Dave Ramsey Koolaid

Ok, we drank the koolaid.

For Christmas, I gave Nick a "marriage book club."  He and I both really enjoy reading.  We are also both hopeless TV junkies tired at the end of the day, and we usually end up chilling on the couch.  I proposed that we each read one book at the same time per month and then discuss what we think about it...AKA, the marriage book club.

The first book for January was Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover," which seemed appropriate given our annual interest in getting fit & getting financially back on track each January.

Oh boy, it messed with me.

I know money is a personal matter for everyone, but I have a feeling we're not the only ones who feel like we run out of money before we run out of month.  We tried setting up a specific budget a long time ago, back when I was a church secretary and Nick was a full-time student--our bills took up 90-something percent of our income!  We tabled the issue, and never picked it back up.

A year and a half ago, when we decided I would stay home with Rhet, we knew things would be tight financially, but we never examined it down to the dollar.

After reading this book, we finally got real with how much debt really have and what we're going to have to do to get rid of it.  I feel so liberated!  Even though we're still on the very first "step," it feels good to have a plan and to finally have the ability to tell our money where to go.

Dave repeats himself a lot, and one of his big things is working toward financial goals (paying off debt, particularly) with "gazelle-like intensity."  I respond well to goal-setting and motivational speeches, so Dave naturally struck a chord with me.

Here are a few things we've done to fine extra room in our budget--some of them may sound crazy to you, but remember--we're working with gazelle-like intensity over here!

1. Look at every single bill you pay and figure out how to make it lower.
This may seem like a "duh" statement, but in the past we've just paid what the paper told us we owed and didn't take them to think any more about it.

• We switched our electricity/gas/water bill to "Budget Billing."  This is an option in which they average out your bills from the past year so you pay the same amount every month.  Much easier to plan around.  (Don't worry--they reconfigure your savings/extra every year and make adjustments.)

• We switched our cable broadband internet to the slowest speed (AKA cheapest per month cost) and signed up for a 6-month promotion to get the bill even lower for a bit.  $20/month!  (Because of the amount of budget cuts/changes we've made that in turn have us relying on cable internet, we couldn't slash this anymore than what we did.  Dial-up just wasn't going to cut it for now.)

• We called our car/renters' insurance agent and asked what we could do to get our bill as low as it could go.  This meant raising some deductibles (Dave has emergency savings in his plan, so that would cover things) and reevaluating the way we use our vehicles.  In all, we shaved $60/month off of our bill!

• We don't get cable TV.  We use an HD antenna with our smart TV, and we we do pay for (an ancient, grandfathered) TiVo subscription at a low cost.  We quit our Hulu subscription (which we had in case one of our channels got iffy for whatever reason in the middle of recording Downton Abbey), knowing we could watch a show on the computer or iPad if we missed it on TV.  We subscribe to Spotify Premium for $10/month instead of purchasing music.  We have considered dropping our Netflix subscription, but we're holding onto it for the time being we're using it often.

• I made a commitment to slash our eating out (a HUGE weakness) to $20/pay-period and reeeeeally trying to cook on the cheap ($100/pay-period).  Check out how that's going over on Frugal Foodie!

• Here is the craziest one that is also saving a bunch of money: I quit my cell phone service.  We both have iPhones that we used with AT&T.  I was off-contract, and when I started looking into it, I realized I could definitely lower my bill.  (Nick still has about 9 months left on his contract--we are budgeting for buying him off of it because the money we save will pay for the cost of the buy-out almost immediately!)  There are several ways I could have gone with this, and I will probably modify what I've done later once we have eased off our gazelle-like intensity :) but for now, this is what I do:

• Before I cancelled my service with AT&T, I "ported" my number to Google Voice (for $20).  This allowed me to keep my phone number that everyone knows, no matter what I decided to do for my phone service.

• Also before canceling my service, I made sure to request my iPhone to be unlocked, so I could use it with another carrier in the future.

• I purchased a SkypeIn phone number.  As a trial, I purchased mine for $18 for 3 months, but you can also pay $60 for the whole year.  This gave me a phone number to use as a forwarding number with Google Voice.  (When people call the phone number they know as "mine," Google Voice will accept the call and forward it to my new Skype number.)

• I also purchased SkypeOut Credit as a trial.  (If I end up spending more than $2.99/month, then I'm just going to get a SkypeOut subscription that allows me unlimited calling minutes for that total per month.)

• So here is how using my phone works:
• I make outgoing phone calls using the Skype app (which is set up to show my known Google Voice number for caller ID) on my iPhone over wifi.
• I receiving incoming calls through the Skype app on my iPhone over wifi (which are forwarded from Google Voice).
• I text my friends with iPhones through the normal texting app on my iPhone with iMessage over wifi.  If I'm texting with an iPhoneless friend, I use Google Voice, which uses my Skype credit.
• The good part: I get to use my oh-so-useful and beloved iPhone for about $2.99/month (after the initial $38 start-up cost) on the same phone number that everyone knows...this saves us about $60-80 per month!  The bad part: If I am not on a wifi network, I can't use my phone...AKA: I am living life in 1992.  As a stay-at-home mom, I am often...well, staying at home.  Duh.  And if I'm out and about and need to use my phone, there are places with wifi I can go to.  I approached all the "what if's" with a "this is a temporary super-cheap solution...in an emergency, I can rely on the kindness of strangers and provision from God" attitude.

• Once Nick is able to switch is network, we'll probably get him a prepaid plan & simcard from a much cheaper competitor and he'll limit his data as much as possible.

You guys, it feels SO GREAT to have the money that we need to save and to pay off debt instead of despairing that it disappeared every month.  Sure, it's kind of painful to make cuts that are really inconvenient and not fun.  But the payoff is literally worth it.  Hope I inspired you to find some "extra money" in your budget, too!

Love the One You're With: Nursery Space

Betcha thought I was never coming back, huh? Well, I just need to get this off my chest: I'm finding blogging time to be sparse these days. The phrase "no time" doesn't quite fit, because I do have time. I have roughly one hour every day to do whatever I want to do without a toddler present. While I do (often, ok, mostly often) enjoy my time with my little buddy, the all-the-time-ness of stay at home mommyhood can weigh on a lady. While I wish blogging was my activity of choice in my golden quiet hour (and for some people it is), I find that a cup of hot tea and a good book top my list. (And by "good book" I mean several episodes of "Sister Wives." Haha. Just kidding. Kind of.)

But here I am this afternoon, bloggie friends, prioritizing YOU.

This will probably be in two or three parts, but I'd love to show you some special things I've done to Rhet's nursery that were pretty economical, hence loving whatcha got. (Ok, "have" for you grammar people.)

This is the view from the doorway. I took this pic during the Christmas season, so there are a few added holiday touches. Sorry if you're soooo over that. I'm not. And my confession is that the paper snowflakes are still hanging from the ceiling.

The "r" on the door was a little splurge from Anthro. Loving what I have usually includes adorning it in some way with a tiny "happy" that makes me feel...happy. :)

The colors were meant to be gender neutral, as we got started on the room before we had our referral. The grey on the walls was a Farrow & Ball (cha-CHING) color that I saw in Real Simple magazine. I went to my local Benjamin Moore store, which had a color swatch of Farrow & Ball. They color matched to Benjamin paints for me. Then I took the samples to Home Depot and got them to color match some generic and MUCH cheaper paint. Shout-out to my hubby Nick, who REPLACED the baseboards and painted them--a little detail that made the room feel so much nicer.

The curtains are homemade from a cheap white fabric Target shower curtain. I split them in half, sewed up the hems, and sewed on a border from fabric I was already using in the nursery. They are hung with...what else? Shower curtain rings. :) The curtains are shorter than I'd like, but beggars can't be choosers, and neither can people on a budget sometimes.

The tiny Xmas tree and end table were temporary for the holidays--I had to find a spot for the end table, actually, because it was displaced by the Xmas tree in our living room. A lot of things in Rhet's room are like that--"there" because that's where they fit. The cream colored Ikea chair is another example. We have no other spot in our house for it, and it ended up being nice for when Nick and I are both hanging in the nursery.

Rugs always feel like a splurge. This one was from Target and fairly inexpensive as far as larger floor rugs go. I originally felt unsure about it, because it changed the crisp grey, white, golden yellow simplicity of the room. But I settled on it for good when I decided it help to tie in the blues and greens that I can't NOT use because they are my favorites. :)

I'll talk about the crib and bookcases (on the wall you can't see in this picture) on another day. We also made some "big girl" changes after the holidays, and I have finally finished some art projects for the walls, and I'll save those for a later post as well.

My famous buddy Ashley featured my dresser makeover on her blog awhile back. It used to belong to my great-grandparents, and I was hesitant to change it at all because of the history, but my mother urged me to go for it. (The finish was pretty damaged on top, which eased my guilt.)

Ashley also gave me advice/encouragement on the paint colors/finish. I love the way it turned out! We left the inside of the drawers lined with the original paper, and we left the back untouched. (Who's gonna know...until I tell the world on my blog?)

The knobs are a happy splurge from Anthro, and they're also a bit sentimental. My friend moved to Memphis to open our Anthropologie here, and I temped for two weeks to help get the store up and running. It was a super interesting and super exhausting experience. And I made a little cashola with a temporary employee discount...voila. Dresser knobs.

When I first started looking at bedding for the nursery, I was in love with the Land of Nod. (A continuation of my Crate & Barrel love from wedding registry days, I guess.) While I ended up going a less expensive route on the bedding, I allowed myself the changing pad cover. :) We keep Rhet's cloth diapers, disposable diapers, and clothes in this dresser.

Again, the Land of Nod had my ultimate nursery dream item: the upholstered glider. I really wanted a piece of furniture that I could use elsewhere when it's nursery time was up. But I could NOT justify it in the budget.

Instead, we purchased this super cheap wooden glider from Target. The cushions were the color of the ottoman (in the doorway pic)--still need to cover that ottoman! I painstakingly created covers for the cushions out of two different fabrics. And it was true pain--those cushions were thick and running the needle through them made me hate my life. But it was worth it, because I ended up with something I loved even though it didn't start as such.

We keep the little frog fabric crate next to the glider to contain the books we've read that day/week. (Encouraging a little bit less repetition for Mommy's sake!)

The end table was another Ikea purchase that was displaced from another room. I can't wait to show you the lamp...another time!

This little munchkin has awoken from her slumber. Time to get our "zoo" on!

(Literally, we are going to the zoo. Just another reason to love Memphis--a trip to the zoo is nbd and supereasyfun.)

Love the One You're With

My mom doesn't care for this Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young song because of it's flippant attitude toward relationships, but...

I think it pretty much sums up my love relationship with my little rented house.

Almost 7 years ago, I moved out of my little church-provided duplex and spent my grandmother's grad school graduation gift on the down payment of a 900 square foot, 2-bedroom/1-bathroom house in a sweet little neighborhood in East Memphis.  I was dating Nick at the time, but never expected to continue living in that house when we married one day.

Almost 7 years later, we have a marriage-full of memories in our little house!  I have gone through a love-hate relationship cycle with our place, and I have drawn many "We'll move out when..." lines that I have broken again and again.  (We'll move out when we have two incomes--then we can afford to buy or rent a larger house.  We'll move out when we get a second dog--there is NO way we could live here with two large dogs!  We'll move out before our first child comes home--there is DEFINITELY no way we could live here with two large dogs and a small child!)

The house is about 60 years old.  It is small and drafty.  There are things about it that I abhor, things I hated and then changed, and things that I kind of like.  And somehow it all pans out to a home that I have really come to love.

Why do we live here?
Our rent is the cheapest I've found.
Our landlord is a kind & generous Christ-follower.
(He lets us deduct from our rent any improvements we make to the house--how awesome is that?!)
And we don't "need" more than what we have right now.

Need:
My opinion on that definition for our family is ever-changing.

I have often battled with embarrassment over the difference in our home and those of our friends'.  Years ago, I took dinner to a friend who had just had a baby.  She was showing me her newly renovated bathroom and complaining that they almost put a window in the shower wall.  "Can you imagine it?" she said, "A sliding window in our shower?  I mean, how tacky did they think we were?  This isn't a trailer home!"  I smiled and said nothing, thinking of the sliding shower window in my own bathroom.

But here's the deal, people: this little house has been and continues to be great for us.  It's all we can afford for now, but it's also all we need for now.  Sure, I wish a lot of things were different.  But then I remember Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young...

"When you can't be with the one you love, 
love the one you're with."  


We wont live here forever.  (Well...never say never, I guess!)  But I've come to cherish this little old drafty house in recent years.  It is the first place we were a family of two.  It is the first place we were a family of three (or five, if you count the dog-children).

Necessity truly is the mother of invention.  And I'd like to start a little series showing how I embrace my "less than awesome" qualities of our little home.  Some of it will be changes we've made to the house.  Some of it will be changes I've made to my budget or my lifestyle or my habits.  I know I'm not alone in this--surely many of you "make do" with elements of your homes as well!  I figure it's time to stop pretending I'm blogging from some glamorous home from your dreams, and show the flaws of our home that I can own up to and even love!

Coming up next: Rhet's nursery!