to get the debt payments out that I think I went a little gazelle intense.  

Current Debts:

Below is the breakdown of my debt progress… I think (I hope) I am still on track for the July 2016 payoff date! 

Name	Jun-14	Jul-14	Aug-14
Personal Loan	8,976.00	8,662.00	8,346.00
Student Loan	6,970.00	6,869.00	6,688.00
CC #1	6,542.00	6,424.00	6,200.00
CC #2	634.00	1,275.00	200.00
CC #3	-	840.00	-
TOTAL	23,122.00	24,070.00	21,434.00

How was I able to pay off $2,636* in a month?

CC#3 Story – Paid off $840

 I am NEVER going to book another hotel from hotels.com again!

A gist of what happened - J and I were not able to check in the date because of weather related issues. There was NO WAY for us to get back to the mainland since ALL flights were cancelled. I kept explaining this to the reps (yes, plural) at hotels.com - and its either I was placed on hold for how long and I even felt like the manager didn't believe the story. Feeling defeated I googled what else I can do because I didnt want to pay that 'extra' amount. Thank goodness CC#3 was there to the rescue (Ok, its AMERICAN EXPRESS - I think they deserve a shout out on my blog) absolutely no explanation needed. I disputed almost $300 of the charges from my July and got the funds back into the account almost the next day. That was how I was able to pay off that CC by August!

CC#2 Story – Paid off $1075

 The vacation completely threw me off the loop and for this – it was a good thing!

Originally my automatic deposits are broken down by :

• 10% Main Savings
• 20% Credit Union Checking
• The rest is on my main checking account

But pre-vacation, I changed the 10% to deposit to be sent to my Credit Union Savings instead. I saw a pretty nice sum (4 paychecks later) on the savings account and decided to just pay off most of the credit card debt from that.

The rest of the $721 went to… 

Were paid to my Personal Loan, Student Loan and CC#1…. +/- interest rate charges.

	Rest	Aug Paid	Interest
Personal Loan	316.00	396.00	(80.00)
Student Loan	181.00	200.00	(19.00)
CC #1	224.00	300.00	(76.00)
TOTAL	721.00	896.00	(175.00)

July Ending Debt: $24,070 || Paid: $2,636 || August Ending Debt:* $21,434

Weekly Spending:

The $150 weekly goal, I realized, will not work for me... However, I will still aim to keep around that amount and I will still enter my expenses weekly under this group

I am just going to focus on paying $500 bi-weekly (+/- $1000 a month) to my debt total 

Pending Expenses:
Christmas is almost here! 120 more days and 8 more paychecks to go. I cant really calculate what I will be spending the next couple of months, but here's what I will be expecting to spend money on.

• End of August - Birthday season is coming up for our group of friends. It starts this week!
• September - Continuing the b-days and festivities
• October - Trip to visit friends out of state
• November - Car Registration due!
• December - Christmas Funds are completely depleted to pay off debt. Time to restart again! *sigh*

I am sure there will be more changes. 

*This update is for Week 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12