Thursday, July 22, 2010

I am really frustrated right now...

I am so meticulous about tracking some things but I've been looking at our September 2009 versus our September 2010 budget.  While today is only July 22 the budget I'm working on is labeled September (even though we're going into August) because what I'm paying in August is actually for September.  Don't ask me how I got on it that way...I just did.  So I'm trying to figure out how much we've paid off in the past 12 months.  And while I track our balances each month...that balance has gone down (yay!) and up (boo!) because new debt has been added to it. 

And I know, Dave Ramsey would keel over if he heard new debt but really...it wasn't new debt, just bills that came due that we didn't have money put away for yet (we're still working on building up our medical/dental envelope and when insurance doesn't cover $1600 of surgery...we've got to add that into our debt snowball).  And one part of it was taking back the student loan payment that my parents had been making for me.  That was part of the deal when I went to school...they were going to help me (and they have helped my brother) but they actually got to the point where things were tight (due to some choices my brother made and they needed to help with) so I decided to take that loan balance back and add it to our debt snowball.

So here are the balances for the last twelve months (and this is just consumer debt...no mortgage in these figures):
09/09:  $22058.63
10/09:  $26704.15
11/09:  $25712.43
12/09:  $24485.66
01/10:  $24658.07
02/10:  $23569.55
03/10:  $22456.59
04/10:  $21101.42
05/10:  $19588.84
06/10:  $18856.25
07/10:  $17591.38
08/10:  $17077.91
09/10:  not quite ready to be calculated

So from high point to low point, we're looking at just under $10,000 but there have been things we've paid for in cash, in full that never hit the budget spreadsheet (things like LeeAnn's dance class in full last semester and the roof job that we just had done that came in at just under $1k). 

Which is where I'm frustrated.  I don't remember exactly what all we have paid for out of pocket like that.  I know I can go back through my checkbook to see what else I can remember but really?  Why didn't I track that stuff better!?  I'm going to start doing that now!  Or at least I plan to...and actually I might start with that recent roof job.  I guess I better ask Brian about costs and such. 

I'll update again in a few days when (if) I get it all figured out. 

2 comments:

  1. May I ask what your "roof job" was? Did it happen to be a cleaning? We're getting ready to have that done with our roof; we'll be getting estimates in the next few days.

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  2. Hi! Thanks for stopping by...

    We had to reroof part of our house. We have a tall two-story house with a porch that had been added on and closed in two owners prior to us. My husband and a friend of his had to tear off the shingles and tar paper and boards all the way down to the insulation and then redo it all. It was messy and hot and time consuming but they got it done.

    It helped that Brian got the shingles at an auction and then was able to sell what we didn't use. The few things he bought and didn't use and then returned helped too. All that and a good friend as the main laborer made it a fairly cheap project for us.

    I hope you get some good estimates for your cleaning job.

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