Prior Months Equity Balance: 57%

We usually spend Mother’s Day weekend between Hubby’s mom and step-mom, which is much closer to home. But since it was also my cousin’s graduation on Sunday we had to do things a little differently.

We started by taking Hubby’s mom out for supper on Friday night. This was a special treat since we haven’t spent much time with his mom and step-dad lately.

Saturday we drove to my hometown, and met my grandma and mom for supper at a nearby town. I come from a very small town, and unless you think Sonic sounds like a good Mother’s Day treat there isn’t anything there to eat.

We spent Sunday with my family. The ceremony was pretty short, but 58 graduates helps keep it short. Then we went to a reception and visited for awhile, before making the trek back home. Of course, if the kids would have slept the trip would have been much shorter. But I think we had to stop every 30 minutes to get more food and go to the bathroom. (I think the Boy is getting ready to grow, he was eating so much).

All in all, we had a great weekend. The only bad part was going back to work on Monday!

I hope you were able to spend some time with your family and enjoy them as much as I enjoyed mine!

Taking a day off work to attend a child’s field trip may  not be a big deal for some people, but in our house it is a pretty big deal when Daddy doesn’t go to work. Sometimes it really sucks to have a job that does not offer vacation or any other paid time off. When Daddy doesn’t work, he just doesn’t get paid.

Before we started trying to pay off our debt, and add to our savings account, my answer to this would have just been ‘NO’. I would have still worried about being able to get everything paid off on time, and have a little extra money to do something fun with the family. But all the saving and paying off debt should be worth it right? So, Daddy got a day off to take the Boy to his field trip. I think, our debt repayment can take a day’s break from getting paid off to give Daddy & his son a day full of memories.

Hopefully you have paid time off to be able to enjoy special days with your family without it being a big deal.

We are at 23% saved, an increase of 0%!

Hubby is in charge of adding money to our House Account, and he forgot in April. As a result, expect to see a 2% increase in the May update.

The Equity in our Land is at 57%, an increase of 2%.

We did double the monthly percentage this month due to our tax refunds.

We paid off an additional 0% of our outstanding debt! We only have 66% of our starting debt left!

Credit Card debt- We gained 3% of our outstanding debt back. I’m sure you guessed it, but we did go out and make a purchase in April. All these purchases add up, and I’ll be very curious to see how many times we could have paid off our original July 2010 debt when we are finally debt free.

Student debt- We decreased my student debt by 0% in April leaving us at 82% to repay. We did pay off some debt in April, however it wasn’t  full percentage point. Since we only deal with full percentage points, it looks like we didn’t pay off any student debt in April. Oh well, May will show a big decrease due to my biggest tuition reimbursement forgiveness amount is coming up! I’m pretty excited about this amount decreasing.

What doe May bring us? The end of the school year and a Kindergarten graduation! We also have summer vacation to look forward to. This will be the first year both kids have to find a new summer day care program since the preschool and Kindergarten is not year round. Memorial day will also be coming up at the end of the month. We will also be having family time with Hubby’s family while we try to get Granny B’s house ready to put on the market.

The minute I say, ‘it would be nice to have…’ my husband jumps on board. While it’s nice to have new things, sometimes I wish he would just say ‘no’, or maybe I need to learn to keep my mouth shut!

So, I opened my mouth and said it would be nice to have a recliner. Recliners are great for lounging in, and sleeping in when I have heart burn and it helps to sleep elevated.

The problem is, Hubby has been wanting a recliner for aLONG time and we haven’t had the room. We still don’t have the room, we just got rid of our old couch and replaced it with two recliners and a small 3 drawer stand. The dresser has been great to put all the remotes and video game gunk in. It helps keep everything centralized, where before it would be in the middle of the couch.

Yes, I know I’m rationalizing. But we did it, and we put it on our store card interest free for 20 months. We didn’t get the cadillac of recliners but we did find some reasonably priced ones at our furniture store.

Have you made any big purchases lately?

This weekend I thought I would share what is on our list of things I think we need (and maybe a few wants). We were going to be saving for a family vacation this year, however I just don’t think we will be able to do it. I want our money coming in to be focused on the land mortgage and also this list of things.

Already this year, when we were starting to save toward our family vacation Murphy showed up with a $900 maintenance and new brakes for our van, and a $500 tie rod replacement. These are just the ‘big’ places that he’s reared his ugly head.

1. New brakes for the truck. We rarely drive our truck because Hubby has a work truck supplied by his employer. If he isn’t working, 98% of the time we will be in the van. Much to our surprise this week, as we took the truck out we discovered our brakes are super bad. Yuck! Looks like we will need to replace those soon. Why not immediately? Mostly because we rarely drive it, so the need isn’t immediate.

2. A catalic converter for the van. Ugh- another almost $400 spend on that darn thing! Whatever it is, my brother in law was able to do a temporary fix of the problem. This is probably the number one thing on our list since we (or I) drive this vehicle every day.

3. In the next 8 months I hope to pay off half of the remainder of our land mortgage. If you are keeping up we were at 57% equity, so I want to pay off about 21% of the total loan. This is going to be a major undertaking. That will leave 9 months in 2013 to pay off the remaining 22% of equity.

4. I want to continue with our Labor Day mini vacation this year and next. We may be able to go on a bigger vacation after the land is paid off, but until then I think a big family vacation is probably out of the question.

What are some things you’ve had to add to your list to save for recently?

The great thing about the tires we purchased last year is that we receive free tire rotations. I am definitely a fan of FREE. Also, you may remember that I needed to replace a tire six months ago and it only cost me abut $15 for a new warranty on the FREE tire. Again, I’m a fan of this type of thing.

The van had been pulling a little to the right so when we walked in I asked for an alignment as well (not a free service, by the way) because it is another thing that can help extend the life of the tires. Or so I’ve been told.

I should have known I was in for trouble, since it seems like we just paid a lot of routine maintenance for the van. When the service guy came into the room and said my name I could tell he wasn’t coming to tell us we were finished. Instead, I needed to replace the tie rods in the front wheels. I did get a 10% discount on the whole thing- but I still paid over $500.

The alternative (I’ve been told) is that if they break completely, my tire could fall off the van while I’m driving it. Since I mainly drive on an interstate, and I mainly drive with both my kids with me, $500 is a small price to pay to keep us all safe.

I’m wondering what else is going to pop up that needs replaced soon! It seems like we’re having bad luck in the vehicle department lately.

I really haven’t owned that many vehicles.

The first car I purchased while I was in college I ended up wrecking. It was totaled.

The second car I owned was awesome- a Prius. I loved that car, but right when I hit the five year mark of owning it, Hubby thought we needed a bigger vehicle and we traded it for our van.

This spring marks the van’s 5 year birthday. So it’s probably no wonder why the last time I went to the dealership to get my oil changed (I’ll explain why in a second), they came up with all sorts of ‘routine’ maintenance I was supposed to have completed. I guess, 103,000 miles might do that to a person. Ugh!

I know the stigma about dealerships is that they are expensive places to have car maintenance completed. The cheapest place around for me to get the oil changed, however, is the dealership. They have a buy 1 get three free deal for only $60. Where else can you get an oil change for about $15? Nowhere. It costs that to buy the supplies and do it ourself at home, and we don’t have a place to dispose of the old oil.

The list was pretty long when I asked what routine items were needed. Luckily, we had done a couple of things at the 90,000 mile visit so it really wasn’t as long as it could be. The damage? Almost $900. But hey, my next three oil changes are free!

Hubby thinks it’s pretty important to complete all the scheduled maintenance visits because of a warranty we purchased when we bought the van. We don’t want to skip something and have it void that expense warranty!

It’s also just important to perform maintenance on your vehicle. It will help it last longer and perform better, which could save money in the long run. Gas mileage will not be compromised, and you can save longer fo

Do you complete all the suggested routine maintenance on your vehicle?

The Boy has always been a night owl. After the conference, I found out how much he was actually sleeping during his afternoon preschool class. No wonder he wouldn’t sleep for us at night. Since he wasn’t sleeping at home, he would sleep during the day at preschool. Then he wouldn’t be tired at bedtime and stay up half the night. Then he would sleep during the day at preschool.

Sometimes we get into these cycles on accident, and just can’t snap out of them. Spring break definitely helped us restart his routine. They did not take naps during the day, so we were all going to bed earlier than normal. Luckily, we have been able to continue the trend of earlier bedtimes.

This has definitely helped him be more alert in preschool and actually participate more during class.

Prior Months Equity Balance: 55%

We increased our equity by 2% this month! I know it doesn’t seem like much but it’s twice as much equity as we earned last month. We also decreased our daily interest by 72 cents from March. I’m pretty excited when I see such a big drop in the daily interest, because it is daily and compounds. I can’t wait to get to the single digits for daily interest. Yes, sometimes it is the smallest things that can make us happy.