A "New" Bedroom for about $100, Part I

We moved into our house close to three years ago and until recently hadn't done a thing with the master bedroom including our horrible yard sale furniture.  This is the first of two parts explaining how that all changed for right around $100 including getting "new" furniture.

We had been living with our atrocious bedroom furniture for way too long.  I wish I had a picture to show you of our furniture before the makeover, but since I don't here is the story behind it. 

My husband and I met in college and in his senior year of college (1996) his mother purchased for him a bedroom suite at a yard sale.  At that point, I am willing to venture and say, the furniture was close to thirty years old.  It is very much from the 70s.  To go along with the 70s theme it was also $70.  This included the two nightstands, the headboard, frame, mattress and box spring as well as the dresser.  He loved the retro vibe of it.  I felt a "bit" differently about the set that had an awful lacquer finish to it and screamed to be paired with orange shag carpet. 

Anyway, it was fine furniture for a male college student and it served him well.  However, it followed him into our marriage and has been with us through an apartment and three houses now and unfortunately it isn't in the guest bedroom - it is still in the master bedroom.  We did get a new mattress though :)! 

So, when my husband suggested we paint the furniture I saw it as my out.  This was my chance to get new furniture!  I had patiently been waiting (for 15 years) and once we painted the furniture (translate as - make it unusable) I could finally get the new furniture I wanted.  That isn't what happened though, I am now in love with our yard sale furniture and although I would still like to have new furniture I realize what I have right now is far better than dishing out the money for something new.  Here are pictures of how it turned out:

Before the makeover, it was a light oak with a lacquer finish, really shiny, with gold hardware and don't forget it looked like something out of "That 70s Show." 

We had to sand it, prime it and then we painted it the brown you see.  We also used the same hardware that was on there before.  We just spray painted it silver. 

It took about a day to do all of that, at the cost of about $50 and it really makes me wonder why we waited 15 years to do it.    It may not be new furniture, but I love the color and it was whole lot cheaper than purchasing new.

I will be back later in the week to tell you about how we finished the room off for under $100 total.

I'm Back....Let's Hope for a Bit Longer this Time

Sorry for the absence...life just gets busy and when something had to give blogging was it.  I'll try to be better :)! 

So, what has prompted me to come back to blogging you ask?  It is the accountability of it.  Over Christmas we spent too much money....typical of us!  So, now we are trying to pay it off again.  Along with over spending at Christmas we also bought a third vehicle that came to us through family.  We thought having a van would be nice because we would finally have a vehicle that we could comfortably take more than 4 people in and for that purpose it has been fantastic!  However, as far as everything else goes it is looking more and more like a money pit.  When we decided to buy it we were well aware of this possibility.  We had done some research and found that some people absolutely loved the van and others were on the exact opposite end of the spectrum b/c it seemed like one repair after another for them.  But we were buying it from family and were getting a good deal on it and everyone really thought it was a great deal. 

So we laid out $3000 for the 2002 Chrysler van that had 70,000 miles on it.  Registration costs were about $500, then we had to pay for something related to the transmission which was another $400, and now there is something else wrong and we are looking at another $400.  We have also noticed that the DVD player doesn't work, the hatch will not always stay up and one of the automatically opening side doors has to manually be opened in order to get the automatic part of it to work (once you manually open it, it will automatically open for the rest of the ride, crazy huh!). 

A bit of explanation on why we didn't sell one of our vehicles when we got the van:

• We were afraid it might be the money pit we had read about and wanted to have a back up if we needed to.
• What we would have sold would have been the Honda and it is so beat up aesthetically and has 140K+ miles on it that we would not have gotten much for it.  So, now my husband drives it to work and is actually saving on gas mileage. 

So, now we have three vehicles and some Christmas credit card debt that amounts to about $5,500.  Thankfully, this should be close to paid off with our tax refund.  But, our refund will still fall a bit short.  Right now in order to quickly pay all of this off we are really focusing on our spending, which obviously got really out of hand during the holidays.  And that is why I am back to start documenting our financial journey again!

So, here is my first financial goal.....

• Between now and the end of February I only want to spend $166.50 on groceries. 

Although that seems like a small amount so far this month I have spent 333.50 on groceries.  This total includes the end of January and averages out to $100 a week.  I have stocked up pretty well, but I don't know if we will be able to do it.  Wish me luck!

Monthly Financial Update

So here is the update, next month we will add in his truck being paid off as a financial goal.

• Credit cards paid off by August - Done in 6/11
• Can I just say how happy I am not to have to pay any credit cards this month!!!! That is so exciting for me!
• Save money, approx. $10,000, for a new truck for Doug.
  • Update - Since we now can't save (since we already bought it), maybe we can pay this much off.  Our plan right now is to make payments of $500.  This is about $150 over the required payment. 
• Use tax refund to pay off one of our two remaining credit cards.
  • DONE 5/11
• Use my debate coach pay for credit cards - Done 6/11 
  • The check came and went, before I even got to touch any of it :(.  I can't wait until we have a tax return or a any other kind of big check that I actually get to do something with it other than pay bills. 
• Build Christmas gift fund of $1000 to include food too.
  • Not working so well right now.  I keep raiding it.  We currently have $200.
• Keep food budget at $400 a month ($100 a week).
  • Tried this, but then adjusted it to $500 and it seemed to work better.  However, during much of March & April we have been only spending slightly over $100 a week and doing pretty well. We may need to adjust it back to $400.
  • In truth, since mid June when we got back from vacation I have had a ton of trouble sticking to $125 and holding to my principles of healthy food.  Wish me luck, I need it!
• Take a small vacation, around $700, paid in cash from daycare money (we don't have to pay daycare during the summer since the kids stay home with me).
  • We are headed to Florida soon!  We already paid for the condo, which is mainly why we are behind in our credit cards.  We have also saved a decent amount of spending money, but we still need some more.
  • We did it!!!!  It was wonderful.  I have not relaxed and had fun like that since I became a mother & how awesome is it that it is all paid for!

A few late additions to our financial goals. 

• Up the kids college savings to $100 a month. - Done, now we just need to keep it there!!!
• Begin building an emergency fund by saving $500 a month, which would mean $3000 by the end of the year.
• We have never had an emergency fund.  Our credit cards have been our emergency fund and I am kind of worried about what we will think about actually having money in the bank.  I am really afraid that our emergency fund will become our "Oh my gosh, that is an awesome deal and I want it now" fund.  I'm afraid my husband will use it to buy another flat screen t.v. and that I will use it for the leather living room furniture I have been drooling over.  Wish us luck because we are going to need it.
• Finally, we have a new budget.  This goal is to simply stick to it.  We will see how it goes, this is the first month.

So, we have some big news from "Simpler Life" household.  The good news is (drum roll please........), the credit cards are PAID OFF!!!!!!  We have done this before, but we really weren't in the best financial position, well maybe financial state of mind to maintain it.  This time we are!!!  So good-bye credit cards! 

Ok, now onto the bad news, my husband had a wreck and totaled his car.  The check allowed us to pay off the credit cards, but the $16,000 truck has added some new debt :(.   Oh, by the way, thankfully his injuries were quite minor and no one else was involved. 

So here is the update, next month we will add in his truck being paid off as a financial goal.

• Credit cards paid off by August
• Save money, approx. $10,000, for a new truck for Doug.
  • Update - Since we now can't save (since we already bought it), maybe we can pay this much off.
• Use tax refund to pay off one of our two remaining credit cards.
  • DONE
• Use my debate coach pay for credit cards
• The check came and went, before I even got to touch any of it :(.  I can't wait until we have a tax return or a any other kind of big check that I actually get to do something with it other than pay bills. 
• Build Christmas gift fund of $1000 to include food too.
  • Not working so well right now.  I keep raiding it.  We currently have $150.
• Keep food budget at $400 a month ($100 a week).
  • Tried this, but then adjusted it to $500 and it seemed to work better.  However, during much of March & April we have been only spending slightly over $100 a week and doing pretty well. We may need to adjust it back to $400.
  • On going
• Take a small vacation, around $700, paid in cash from daycare money (we don't have to pay daycare during the summer since the kids stay home with me).
  • We are headed to Florida soon!  We already paid for the condo, which is mainly why we are behind in our credit cards.  We have also saved a decent amount of spending money, but we still need some more.

Paying Off those Pesky Credit Cards

Not too long ago we had $16,000 in debt (probably a year and a half to two years ago) and one car payment.  I can't really remember how much we owed on the car - how easily we forget, huh!!!  Today we are down to under $5,000 in credit cards and no car payment (actually we owe $150, but I refuse to pay the prepayment penalty, so we are letting it sit) and the plan is to pay off the credit cards in September and only have student loan and mortgage debt.  Here is the plan and I hope by posting it on-line that I will be more likely to hold myself accountable and make the payments as I should instead of buying that really cute outfit or those amazing shoes that I desperately "need."  So I will also be updating this bi-monthly as the payments are made.

A few things first....

• I'm sure this isn't perfect, my numbers aren't exact and I'm sure some things will crop up in the process (Want to hear something ironic?  Before I even published this-I typed it on Monday and was saving it for today - my husband had an accident.   Thankfully, he is ok.  But we now need a new vehicle.  What is that saying, I think it goes something like "We make plans and God laughs."  So, we made some plans and they have been derailed a bit, but we are still going to pay those credit cards off.) 
• We aren't paying interest (I play the transfer game), so that helps.  But after this hopefully there will never be a transfer game to play again!
• Our regular payments are just that, what we had been paying.  But the first full week in June the kids are out of daycare and we have an extra $650 to put towards our credit card payments.  I kept $200 of that out because we always spend more during the summer on fun activities, so realistically we need more spending money.  The remainder of that has been divided up into twice a month payments labeled as "Extra Daycare." When the kids go back to school in the fall the payment changes, but we get to save almost $400 over what we are currently paying :)!!!!

Date	Payment	Balance	Payment Source
1-Jun		$ 4,600
	$673		Reg. Payment
	$85		extra daycare
		$3,842
15-Jun	$150		Reg. Payment
	$225		extra daycare
		$3,467
1-Jul	$673		Reg. Payment
	$225		extra daycare
		$2,569
15-Jul	$150		Reg. Payment
	$225		extra daycare
		$2,194
1-Aug	$673		Reg. Payment
	$215		extra daycare - kids start school
		$1,306
15-Aug	$150
	$160		extra daycare - extra week to pay
		$996
1-Sep	$673		Reg. Payment
	$215		Extra Daycare
		$108
15-Sep	Pay that baby off!!!!!!