Perfectly Imperfect Family and Finances

Posted By Mr. Imperfect on January 7, 2009

Welcome! If you are new here, consider subscribing to our RSS feed to get post as soon as they are available. Not sure about RSS feeds? For a description, and a brief tutorial, check our RSS Page.

One of our main goals right now is to get out of debt as quick as possible. We lived rather recklessly and it got us into a mess. It is not an easy task to get out of debt (far easier to get into than out of), but it is an attainable goal. Right now if we paid the minimum payment or bills (student loans, personal loans, mortgage, etc.) we would be in debt for the next 24 years! That is no longer acceptable, so we have a plan in place to reduce this time drastically (we are hopeful to reduce total debt by 40% this year).   How?  Glad you asked.

First, we are going to continue to try to reduce our expenses. In the order of importance to us:

1. Meals

This is our biggest area that we struggle with. Many times money is spent on convenience meals (that only leave you hungry in an hour) that could be used for more groceries. We have literally wasted an entire months of grocery money in one week. It is our goal for 2009 to make our dining out experiences enjoyable family outings-not just a trip to the drive through window. Another way that we are going to try to improve the area of meals is through more and organized coupon use. Combing coupons with weekly sales allows us to get many items drastically reduced, free, or if we are really lucky-we get money back!

2. Reduce our fuel expense.

Our second area that has the most room for improvement is our gas expense in our vehicles. For ways that we have reduced our fuel cost, check out this article.

3. Reduce our utility bill

Lastly, we continue to try new and innovative ways to reduce our monthly utility expenses. The best ways to help reduce this expense are in our saving on expenses category.

As a note here, there are a couple blogs out there that are really worth reading while trying to reduce your expenses. First, Money Saving Mom is a great resource for sales and deals that we mentioned earlier about getting things reduce or free. Also, Lynnae at Being Frugal always has useful information on frugality and other personal finance information. GLBL Guy at Gather Little By Little is great about providing specific personal finance information and often has free software, spreadsheets, and other reviews. We have learned a lot from these three (and others), and have been inspired by both their stories of successes and failures.

We are currently on step two of the Dave Ramsey Plan. We have our $1,000 dollar emergency fund in place and we are currently working on our debt snowball. For those of you who are getting out of debt, this is one of the best plans on the market. It required a little personal tweaking in our situation (we still wanted to contribute to retirement accounts while getting out of debt), but it has worked well for us so far. The name of the book is The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness.  If you need a little motivation as well as a guideline debt reduction plan, this is a must read.

Tomorrow we are going to dicuss ways to increase income in 2009 to help eliminate debt. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Photo courtesy of www.freefoto.com.

• 100 Ways in 100 Days-7: Bake Items in “Groups”
• 100 Ways to Save Money in 100 Days-6: Use a Prgrammable Thermostat
• 100 Ways to Save Money in 100 Days-4: Wash Only Full Loads of Laundry
• 100 Ways to Save Money in 100 Days-2: Filters
• Getting Your Finances in Order
• What Debt Would You Pay Next?
• January Update: 1 Bill Paid Off!
• 100 Ways in 100 Days-12: Remove Items in Groups from Refrigerator
• 100 Ways to Save Money in 100 Days-5: Switch to CFL’s or LED’s
• 100 Ways to Save Money in 100 Days-3: Air Dry Clothes

Category: Family, Finances, Goals, Saving on Expenses
Tags: debt reduction, financial goals, fuel economy, save money at grocery store, Saving on Expenses, utility bill