Why hellllo there! I feel like I need to be introducing myself but I guarantee I don’t have any new readers.  I’m going to just assume if you are reading this you have been with me long and faithful and were as shocked as I am to see a blog post on this lousy Monday.

So let’s see, my last post was on December 5. That’s almost four months since my last blog post… I haven’t gone that long without blogging since? Well, probably since I actually started blogging.  I’m kind of disappointed actually. Disappointed I didn’t stick with it or at least jump back into it much sooner.  You blog for a few years, building a relationship with your readers and with other bloggers, and then you just stop.  I know when I had the time to read all of my favorite blogs I would get so disappointed or curious when a blogger would just fall off the face of the planet.  Don’t they care about us readers?!  You know there is always something going on in their life that is due to the change in blogging and I think I have some what of a valid excuse.

In early December, Brad and I started researching on our latest business idea – we wanted to start a Photo Booth rental company.  They were becoming more and more popular it seemed and after another wedding with a photo booth we realized that was something we thought we would love to do.  We started researching building our own booth, where to purchase a booth, developing a business plan, and a few days before Christmas we had a loan in our pockets and a photo booth being sent to us within the week.

It was a lot of praying that we made the right decisions and scared of not knowing what to do next.  It was like a sudden heavy, stressful feeling with a “what now?!”  I instantly started developing our website and advertising our new business to all of our friends on Facebook and to anyone who wanted to listen. Brad and I were officially business owners.  My dream my whole life was now a reality. I was getting to start something from the ground up, and with my husband. I majored in Entrepreneurship and I was actually getting to put so many things I learned into practice!

Photopia Photo Lounge was born, and within our first week we had our first wedding booked. It was so exciting! Since then, the time I would usually put into blogging now was me responding to emails and advertising anywhere I could! Things were happening so fast and I was loving it! During that time in December, January, and even most of February my new “lifestyle changes” kind of got put on the back burner.  My frequent gym visits after work were not spent at my computer with Brad working on stuff for the new business and trying to eat healthy meals was now being replaced by quick fast food runs or going out to dinner so we could sit at the table only to work some more in the middle of restaurants.

As things finally started to develop a system I finally was able to start managing my time again with this new full time job on top of my already full time job and I realized I needed to get back into my weight loss journey.  I had only lost around 13 lbs before the holidays and I had so far to go, I couldn’t stop now.  In late February I started trying to get in a cooking habit again (which I’ve been doing great at) and I started doing workouts at home for when I can’t make it to the gym.  As of last week I finally hit my first 20 lb lost and I’m back on track and it feels good.  I’m starting to have a little bit more energy that has got me through all of this craziness we have committed too lately, I HAD to start making time for me.

Setting up at our first Bridal Expo

Business has been going really good and we are loving what we’re doing! We’ve met some great people and are having a great time at the weddings and parties we have done so far, we can only hope our success we’ve experience so far in such a short amount of time can only continue to grow.  We feel so blessed and have had so much support from our friends and family!

{Source: Photopia Photo Lounge}

I would like to thank some of you who I do stay in contact with and I get constant support and encouragement from your through Facebook, Twitter, and emails! It means so much to me! So there ya have it, that’s what my life has been committed to for the past couple of months and I’d love to say I will try to pop in much more frequently… I promise I will really try!

Well not quite yet, but that’s our ultimate goal. The day I posted my blog I asked out on Twitter if there was anything you wanted me to blog about or if you had any questions for me, a few people had questions about my debt — what our system is and how we’re going to get it done.  I had posted about it on my old blog but I thought since I’ve gotten a few new followers I would do a repost along with some updates throughout, so if you’ve read it once you can read it again.

A few months ago we were in the process of trying to rent out our town home while searching for a future home.  During the first 5-6 months we planned on living with our in-laws while we saved and paid off some items while also showing the banks we had a stable income for our town home property.  Brad and I did a lot of discussing and number crunching and researching and we then decided to stay in our place that we currently own.

Why? We want to be debt free.

There is a large number of bills we have that we don’t have to have. There is a personal loan that got a little charged up from our wedding and honeymoon. We had two credit cards that slowly have escalated (one was paid off with part of our tax return, woo-hoo!), our car that we purchased in September, two furniture bills from when we bought new bedroom furniture, and then the biggest ones – the school loans for the hubs.

All of that added together is $60,000! That is a freakin’ lot of money. Paying minimums on all of this would take a lifetime to payoff. With a little help from our financial mentor and some research with some of Dave Ramsey’s programs we have decided that why add in another $2000+ a month payment with a new home while we have all of this to pay off when with a lot of structured and strict hard work we could have that $60,000 paid off in three to four years. Letting us be financially free to purchase that new home and only have the monthly essentials — utilities, cell phone, etc. We then have a goal to only purchase things when we can save for them — and without those bills like the car and student loans we could pretty much save for something almost within the month. Just our one car payment and the hubs student loans is $700 a month!

So we have done lots of excel work and number crunching and we have made today, June 1, the day we start to get debt free by using Dave Ramsey’s Snowball Plan. (UPDATE: It is now July 7th and I’m happy to report the first month was great!) I’m about to really throw out our debt to you and show you a little of how we plan to accomplish paying off $60,000 in approximately four years – what a fantastic fifth anniversary wedding present!

Here is a list of our debt starting from the smallest amount owed (rounded) to the highest:

Furniture Store #1 — $647.00
Furniture Store #2 — #681.00
Personal Loan — $2,422
Credit Card — $2,950
School Loan #1 — $7,146
Car Payment — $16,441
School Loan #2 — $14,117
School Loan #3 — $15,738

Dave Ramsey suggests that you find a way to save some money every month trying to do $200 but less if needed. Since we eat out so much it shouldn’t be too hard if we make a more strict eating at home plan to save $50 more a week — it will take some work. He also says if there is anything you can sell – DO IT. Give yourself that jumpstart to paying something off because it will just feel good. So we are going to add in an extra $200 a month to paying off our bills and we have figured out what we will sell to jump start our payoff.

We are selling my car. No we aren’t going to a one-car home… that just isn’t possible with us. But my in-laws have an extra car that just sits in storage and they have graciously given it to us so I can sell my car. Although it’s a few years older then my car it has over 50,000 miles LESS then my car. So we are getting my car all cleaned up, we’ve checked out Kelly Blue Book, and looked at comparables. We are going to go to Car Max and we have the least we are willing to accept ($1,000 less then what we will sell for privately hopefully), if we can make a deal then great and we won’t have to worry about trying to post and sell it on our own. If they won’t give us enough we will try to sell it on our own and we will get it detailed and see how that goes. We will then use all of the money we get towards the bills. Let’s say we get $5,000 for my car. That will already knock out the first three and start chipping off from the next one.

Furniture Store #1 — $647.00
Furniture Store #2 — #681.00
Personal Loan — $2,422
Credit Card — $2,950
School Loan #1 — $7,146
Car Payment — $16,441
School Loan #2 — $14,117
School Loan #3 — $15,738

Dave Ramsey says not to worry about interest rates. So we aren’t. What we did do though was call all three loan companies and ask if the hubs is eligible for a forbearance or deferment. All but one gave us one. One is for six months and the other is for a year. So basically once a month there will be the $200 + the minimum payment on the bills and for six months or a year we will add what would be going to that student loan onto that next bill in line as well. So for example- On the credit card my minimum payment is $70 + my extra $200 + the minimum payments for those two student loans is $250. So rather then paying the typical $70-100 I would pay towards my credit card I will now be paying $520. That’s a lot quicker payoff for the credit card isn’t it? So you are just paying the minimum on all other bills until you pay off the next one. So once the credit card is paid off that $70 minimum payment will now go to my next bill, School Loan #1. Does this make sense? I feel like it might be hard to explain this on the blog. Hope you’re up to speed. Here is a little what his worksheet looks like:

I kinda made my own version in excel with some additional columns and some formulas so I could play around with it but that’s a good starting point. As long as things go as planned for the most part we will have this paid off in 3-4 years. Of course it can be less because of additional money coming in say from a tax return and it can be more because you never know of a big emergency where you might need to pay for something that you can’t help.

I feel like we are being so responsible in making this decision and to think that we would have over $1000 extra per month AT LEAST once this is paid off is amazing. It will be so easy to just save for different things, like a vacation on a whim and we might have a little extra money to not have to compromise as much when we are able to purchase a new home.

Have you made huge sacrifices in order to stay on budget, save, or get something paid off? What are things you’ve given up?

————————-

UPDATE:

After a month of doing our plan things have been great.  We sold my car for $3000 and have sold a few other items that have really helped out, here’s our latest:

Furniture Store #1 — $647.00
Furniture Store #2 — #681.00
Personal Loan — $2,422
Credit Card — $2,950 $2,000
School Loan #1 — $7,146
Car Payment — $16,441
School Loan #2 — $14,117
School Loan #3 — $15,738

Based on our calculations that Credit Card should be paid off in September and our big one we are working on next is the Car Payment. School Loan #1 is in forbearance until next year allowing us to use that money we would be spending towards it to another bill we are currently focused on.

I work on this a lot and I really enjoy it, if you have any questions or would like help or clarification just let me know and I will respond to any of the comments I get.

TOTAL PAID OFF SO FAR: Approximately $5,000

TOTAL DEBT LEFT: Approximately $55,000

Let’s be debt free together!