As we leave 2011 and move into 2012 I am excited for our future. More so than I have been in awhile. We will be completing Baby Step 2 in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace and moving onto BS 3. Well, Christmas with 4 kids is going to be tough every year this I can easily tell. We will need to budget each year something we have not done in the past. I know I haven’t updated in awhile. Blogging is tough work.,
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I have decided to participate in 20′s Finances, The Dollar Challenge, where I am sharing the details of where I spend every cent of my dollar for an average month. I am excited to see how I compare to others. This was a great exercise because this has shown me that we have lost our way. We need to get back on track and get serious with paying down the debt. I know that I can do it faster after going through this exercise. Thanks 20′s Finances for allowing us to participate! Housing: $.33Thirty-three cents of every dollar goes to Housing. I think I have hit this right where I want it to be until I can pay off the mortgage. I am comfortable here for now. This also included our HOA fees which were due in October. Food: $.20Ok, here is a big number, way big. However, we have a family of 6. I still think this could be reduced by at least a third. We eat out too often. My wife is a wonderful cook and makes the most amazing dishes. However, we have a newborn that keeps my wife very busy and our 8 year old started competitive swimming which means she gets home very late. In short, this all means we eat out too much for convenience this needs to change.Twenty cents of every dollar goes towards food, including eating out. Transportation: $.16Sixteen cents of every dollar that I earn goes toward my transportation costs. This includes two car payments and gas. This number will change drastically by January. One of our cars will be paid off in January and we are planning on selling the other one. No more car notes. Other: $.14Fourteen cents of every dollar is currently going to unsecured debt. All of this will be paid in September 2013. I cannot wait.
Personal Care: $.08This includes clothing, medical expenses and personal hygiene. I also included our gym membership here as well. Entertainment: $.07This category includes all of our family activities as well as the kids activities, swimming and ballet. Insurance: $.02This is our car insurance. I did not factor our health insurance since it is directly debited from my paycheck. Savings: $.00We are working our baby steps and will be complete with our journey around September 2012. I have suspended all savings and throwing it all at the debt. Another great motivator to lose weight is to call a life insurance broker and get a quote. Life insurance for the obese is not nearly as cheap as the internet postings you see everywhere. Life insurance is almost double what you see on the internet for someone who is overweight like myself. What is one to do? Should I go ahead and pay a rather large monthly payment or lose more weight before I have the examiner come to my home or office? After careful consideration on this topic for almost six weeks I have decided to go ahead and get a 10 year term policy for 10x’s my earnings then lose the rest of the weight, then shop around the rate once I get out of the obese category. I think this is the best solution. I have protected my family in case something happens and I will only pay a high rate for a few more months. What is the Zander Insurance number again? I am pleased to announce that today this blog is now a member of the Yakezie Challenge. I am joining a powerful network of like-minded bloggers. My goal to become a Yakezie member is to obtain an Alexa page ranking <200,000. Today, I am somewhere around 3,000,000 so this should be fun. Ok, I have had enough. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired; and the reason I am sick and tired is because of my weight. Last week I was incapacitated due to gout in my foot. Gout is a painful arthritis you get when you are fat. Wow, it really hurts. Why do I want to continue experiencing this? I don’t. Yesterday, Sunday I felt bad all day. I have a good reason why and it all relates back to being fat. I am ready. I am going to do it. I am not going to talk about doing it (which I am very good at by the way), I am just going to do it. I am going to lose this damn weight.
I have to change my habits to change my weight. I am making this commitment today and will stick to it long-term. This will not be easy but I have to do it for my kids, my wife and my future. This will help alleviate the financial stress and make me a better person all the way around. I can do this and I want to do this; let’s do it.
This is a huge reason I feel there is a correlation between money and weight. I have many others in mind as well but I will save those for future posts. Stress has so many effects on the body and it is extremely unhealthy. I stress out from having to write monthly checks to credit cards, car payments, etc. I stress out trying to figure out how many more months I am going to have to write checks before it will be paid off. I stress out thinking can I pay an extra $500 this month on this bill to just pay it off quicker so I won’t be so stressed about it. I truly hate debt. I am committed to no longer use debt. As I mentioned earlier, using Dave Ramsey’s snowball method we have just about 9 months left with our debt snowball. At the end of this year that snowball is about to turn into a boulder. I need to relieve myself of this unhealthy stress and start being the fun person I know I can be. Without this stress, I think I could immediately lose 10-15 lbs. This type of stress makes me sleep less and eat more. Maybe a way to relieve myself of this stress would be to exercise, which is something I will do tonight. I am stressed. Last week I noticed that my Qwest now CenturyLink contract had expired. I had been thinking about switching to Comcast I feel that my speed is much slower through DSL than through cable. I price shopped on the Comcast site and found a decent deal, 20 mbps for $29.99 as an introductory offer. I called CenturyLink to cancel and they ended up giving me 40mbps for $29.99. I was on 12 mbps for $49.99. A great money saver. Get out your contracts and shop around for the best deal this is a great way to save money.
This is the toughest topic to write about because it is the one that I deal with on a minute to minute basis. This is the one that is toughest to over come. This is the one that I have failed many times to overcome. I am 39 years old and I have made a commitment to lose this weight and get out of the obese category by the time that I am 40, I have 10 months to do this and I will do it. At my heaviest I was tipping the scales around 285 today I am at 263 and dropping. I have tried so many different programs and failed miserably at most of them. I did use Weight Watchers at one point and lost 25 pounds that is about the most successful I have been at losing weight, except for the time that I was in the hospital for 2 months I dropped to 220 only to gain it all back in a few months. Today, I am following Rip Esselstyn’s diet the Engine 2 diet. The idea is to become a vegan (no meat or dairy). I have been doing this for about 6 weeks now and it is surprisingly easy, well the vegetarian part is easy the vegan part is a bit more difficult. Our entire family has become vegetarian which has really surprised me. I asked our oldest daughter last night, she is 8, if she liked being a vegetarian and she simply replied, yes. I am surprised how easily she gave up her favorite things like Chick-Fil-A and McDonalds but at that age I guess they are not as attached to those foods as we are as adults. I am very happy to see them eating better and healthier and knowing that I am helping them out at a young age to make better decisions for their lifetime. Continue reading Losing Weight Currently, we are using Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to pay off our debt. Dave has a great method for dealing with debt, the debt snowball method. We have been using the debt snowball method for over a year and have about 10 months to go on our plan. A debt snowball is when you line up all your debts and pay everything you can on the lowest balance while paying just the minimum payment on the other debt. Once you have paid that debt you then take all of the money you were paying and apply that to the next debt and so on… In a few short months (9 months)we will be debt free using this plan. I am so excited and ready to be done with our debt snowball. This is the feeling that I have, my compulsive feeling, that I just want it to be done with now and do not want to wait! This is also the feeling that has created most of this debt which I have to get under control. But, I know if I just take it nice and easy it will be done with in about 9 more months then we will have no more bills! Continue reading Paying off debt. |
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