Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Simple Ways to Save Even When Money Is Tight

By 4 Comments

For the 15 years my husband and I have been married, we’ve always shared just one car.  Actually, most of the time I’ve been the one with the car—first because I had to drive to work while he could easily take the train, and, once I became a stay-at-home mom, because I usually had the kids that I needed to transport while he could commute by public transportation.

While he’s been a good sport about this situation, the time has come to finally buy another car that he can use.

The problem?  We don’t want to take out a car loan because doing so would create a serious strain on our budget.  We want to pay cash instead.

But how do you save money for a car when you feel like there’s absolutely NO wiggle room in your budget?  Here are the strategies we’re using.

Save Cash Back from Credit Cards

Our credit card regularly gives us cash back.  For the first three months of 2016, we’ve earned just shy of $150 in cash back.  If we continue at this pace, we’ll have an extra $600 in cash back thanks to using, and paying off, our credit card each month for as many purchases as we can.

Save Whenever You Receive Discounts on Regular Expenses

This is my favorite way to save because there are so many opportunities to save this way!

For instance, at Christmas, we received a postcard from our car repair shop offering 10% off our next car repair.  I held onto that, and just last week we had a $284 car repair.  We saved $28 thanks to the postcard, and that money went right in our car fund.

We took a vacation recently and stopped by Denny’s on our last day when we had eaten up all the food we had brought with us in the cooler.  Our total was $39, but for some reason, the cashier decided to give us a $6 discount.  I put that money right in our car fund.

Our grocery store gives fuel rewards points for shopping.  For every $100 spent in groceries, you get 10 cents off your next gallon of gas.  If you buy a gift card, your reward points are for double that amount.  I send any of those savings to our car fund.  Just today I put 19 gallons in my tank, and I got 20 cents off per gallon.  I put that $3.80 into our car fund.

Save Change or a Specific Bill

I don’t use this strategy anymore because we typically use credit cards for our purchases, but when I was using cash a lot, I never spent the change and earmarked it all for a specific fund.  One time, I went several months saving all of the $5 bills I got and used them to pay down debt.

To be sure, none of these savings strategies is growing our car fund at an impressive rate.  However, we ARE saving something using ways we save in our everyday lives.  We’re consciously, physically setting aside our savings, which is a great way to save when your budget is tight and you feel like you have no wiggle room.

Do you save like this?  If so, what are your favorite strategies?

 

Is It Time to Give Up Your Debt Free Dream?

By 3 Comments

From the time my son was three, I’ve been a big Dave Ramsey fan.  When my youngest children were young (two under two), I quit my job to stay home with our three kids.  We decided to get gazelle intense with our debt.  Since my husband was working part-time and attending graduate school, that meant I had to work from home.  Work I did.  I worked a lot, and I compromised my health.

While we reduced our debt a lot, we never got debt free.

Then we had a cross-country move.

We also had significant medical bills this last year when one of our children had a medical crisis, the treatments of which were not all covered by insurance.

Our income, while more than it was years ago when I was gazelle intense, has never really grown much.

My husband and I were talking about finances recently, and I mentioned that I’d like to get gazelle intense again.

But, my husband, not so much.

Give up on your debt free dream
Is there a better way?

He sees our children growing up, and he doesn’t want to work, work, work trying to pay off debt.  Instead, he wants to spend more time with the kids, take vacations with them, and just enjoy them before they fly the nest.  As fast as time is going, that will be all too soon.

Turns out, my husband is not alone in this sentiment.

Recently, I stumbled upon a Daily Worth article where the author’s husband felt exactly as mine did.  He didn’t want to spend all of his time working and penny pinching, not enjoying life, in the hopes that he would one day be debt free.  The author writes of her husband, “He didn’t want to wait another five years to take our first family vacation.  He didn’t want to give up a decade of our lives in order to live my extreme version of the American dream.  He wanted a house in a better neighborhood that was actually big enough for our family.  He wanted to spend some of the money he had worked so hard for.  He was done.”

So, too, is my husband.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to go crazy spending.  What it does mean is that we will save money to take a vacation with our kids.  (The only vacations we’ve ever had were when we took the kids along when my husband attended conferences.  I took the kids to see fun things while my husband worked—not exactly a family vacation.)

We’ll finally start putting money in the kids’ college funds, and we’ll also start funding our Roth IRAs.  (We didn’t want to do these two things until we became debt free.)

My husband is expecting a substantial raise soon, and we will use some of that money to pay down debts, but we’ll also use some of that money to enjoy now.  After all, you’re never guaranteed tomorrow. . .or retirement.

If you’re in debt, is your goal still to be 100% debt free, or are you choosing to live and enjoy your life now while paying down debt?

 

Some Years, No New Debt Is Reason To Celebrate

By 4 Comments

When you’re in debt, it’s easy to be hard on yourself.

You shouldn’t have let yourself go into so much debt. 

You weren’t smart with your money. 

You’re not paying off the debt fast enough. 

On and on we berate ourselves.

It’s even easier to do this at the end of the year when you feel financial pressure to buy gifts for not only family members, but associates, hired help, etc.

In addition, if you’re anything like me, you may have set some lofty goals last January that you could not achieve.

Our Lofty Goals

Last January, I could see nothing but clear horizons.  I set some ambitious financial goals (for our financial situation).

  • I wanted to put at least $3,000 in our emergency fund.
  • I wanted to save $1,000 for a family vacation.
  • I wanted to save $3,000 for a new-to-us car.

Guess how many of those financial goals I accomplished?  None!

Guess how many I partially accomplished?  None!

No new debt celebrate

Sometimes Finances Are Just about Survival

What I could not see that fine January morning when I set my goals was that we were on the precipice of a financial cliff.

Within just a few weeks of setting the goals, we experienced a number of financial difficulties.

  • My husband had to get a root canal and a crown at the cost of almost $600.
  • I had to see a periodontist and several dentists for a cyst on my gum that finally resulted in a root canal in April and a corrected filling. The cost of all the treatment was approximately $700.
  • Our daughter had to have several fillings filled and then later had to have a tooth pulled. $300.  (This was a special year for dentistry; I promise, our teeth aren’t as bad as this year makes it sound!)
  • Our car needed a $1,500 repair.
  • Our car needed new tires. $700.
  • My son needed braces. We saved and paid the first $900 out of pocket.  In a few months, we’ll need to come up with another $900, and then we’ll be on a payment plan with zero interest for the rest.
  • Our 18 year old A/C unit was leaking Freon, causing one electric bill to be $150 more than normal, and we also paid $200 to have it serviced for a grand total of $350.

In short, this year was a financial disaster as far as paying off debt went.  This year was all about financial survival mode.

And that’s okay.  Some years you can’t be gazelle intense or even pay any extra on your debt because you’re too busy just surviving.

Even though the year didn’t go the way we had planned, at all, it wasn’t a complete wash financially.

The good news is that we learned more creative ways to stretch our money even further.  We’ll continue to implement those strategies this upcoming year.

The even better news is that we didn’t acquire any new debt.

Sometimes, treading water is the best you can do.  Overall, for this year, I’m happy with that.

If you’re paying off debt, did you make the progress you wanted to this year, or did you have a year like ours?