December 1st State of the Frugal Union

I’ve been dreading this post a little bit because our debt on paper went up a considerable amount last month. We didn’t work as much at the second jobs and murphy came for another visit. We used a 0% interest balance transfer to cover a number of debts that seemed to happen all at once, the majority were medical bills, but we also paid off the preschool for frugal kid #2- we will get reimbursed for some of that at the end of the year as I’ve had payroll deductions coming out of my paycheck to cover it. It’s still not ideal and makes me sad and if I’m being honest a little bit embarrassed, but hey, you brush yourself off and try again right?

The good news is that we have 3 people left to buy/make for, but 90% of our Christmas shopping and making is DONE. So no money going out the door there, and we’re actually headed into a time (fingers crossed) where we don’t have any big bills due and should have some extra money coming in with the tax return and reimbursement for pre-school. This time last year was when we made our biggest leaps of progress. We’re also considering cashing in an old pension account- it’s not a lot of money and the last 2 years it’s only earned 1% interest. Getting rid of a car payment would free up money and help us to make a lot of headway. No decisions yet though. I want to sit on everything for a few more months and make decisions with a clear head. So here are the numbers:

1. Frugal house- $207,148
2. Frugal Student Loans- $161,000
3. Frugal Private Student Loan- $4,250
4. Frugal Car 1- $15,200
5. Frugal Car 2- $15,000
6. Frugal Credit Card #1- $10,050
7. Frugal Credit Card #2- 14,2700
8. Frugal Credit Card #3- 12,230

So if you’re playing along at home that’s $9k MORE in debt since the last time I posted. This makes me super sad. How about some positives? Since we’ve started on this journey we’ve still managed to pay off $14,100 in debt in less than 10 months and 14k is pretty good! My goal is to hit the 20k mark before we hit our one year mark on March 1. So that’s 2 more state of the union’s before the big one.

We’re starting to set goals for 2019 in terms of how much we want to work, how much we want to save etc. I had a tiny thermometer, but I’m thinking this year we’re going big! Not sure what I’m going to do yet, but it’ll be grand!

I’d like to note something here if you’re still following along- I waffled about doing this post for a long time. I wasn’t sure if it really made sense to share that our debt went up on a blog called “frugal five”, but then I had the chance to spend the day with my best friend and she mentioned that they were still “digging out” from the summer, I mentioned that we had our own new added pile to dig out from and for a split second neither of us wanted to share our number.  I was so worried that if I said my number it would be many times more than her number and I know she would never judge me, but I wasn’t ready for the comparison. We both blurted our numbers out and guess what? They were almost the same.  I thought she would be SHOCKED to find this out about ME, but then it turns out, life happens even to wonderful people like my best friend and we need to forgive ourselves. (Love you lady!)

This is HARD. We’re going to have set backs and murphy is going to move in, but we’re making slow progress and we’re not giving up. So there you are, the good, bad and the ugly. We’re tired, we’re busy, but we’re showing up.