Hello! I thought I’d stop in and give an update, and I apologize in advance if I ramble as things have been a bit crazy ( as per usual). Our January no spend, no screen month went well! We did experience a bit of a backslide on both aspects because we all were sick at one point or another and buying comfort foods and having screen time were needed.
February, I did all of our meal planning and shopping for the month and it was great! I wasn’t able to get my act together for March, but I plan on doing weekly meal plans and then going back to Monthly in April.
In other news! Frugal Husband has started taking classes, he will be getting his B.S. in computer programming and it will take him a little under 2 years to accomplish it. The GREAT news is that it is completely and totally free because he works for the university that he is taking the classes at. Our hope is that he will be able to stay at the university when he’s finished and increase his salary.
Husband starting back to school and a bit of a shake up in management at work for me has prompted me to also go back and get my MBA- this will not be free, but will be about $300 a course which we will pay for out of pocket. The going rate for courses at this university is $1,900 so we get a HUGE discount. Having my MBA will allow me to either move up a bit faster were I work, or if I ever want to move to a different company, it will give me an educational background in business as my original degree(s) were in education.
This leads me to my next update. We have considerably cut back on our second jobs. With the investment that we’re making in ourselves with our education we’re not going to be able to maintain working at our second jobs and taking a full course load. It also was becoming apparent that it was not sustainable for our family. Our children are getting older and are acutely aware of the fact that we’re leaving them for work. Not only does it break my heart every time, it makes it harder and harder to leave. In addition, it leaves absolutely no time to get anything done around the house. We can afford to not work our second jobs and still make progress toward debt and our jobs are per diem and we can pick them back up at any time, so I don’t have to worry that we’re burning any bridges.
Finally in the update category, I got a raise! I got a raise of about 4k a year that will be taking effect on 4/1, I’m really really excited about this as it helped us to make the decision to cut back on our second jobs. Husband will be eligible for a raise of about the same amount this coming summer wahoo!
So what’s coming? Well, we’re considering taking a loan out of my 401k to help pay down debt faster. A lot of financial advisors advise against this, but it will save us a considerable amount of interest and we would take a loan for 24 months, so it would be fairly short term. When this is done being paid off we should be consumer debt free and will have just the house and student loans to focus on. Even with the payment coming out for this loan we will still have about 1k a month extra to put toward the rest of our consumer debt/use as a buffer for unexpected life. I worked for a 401k servicer back in the day, so I’m solid on the pros and cons of this.
In other news of what’s coming down the pike, I’m hoping to get back into regular Friday and monthly postings with a few other ones thrown in. I’ve tried my hand at a few frugal hacks that are out there floating on pinterest and I’d love to share my experiences.
Well friends, I think that’s enough for me! See you soon!
I used a 401k loan when my daughter was about 2 years old because I was so stressed out about all the credit card that I had and it did not seem to make a dent when I made payments. It was a five-year loan and yes, it considerably cut back income but I had no debt at that point and the stress reduction was amazing. Being a single parent with stress enough. We simply lived within our means, which meant not going out to eat very often and doing smaller, less expensive vacations than I might have liked. However it was totally worth it to me.