Debt Repayment
In December we put $852 toward debt. Definitely not stellar, but it’s just barely enough to drop us to less than Six Figures Under. Having debt of less than $100,000 is worth celebrating.
Income
Regular: $3,175 (after taxes)
Etsy: $300— A little better than last month, but well-below average. All of the month’s orders came in the last two weeks of the month. It made for a stressful time right before leaving to go out of town. Now that we are back in town, I have a whole backlog of orders to catch up on.
Ebay: $34— I had two ebay sales: a skirt and some scrapbooking embellishments.
Other: $54— Dividends from our USAA auto insurance policy
Spending
| Category | Budget | Spent | Notes |
| Tithing | $350 | $ 356 | Our regular 10% tithe on our income. |
| Rent/Mortagage | $0 | $0 | This is my favorite budget category. Hooray for the basement! |
| Gas | $500 | $585 | We went over, but not by much considering it includes gas for visiting family who live 1200 miles away. |
| Utilities | $0 | $0 | Included in our free rent. |
| Groceries | $300 | $92 | We didn’t do any major shopping since we knew we would be going on a trip. My sister hosted my whole family for Christmas. We each took a night cooking dinner which was lovely. |
| Gifts | $300 | $670 | I was mentally taking into consideration the $200 that we didn’t spend on groceries, so this category isn’t quite as off-budget as it looks.About $160 was for some new dress shirts and ties I got for my husband at a great price. That might sound super lame, but he’s a practical-gift kind-of-guy, so he was excited. He surprised me with an awesome Blendtec blender. It is amazing! He got a great deal on a factory reconditioned one. Those were the two big chunks of the Christmas gift budget. Other gifts were handmade, purchased earlier in the year, or bought at great prices. |
| Clothing | $30 | $9 | I picked up pants and a shirt for my son at the thrift store for family pictures. |
| Home & Office Supplies | $40 | $ 42 | Part of this is for renewing the domain name for our family blog. |
| Entertainment | $36 | $32 | Over Christmas we went to a Children’s museum. My sister got some of us in on her family pass, so it was much cheaper than it would have been. We also helped pay for a babysitter once so all the adults could go out. |
| Health Insurance | $453 | $453 | This is the last month paying the premium for our high deductible plan. |
| Dental | $122 | $122 | Our dental discount plan costs $22 per month. The other $100 is a payment for dental work Mr. SixFiguresUnder back in October. I think it’s the last one though. |
| Lawyer Marketing | $450 | $399 | We’re back to our standard size ad, plus a few other expenses. |
| Lawyer Marketing Food | $25 | $5 | Fewer marketing meetings than usual because of the holidays and an ice storm early in the month. |
| Law Practice Expense | $60 | $45 | Just the practice management software subscription. |
| Other: Life Insurance | $652 | Our annual life insurance premiums. | |
| Other: Car Maintenance | $536 | Before our big trip, we got an oil change and had some issues looked at, which included replacing the serpentine belt and all tensioners. | |
| Other: Christmas Cards | $52 | The bulk of this is postage. We always send out a family poem along with a photo card. This year I just added text to a 4×6 picture and had them printed at Walgreens (with a coupon code, of course) to save on costs. |
A church that sets an expectation of 10% tithing is more about business than about spirit. It angers me beyond belief that they accept this from you.
Hi Meg! Thanks for your concern. We give 10% willingly. Considering God has given us all, keeping 90% seems like a pretty good bargain! 🙂 We also don’t see it as the church requiring a tithe, but rather a commandment of God. I can see how that would seem kind of crazy for someone who doesn’t believe. It is an act of faith and obedience for which we are greatly blessed!
I need a “LIKE” button 😉
Congratulations!! How exciting. $36,000 in one year. Gosh! That’s makes our $14,000 seem wimpy 😉
No way Sara! $14,000 is amazing! Don’t compare numbers. We’re both doing our best and (cheesy as it may sound) that is what matters.
We still have a long way to go and subsequent years likely won’t be as impressive 🙂
Congrats on paying it down! That’s a huge deal. On January 2 I bit the bullet and paid off one of my husbands student loans. That brought our debt from 11,221 (ish) to 9,978! I make a variable (but semi-steady) income as a bartender. It can vary up to $500 from month to month, so I generally try to stay a month ahead on bills and consider the money in my account the money for the following month (if that makes any sense? I don’t know it makes sense to me 😉 ) So pretty much I am counting on making XX number of dollars this month before I have it because I just emptied my account!!! It makes me nervous, but I know it will work out. We are also doing a pantry challenge this month so our grocery bills will be next to nothing. As long as nothing crazy happens we should be good. I’m very excited to be under $10,000 we have been working at this for sooooo long
Congrats CeCee! Getting below $10K is a great milestone! Staying a month ahead on bills is a great way to feel more secure with a variable income. I think you have a good system going. Keep up the good work!
Considering it was the month of December, you still did great! And I had to laugh because with my husband being a pediatrician, he wears dress shirts 365 days a year…but they tend to get blood on then from time-to-time from when he gives vaccinations. Also, most of his dress shirts are 15 years old and so all at once, holes were appearing near the elbows. He spent HOURS sewing them (he does all our sewing because he enjoys it, is good at it, and it helps him practice “stitches”) but they still didn’t make it. So I bought him 6 new dress shirts for Christmas and he was so excited as we both LOVE practical gifts. I also got him much-needed dress socks (again, he’s been sewing holes, but that is so NOT comfy!) and then a couple fun little things. The best part was a deal he got after Christmas: I had received a 20-dollar rewards coupon from the 6 dress shirts I had bought at the Van Heusen Outlet store. Well he got a $30 Van Heusen gift card for Christmas. Thirdly, they were having a great after-Christmas sale. So he went into the store and came out with another dress shirt, a pair of gray dress pants and a pair of sunglasses, and he still had money left on the gift card!
Liz, that’s awesome that you got your husband shirts and that he appreciates practical gifts too! That’s great you scored some awesome after-Christmas deals! I’m impressed that your husband does his own mending! Next time someone around here gets stitches, I may have to ask the doctor if he practices on his own clothes 🙂 I am so bad about getting to mending. I love to sew and create things, but don’t like to mend.
Do you have to change the name of your site to “Less Than” Six Figures Under now? 🙂 Seriously, you are doing a great job tackling that debt. I like the budget you have, it’s a good way to keep track of your spending.
🙂 Not a chance! Besides, it will remind us how far we’ve come.