Yep, Money, one of my favorite topics. Well it is now, it sure wasn't when we had over 50k in medical debt. Back then it was find money and work and pay, pay, pay down debt. Where looking at the stack of bills made ya sick. Working 60 plus hours a week made me sick!
But lately I can't believe what a 360 money has taken in our lives. We have one debt and that is the house. Two years ago we cut our lives down to nothing. Freeing up money, no longer paying 125 a week in gas to get the kids to and from school. No longer paying for school. No longer paying all that extra weekly school stuff that would come up, from photos to birthdays, to raising money for this or that.
But it really wasn't until about a year ago, we got to see the savings from cutting our lives down to nothing. We had some left over things to clear up, we had some things to fix up. Life
And so when we saw that extra savings, we made a plan. To pay down the house so we can re-fi and get rid of pmi. Well in the 18 months since the last re-fi we have went from 126,982.42 to as of Wednesday to 115,000 a big difference of nearly 12,000.
After some chatting last week, hubby and I realized we should try to re-fi now as rates are dropping again and math wise we should be able to drop pmi?
So after some chatting with mortgage guy. Yes, we can re-fi and drop pmi, but our rate is about the same. CRAP. But math wise our payment will drop to about 800ish a month, giving us breathing room. And if we keep on our same road, we would be paying our mortgage down by about 1,000 a month, verses the about 800 we are doing now. So math wise this works out better for us.
So about 220ish principle payment, add in the 135 weekly, add in the 189ish difference in pay, as we save 1000 a month for Mortgage and if we have a payment of about 800-811 we send the difference to mortgage. Comes to nearly 1000 a month. When the final numbers drop we will have to see if we can come up with the difference so it's an equal 1000 towards principle every month. Then watch our mortgage drop.
We talked about other money goals. We have a house fund, this fund is so we can buy some land down the road. We want to pay cash for anything in the future. This was just started a few months ago, and really it's a few dollars here and there. So hubby is taking that over, and he is on the hunt for money. Any extra money at the end of the week, we just cashed in our change jar, and that went in there. There is money, we just need to find it.
Then we have an Emergency fund. Our money lady holds onto to that. Right now we have about three months saved up. I would love to double that and have 6 months saved up. This might be a hard goal to hit.
How are we able to do all this and live on one very small income? Well lets see, bills are down to bare basics. If we don't need it we don't buy it. I make a grocery list every week, I stick to a menu. If it's not on the list I don't buy it. If we want something we save a little something a week until we can afford it. We don't just run out and buy something. We don't go to stores just to walk around. We do things ourselves. Why hire someone when you can do something yourself? I have taught hubby that there is someone on youtube showing someone like him how to do something. It's how we fixed (and then replaced) the front faucet. Last year when Hannah hit the back faucet and sent water flying. We did hire someone to come out and fix that, because A. I was busy under the house cleaning up water. And B. it's a very used faucet, it needed to be fixed right. But that costs us over 300 dollars and wiped out our savings at the time. The front faucet costs 7 dollars. Big difference. And best of all, we say NO a LOT.
Yes, I do garden and save all the food I can and that off sets the food budget. But we also keep track of every single penny. And with keeping track of every penny and only using cash, it's very hard to let that money go to buy something that is just silly. I often find myself in a store, going off a list and crossing off this or that because I just don't want to spend money on it right now.
So if mortgage guy is right we will miss our November and December mortgage payment. With the November payment we plan on buying loads of meat. I'm nearly out of hamburger and one more package of chicken and I may be set for a year? We plan on going and buying a few bags of flour, with winter coming it's hard for us to get out to the flour store. I need to get my sewing machine in for a tuning. Yes, I know I can do this myself, but it's been 12 years and I'm afraid the second I start to remove screws on what I will find? And the rest will go into savings to boost that up. December will go into the house fund.
And then come January, make a mortgage plan and stick to it and watch our mortgage drop.
So I believe for now the Mortgage updates are done. We will know more later this week when we sit and chat with Mortgage guy. But in the end it's exciting. It's breathing room, and I like to breath. Just can't wait for the day we are under 100k. And I can now see that day coming.
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