Category: Finance

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Finance

Finance Update 8th February 2020

We had a pretty good run this pay cycle overall. We did cash flow a couple of things that overall stopped us from hitting our debt as hard as we would have liked. Our emergency fund got a tiny boost over the standard payment this time to finally bring it into the triple digits! woo hoo! Overall after so much drama every week this year it seems things have finally settled down for us. It was actually nice to have a pay day where we were not scrambling around trying desperately to pay for some urgent thing or another.

A couple of small setbacks this week were mostly health related with our daughter getting quite sick for a few days and I had some trouble after a tooth extraction. These cost us a little over budget but nothing that impacted the bottom line too much.

We really only had two bars on the debt side change this time, that being Gem visa got an awesome $499 injection, taking our total owing to only $182!! If nothing goes wrong for us this should be gone before the end of the month!

Amex and society one are stagnant at the moment, but hopefully not for very long.

The big bad wolf had interest added this week so unfortunately our balance went up to $26,477. We are so excited for the day that our minimum payments cover the interest with no balance gains. It will be a day to celebrate!

As usual our emergency fund got the $20 injection plus a small boost to take the account up to $100. I was so keen to get it back into the triple digits. Now we just need to work towards four digits.

Overall we are slightly better off than last cycle and that is always a win, no matter how small the step all that matters is that it is in the right direction. We ended last pay cycle on -$38,436 net position. We are ending this one on -$35,859. We are $2577 better off than two weeks ago! That is an incredible number and only made possible by the bonus we received in that time. Things seemed to have stopped getting in our way for the moment and we can not wait to kick some debt butt!

You can watch our latest finance update here

Or join the freedom family on this years debt busting journey, we share our updates on You Tube and I post pretty much daily on Instagram sharing all sorts of things about our journey. We would love to see you there.

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Finance

First Bonus Of The Decade!

It was completely unexpected and out of the blue but this week we received a bonus!! (I may have actually done a little happy dance when we found out.)

We decided to be quite responsible for a change and actually put this bonus to good use. Honestly. Typically we would each take a portion for spending money then we would go out for a meal and also buy some things off of our wish lists. Maybe do something good like service a car, and congratulate ourselves for doing something worthwhile with the money. NOT THIS TIME! We are so happy with ourselves, and it is with immense pride I can say here that we put our bonus on debt. Every. Last. Cent. Nothing was squirreled away for our own purchases, we did not even consider going out to eat or anything really. The money came in and it was straight away divided up onto our debts using the snowball method.

I am beyond thrilled to share our updated board here. To have been able to knock out our debt to our own sinking funds, and to have paid in full the amount owing to my parents-in-law is such an amazing feeling. We also took about 25% of gem visa.

All of that in one day!

If you want to see me knocking out the bars on my board you can do so here. I thank everybody who takes the time to support us this year.

I am so happy that in just one week we have knocked out over $4000 in debt. That is some serious debt butt kicking, and we are incredibly motivated to keep the (snow)ball rolling all year!

Join the freedom family on this years debt busting journey, we share our updates on You Tube and I post pretty much daily on Instagram sharing all sorts of things about our journey. We would love to see you there.

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Finance

Finance Update 23rd Jan 2020

This pay cycle was both good to us and bad to us. My devil car finally got booked in to be repaired, unfortunately the car dealership will not accept amex, so we had to make a mad scramble to come up with the $6800 elsewhere. Well that is not entirely true, as we did get finance for $5000 so we had to scrounge up $1800 on a moments notice. It hurt a bit and we had to borrow money from a couple of our sinking funds to do it, but we did it.

We are feeling the pinch after several financial setbacks already this year, and our emergency fund, whilst still getting a $20 boost every 2 weeks is definitely feeling very dry.

We owe our sinking funds $850 up from $290 last pay cycle.

Link’s vet bill is parked at $580.

ZIP PAY IS PAID IN FULL!!!!!!

Gem visa has not budged at $1376 the interest free period will expire in June.

OUR PHONES ARE PAID IN FULL!!!!!

Amex is down $700 to land us with $4300 owing.

Society One is sitting still currently maxed out at $5000.

The big bad wolf is down to $26397. I expect this to go up a little next pay cycle after interest had been charged for the month.

Overall our position is a painful one right now. We ended last pay cycle on -$30,799 and are ending this one on -$38,436. Sadly $7,637 further into debt. These car repairs have been crippling to us this year and my dental bills have not been helping the situation.

We are so motivated to start kicking some debt butt, as soon as things stop getting in our way and let us build up some buffers, we will be at it aggressively.

Join the freedom family on this years debt busting journey, we share our updates on You Tube and I post pretty much daily on Instagram sharing all sorts of things about our journey. We would love to see you there.

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Finance

Finance update 9th Jan 2020

Today is payday, and while that may make a lot of people happy to us this week it was just full of frustrations. We are so motivated to start paying down our debt and to see those numbers creeping closer and closer to black, that it is rather disheartening when there is a pay cheque that had to be used for something else. For us that something else is our cars. I am happy to report that one of our cars is completely fixed and operational again, unfortunately the other will cost us $7000 on top of what we have already spent on her. This week has also brought the news of my wisdom teeth needing to be removed at approximately $3000 and a blood test that was done on our dog, that the vet ‘forgot’ to bill us for at the time, is now due also. Not the best start to a January we have ever had, but at least the rest of the year should be up from here.

So with all that being said, let’s get to what we are all here for today and that is some real figures.

We still owe ourselves $290 that we borrowed from our car registration fund.

We paid $200 to my in laws leaving us a balance of $580 for the portion of the Christmas day emergency vet bill they paid for.

Zip pay is down to $65 owing and it should be knocked out very soon.

Gem visa has $1376 left. The interest free period is still valid until June.

Our phones have not changed since last payday.

The big bad wolf has more owing than last time as interest was charged to the account. This leaves us with $26,685 to pay on the principle.

Our emergency fund only increased by the default $20 that was added from our payday as we are still trying to fix the cars.

Overall our position has crept slightly down from -$31,052 to -$30,799 that is $253 towards our goal this pay day.

I am doubtful there will be any major improvements around any of these numbers until we have fixed our second car and my wisdom teeth have been removed. When life stops getting in our way we will get going!

Join the freedom family on this year’s no spending debt busting challenge

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Finance

An intro to our finances

This is the post where I lay it all bare. For those who are interested I offer a complete overview of our current financial position. Updates to this post will be every other week when we get paid, until we are back in the black. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen meet our debt..

We have arranged our debt in the order we are going to pay it off, it is almost the snowball method with the exception of zip.

We start by owing ourselves $290 that we ‘borrowed’ from our car registration account. This has to be paid back asap so we have the money ready when the bill comes in.

We owe $780 to my parents-in-law, who helped us out with a part of our Christmas day emergency vet bill.

We have $120 left owing on zip pay, some supplies for my husbands hobby.

Gem visa comes in at $1426 left owing. this balance is for our new washing machine (desperately needed after our last one died a sad watery death) Also for our daughters bedroom furniture. the interest free period runs out in July this year.

$1850 for two shiny new phones we bought in November. yeah. mistake.

$26,613 left on our personal loan. This is actually our second dance with this loan, we had it paid down to only $4000 owing and then maxed it out again to replace both cars and furnish our house. These are things I never would have bought on credit, but given our situation at the time suffice to say it was a necessary evil.

our emergency fund was obliterated over the second half of last year with both of our cars needing major repairs more than once (yes the cars we bought only 1 year prior. yes we bought them used but they were only 5 years old. No there was no warranty left once the problems started.) We also had an emergency vet trip on christmas day when one of the dogs decided to eat a piece of rubber that was too big to pass naturally. so here we are starting from nothing in our emergency account. We are at least very thankful we had it to get us through what it did.

Anyone with a keen eye will note that I have not included superannuation in our net worth, this is intentional however we will include it in our complete portfolio once we have organized it. As Alex and I can not access our super for about 30 and 40 years respectively any amounts in there are really inconsequential to our debt journey at the moment.

Join the freedom fam on this years no spending debt busting challenge https://www.facebook.com/familyseeksfreedom/ https://www.instagram.com/familyseeksfreedom/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjv3QDuYnFXfYv9PTgOVUog

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