What is your frugal/financial resolution? - Page 2

[Basylica]

mine is different since I'm in a pretty good situation now.

I have no debt, and I'm "stuck" with the house I really didn't want but ex can't afford.

1. I did the math and I *should* be able to save enough for house #2.  I expect I should have 100K in savings before this happens

I will probably rent out the current house if not able to sell for a wash at that point. Expecting some legal drama from ex. urk.

- Need savings for down payment (40K)

- Need savings for repair of both homes (30K)

- Need 6-8m emergency fund (20K)

- Need 3m mortgage of both houses (5K)

- Need tax for both homes (5K)

2. I have 45K in savings right now, and this is ~2yrs of savings.

3. REPAIR CREDIT

- Pretty sure I have all my ex's CCs he got in divorce still on my report. so as much as I don't want to look, I need to

- Continue to pay house on time

- Obtain secure credit card and work on buying/paying off (I have one now)

- Keep car with payments and auto pay so never late (check)

4. Car situation

- I have a new car but they took out cruise and that pissed me off. Plan is to trade in next summer for VW tiguan or perhaps Fiat 500L

- Keep this car and pay off, put car payment into savings for next ehh...5 years. Pay cash for replacement or second car

- Kids are 9 and 6, so they will be driving shortly after next car is payed off. Thinking I may keep this car for 10ish years and buy a smaller car for kids and myself to use so we have 2.

5. Work on some current home repairs now

- house needs some serious TLC. I don't want to pour money into a home I don't own, however we lived there jointly 3 years, i've been there over 5 myself, and by the time I can buy home #2 it'll be another 4-5 years. Might as well make myself comfortable.

[weliveintheforest]

I want to get serious about meal planning.  I've totally drifted away from it and we are spending too much, especially on snacks and things.  

I also want to get ahead of the game this year. Debt is no longer a problem but we live paycheque to paycheque and I need to start living within my means and put some money in the bank!  I think an annual budget is going to help with this.

[Ragana]

Those of you who mentioned meal planning - there are some good threads on this in the Nutrition and Good Eating forum!
 

[AdinaL]

Originally Posted by Catholic Mama 

Mine is to eat out less. Last semester of our children's school year, we did drive thru often after school, and not even for dinner - just as a snack. That really added up and now we don't have as much to spend for the new year. Our children won't starve if we wait until we get home from school to eat some fruit, carrots, crackers, etc. instead of doing drive thru.

Omg yes. With the arrival of the baby it got way too easy to call my DH and have him bring home takeout. I'm trying to cook/eat at home 6 out if 7 nights. I built in one takeout night/week, because I know there's going to be one day where the schedule goes to hell.

[edensmama]

This year we are concentrating on living within our means and simple.  Buying second hand etc.  I was doing really well with this and the last July we came into some money and paid off house, car, credit cards, we have a small loan from our remodel but it's under $7,000.  We kind of went spend happy, although we did buy things second hand it was still things we didn't have to have.  So this year I want us to get back to living simple.  

[BaileyB]

We are luckily almost all out of debt except our car loan and mortgage. Car loan will be paid off by the end of summer ($4,000 to go) and just the thought of having an extra $500/month free for something else sounds amazing! I will definetly have to decide ahead of time what to put it towards because I know I will blow through it/waste it if I don't designate it to something. I am so use to scraping by at this point that it will feel so weird not to be counting dimes to see if I can go through the drive through. Plus I won't be pregnant anymore and will be eating waaay less so that will help with the budget as well. Not 'eating for two' will probably give us closer to an extra $700/month that I am not use to.

A non-finance goal is to get back to cooking more as well.

[kitteh]

Originally Posted by weliveintheforest 

I want to get serious about meal planning.  I've totally drifted away from it and we are spending too much, especially on snacks and things.  

I also want to get ahead of the game this year. Debt is no longer a problem but we live paycheque to paycheque and I need to start living within my means and put some money in the bank!  I think an annual budget is going to help with this.

Yes, this is definitely my goal! I was doing so well last Spring, but then I started working a lot (and making more money than usual) over the Summer and early Fall. The extra income and increased work hours led to more eating out, which we have been working to curb. But even though we are back to eating almost all of our meals at home, I could do a much better job of meal planning and shopping frugally at the grocery store. In December we did almost no planned grocery shopping--it was almost all last-minute, what-do-we-need-for-tonight's-meal kinda trips and we went over our grocery budget by $200! Wowzers! That is going to stop right now!

In other money goals, we had out savings up to 10k, but then pulled from it to pay off a vacation purchase that a relative of mine is supposed to pay us back for. But I'm not sure how long it will take him to repay us, so I would like to focus on getting our savings back up. I'm shooting for 6 months of expenses by the time the new baby arrives in June. To that end, I have put us on an auto-savings transfer of $300/month.

Other than that, we are recently free of credit card debt! Which feels amazing. Planning to keep it that way. I still have some student loans consolidated and on IBR repayment, but we're not planning to get aggressive on that repayment because it's a relatively small amount of debt. Also, if I end up going into teaching there are loan-forgiveness plans that I might look into.

[TiredX2]

Originally Posted by BaileyB 

We are luckily almost all out of debt except our car loan and mortgage. Car loan will be paid off by the end of summer ($4,000 to go) and just the thought of having an extra $500/month free for something else sounds amazing! I will definetly have to decide ahead of time what to put it towards because I know I will blow through it/waste it if I don't designate it to something. I am so use to scraping by at this point that it will feel so weird not to be counting dimes to see if I can go through the drive through. Plus I won't be pregnant anymore and will be eating waaay less so that will help with the budget as well. Not 'eating for two' will probably give us closer to an extra $700/month that I am not use to.

A non-finance goal is to get back to cooking more as well.

Congrats for getting so close!  I would really encourage you to put at least some of your current car payment towards a car fund so the next time you need a car you already have money to purchase it with.  That has been *really* nice for us!

[AdinaL]

Awesome suggestion. I'm waiting for our tax docs. Then we will know how much we owe and how much I can throw at our credit debt.