When preparation still isn't enough!

I think you would have to be a little out of the loop to not get, that I REALLY WANT this job i'm going for.  Well my interview was yesterday.  I returned home, feeling completely and totally deflated.
It made me think of the office episode when Michael talks about his weaknesses and he is "TOO MOTIVATED"  well, that was me.  I want this job so much that I think I even scared myself.  I was so driven that I drove off the cliff.  After a 1.5 hr orientation we went to the interview.  I interviewed with 2 managers, one male and one female.  It was way cool.  I got started talking.... and it was like BLAH.... I just kept talking and talking and I swear all they could do was not stick a sock in my mouth.  I feel like the "perfect" candiate, however... I think I was portrayed as fake.  However that was my true emotion, it wasn't fake, it was the real me.  After the 1 hr + interview, it was time for the test.

After the interview, the thought in my head was... whats the point.  I KNOW that after the interview, they wont want me.. However I prepped this much, i might as well try.  It wasn't a difficult test, however it was an annoying one.. which made my head hurt.  If you know what im talking about.  I was so happy when I was done, and was so ready to go home.
I get to my car, ready to call my hubby, cry and lament about my heartbreak.. HOWEVER my phone is dead.  REALLY how, I had like 40% batt when I went in..  I then had to spend the WHOLE drive home thinking over it... over and over and over again.  Trying to figure out what I had even said.  Honestly, I couldn't even put that hour interview back into my head to break it down.

All of my employees at work, knew I had the interview, I was trying to figure out how I was gonna tell EVERYONE that I SUCK.. That is how I felt.  I didn't want to have to explain myself, but I told everyone I was going in, so I was stuck.  I didn't know what to do.

On the drive home, I did one of those things you NEVER should do.  I asked My Liam (6yr old) "Mommy went for a job interview do you think I got the job? Yes or No"  Response.  "YES"  I wasn't sure how to process that, more then anything it just made my heart hurt more.

After picking up my boys i FINALLY got home.  First thing I did was plug in my phone and used the house phone to call my honey... NO ANSWER.... ARG.  I was feeling so crummy I just wanted to hear my sweeties voice.  I had to sit and think through it even more. I started to think of other firms I should prepare to apply for.  I was not sure I would be willing to go back to the same place again, and even show my face.
I finally got to talk to my sweetheart.  He was so sweet and supportive. I told him about the process and he kept saying "you totally have the job" "don't doubt yourself, you have this"  It was sweet, however I knew that he was just trying to be the wonderful and supportive husband he is.

Not sure how, but I did get some sleep.  Walking into work the next day was rough.  It felt like the walk of shame.  I told many that I felt I did really bad.  I had a few that were quite happy, because they don't want me to leave.  So that was nice knowing that people still wanted me around.
what else could I do?

I spent alot of the evening before praying and trying to cope.  The Lord is always there, and has a plan for us, even if we REALLY hate the consequences!

Anniversary!

I normally don't talk MUCH about family stuff... However TODAY is a day that it is needed!!!!

I just have to BRAG to everyone because I have the MOST AMAZING WONDERFUL SWEET ROMANTIC LOVABLE (and a million other words) HUSBAND!!!

Today we celebrate our 8th annaversary.  And are looking forward to a night with no kids and going to see a movie!!!

WELCOME TO ROMANCE on a BUDGET!

WEEK!!

Yes it has been a WEEK. I swore i would never do this, but I have!!

In the past few days my BABY BOY turned 1,

We also decided to go to snowbird for Octoberfest!!! 

AND my hubby and I are looking at buying a new house.

 

We LOVE IT.  Once we know alittle more I will share it, but for now we are day dreaming of a REAL BACK YARD!!

However I can't make a post without talking about the BUDGET!

Our budget has been at the forefront of our minds at this time.  As we prepare to put in an offer on a home, we started by running all the numbers.  We talked with a Loan officer who is AMAZING EVERY OTHER ONE we have ever worked with SUCKED, but this lady, so far is TOTALLY AMAZING!

Because I have been using a google doc for along time, it was easy to plug in a few other options to the budget. Also with this I have been learning about amortization in my current College course.

 I will add it once I figure out how, but I am alive, I will be BACK SOON in more detail, and I hope you will all join us on our fun adventure!!

School!

School is one of those necessary evil's right? lol

I love school.  I love to learn and push myself.  However now that I am in my last semester of college for my Bachelors of Science Degree I can't wait to be DONE!!

I feel that it is slightly ironic that my oldest Liam started Kingdergarden a few weeks ago.

School is something that really will hit a budget hard.  It can make either little bumps and buses or HUGE divets, or it can make the whole thing come CRASHING DOWN!!!!

At this point, I MUST admit that my son is in private school.  We are not the predominate Utah religion and at this time we are trying to decide what is the best way to work with this.  
ALSO, he is in full day kindergarten, so by having him there I save money by not having to pay for daycare.

I do NOT believe in student loans, for the sake of student loans, Eventhough we do pay monthly on my hubby's.  We are not adding to our school debt. 


What do you feel is the most important part of education?  How would you decide to handle kids education?

Cars!!!!

My hubby and I are just about to pay off our first car.  I have never had a car loan until we bought our BEAUTIFUL 2005 Toyota 4-Runner.  Dont get me wrong this car is SO amazing and wonderful.... HOWEVER it is still JUST a car.
(all of the photos for this post were taken from a simple google images search)

In my married life the cars we have had are the following
-1999 Chevy Malibu : My honey had this when we got married and he had bought it for CASH from his brother.


-1989 Ford Escort: This was a wonderful gift from my husbands maternal grandmother.  She was so kind to give it to us, we needed another car so that both hubby and I could get to work.


When the ford died, we decided we needed a Bigger car.  We go camping ALOT and we wanted something that would hold all our stuff and on occasion pull a flat bed trailer (that my in-laws own).  We looked at alot of different options.  I still wasn't keen on getting a car loan, however I thought it was the best option.  I gave my hubby a budget of $12,000 and asked him to find us something.  I really was excited, however the make and model were indifferent to me.  Chris found us a beautiful USED 4-runner, in my allocated amount.

-2005 Toyota 4-Runner: Our first car with a loan on it as a couple.


I then drove the chevy until it died, and we sold it for a grand total of $500 :)

-1999 Honda Civic:  I wanted to get a car that we could pay cash for.  I gave myself a budget of $3,000.  I really wanted an automatic, however they are on average $1,000 more then manual, so I changed.  I really wanted either a Honda or a Toyota because they have a good track record, and after the problems we had with both our chevy and ford, I didn't want to go that route again.   We did not have enough cash to buy it so we worked with my parents to do a short 6 month loan until we could pay it all off to them.  It was much better then trying to work with a bank and my parents were so wonderful to allow us to do this.


OK so now, here we are.  we have our 2 WORKING cars.  One nice and fancy, a great road trip car, and gets pretty good gas milage.  and my wonderful little commuter car.
As we have told friends and family that we will soon OWN it.  Outright, we keep getting asked, so what are you going to get next......

This makes ms question alittle.... and even more then that I got to the chapter of my book "You aren't what you drive."  It discusses alot about how millionaires purchase cars.  To me a car is not important.  It doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to spoil my wonderful husband with a fancy truck, it is not something I want right now.

Dave Ramsey stated this
"Thinking about buying a new car?

Try this instead: Take your current car out for a drive, open the window, and repeatedly throw $100 bills out the window. Now that sounds dumb, doesn’t it? But when you buy a new car, you’re doing the same thing the moment you take it off the lot."

I plan to NEVER have another car payment EVER again.  

My hubby does want a beautiful Toyota Tundra one day,   One like this :)  ooooo so pretty.

ONE DAY
 

However, when that day comes, I plan to walk up to the CURRENT owner (I never plan to buy a new car) be able to hand them the cash for the car and keep the title in my wonderful filing cabinet! 

I feel that one of the BIGGEST budget breakers in todays world is Cars.  Plain old simple cars that loose all their value!!

And for the record.  I am VERY hard on cars, which is ONE of the reasons I TOTALLY LOVE my little car! Her name is "My girl" and I love her!! :) ... even more now that her bumper is attached, however that is a discussion for another day! 

The WHOLE SHABANG!!

 There are MANY different ways to build a budget.  I have shown already my 3 basic categories!
Bills 
Food
Other

Now we have a few steps we should take.
Something to remember: a BUDGET is a living breathing document.  It changes more then anything else out there.  It is necessary to work on it, and there is no such thing as a perfect budget, because it CHANGES!
 
1: Get rid of the Credit!!!
When working on a budget you need to take a Leap of Faith.
-Hebrews 11: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I will discuss a few things in the future about His money Her money, but NOT today!! So stay tuned.  The readers digest version I DO NOT believe in separate money.

With this leap of faith, it is time to cut up all the cards. EVERY ONE OF THEM, even if it saves you 2%.  YOU NEED THEM GONE!!!

2. Have everything in ONE account.  It is really easy to lose things when there are many accounts you need one.

3.  Now you need to decide a time frame.  There are a few options

   a. Monthly

   b: 1st and 15th

   c: weekly

   d: biweekly

   e: MIS.

This is how you will break down your budget.  For my family for all of 2012 and prior I did it monthly.  While working on our budget for 2013 we decided to mix it up.  We have changed our budget to biweekly.  My husband and I get paid every other week, so we used that as our framework.  The once a month budget wasn't working so we needed to change it.  

4. Decide what form you will use a spread sheet, a Google doc, or a plain peace of paper.

5. Now the fun part :) Well if you are me.  

Start by working with your time frame.  If you choose 1 month, put all your bills and the dates they are due.  

I do mine biweekly (since my bills are due the same day every month, but my paychecks are not on the same days)

 This is MY budget for Aug 2013

We get paid on 8/2, 8/16, and 8/30 (a 3 check month!) 

Bills

Daycare (1)

HOA (1)               Check 1

Power (1)

Mortage (15)

Gas (23)

Cell Phone (23)

Insurance (24)         Check 2

Student Loan (25) 

Internet (26) 

Netflix (28)

Debt

I have 2 debts take those and split them in half.

Now that I know what bills go where this is what I do next.

 

	Check 1
	Income
Bills	Daycare
	HOA
	Power
Debt	Car
	Credit Card
Food	Food
	Dining Out
Other	Boys
	Church
	Clothes
	Dates
	Gifts
	House
	Personal
	Shady (dog)
	Spending
	Check 2
	Income
Bills	Mortage
	Gas
	Cell Phone
	Insurance
	Student Loan
	Internet
	Netflix
Debt	Car
	Credit Card
Food	Food
	Dining Out
Other	Boys
	Church
	Clothes
	Dates
	Gifts
	House
	Personal
	Shady (dog)
	Spending

Build this!! Now we need to put money into it.  

This is REALLY the hard part!

	Check 1	Money	Amount Left
	Income	2200
Bills	Daycare	600	1600
	HOA	110	1490
	Power	100	1390
Debt	Car	133	1257
	Credit Card	125	1132
Food	Food		1132
	Dining Out		1132
Other	Boys		1132
	Church		1132
	Clothes		1132
	Dates		1132
	Gifts		1132
	House		1132
	Personal		1132
	Shady (dog)		1132
	Spending		1132
	Check 2
	Income	2200
Bills	Mortgage	1200	1000
	Gas	100	900
	Cell Phone	25	875
	Insurance	120	755
	Student Loan	130	625
	Internet	100	525
	Netflix	9	516
Debt	Car	133	383
	Credit Card	125	258
Food	Food		258
	Dining Out		258
Other	Boys		258
	Church		258
	Clothes		258
	Dates		258
	Gifts		258
	House		258
	Personal		258
	Shady (dog)		258
	Spending		258

From here you can see we have quite a few blanks, ALONG with having an extra amount. 1132+258= $1390 to still work on. And this is the challenging part.  We have all the food and others to break down now.

This is when I recommend you pull out your previous bank statements and find out an average of what you spend, or just break it down.  Take what we have and use your best guess as to where to put it.  For ME I would take the 1,390 and divide it by 2.

Giving me $695 for 2 weeks.  Then time to break down.

Time to continue to think about this.... This is a LONG Enough post for one day.  We will meet back here tomorrow to finish building this budget!

 

Being financial secure before getting married?

We have all heard the phrase we are waiting until we can afford it to get married. This is my view on that!

I was married at the RIPE OLD AGE of 18. My then boyfriend (now husband) and I combined our finances the summer before we were married. I was given $200 a month other then my rent. My honey made about $1,000 a month. We were living the High Life, we just didn't know it yet.

Income : 1,200

500: rent (his apt)
100: power/gas
60: Internet
20: Cell Phone
100: Car Insurance
Leaving us with $420 each month for everything else.  Not too shabby for a couple staring out. 

Then my sweet boyfriend proposed.

YES this is my BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING Ring (however my honey made it personalized by changing the round stone to a princess cut on point!)

We started looking into a lot of different things.  Money started to feel a little more real. My honey didn't have insurance with his part time job, so he starting looking for jobs.  He got a government job and got benefits.

My daddy was amazing and gave me my dream wedding.  We planned and planned and planned, we were engaged for a year which gave us lots of time to plan. 

Then... we got MARRIED!!! YEAH!!!

Everything was perfect.   I got a part time job, working at Subway (the second real job I'd ever had)

THEN!!!

About a month after we got married my husband lost his job, on the SAME day I found I got a government job.  However mine didn't have benefits. 

Our income went from 

Me:  500

Hubby: 1300

$1800

to

Me: 800

Hubby: 0

$800

in ONE DAY

Should we have waited?