Trust in the Lord

That was the sermon today. Trust in the Lord with our lives, with our whole self, our future, with everything, but especially with our fear. It was a great sermon. They incorporate great songs and clips of videos, commercials, tons of stuff that coincide with what we are discussing in the bible. John seemed to enjoy this sermon than the last. So as of right now, we are hoping to plant ourselves at this church. We also took Aurora for the first time to this church. She had not been to a church or church nursery since she was nine months or so..and back then I did the nursery for that service most of the time.

However she was very excited to go, did fine when we left, and only cried a little when we returned. She was upset because she saw us and ran to meet us, but had to go back inside to get her coat, I think she thought we were leaving her again, but once she realized we weren't, she was fine. She said she enjoyed herself, she "played", colored a little bible verse book, and had a good time. So she will happily be returning with us next week. The next step is introducing johnny. Hubby and I are uncertain about how he is gong to take this. However at some point we will have to attempt it. Currently he stays at home with grandpa, but I think in the next two weeks we are going to start taking him as well.

Well I guess thats the only news I really have to report for now. : )

Annoyed...

My hubby had his yearly review at work today. He is always a model employee. Has never called in sick, always gets great reviews (which means the best raise they give), etc. Well last year he got in trouble for using the internet at work. I dont know how many people remember this, but they put him on paid leave and we feared he was going to lose his job. Yet when they found out he was just doing school work in his lunch times and such, they gave him a final warning and that was it (They thought his school program had been hacking their system, which turned out to be not the case)

So fast forward to almost a year later. He is up for his review, his probation period has been over since September... In every category he received, exceeds expectations, as always. Yet that one mishap took him down to, sometimes meets expectations! His bonus was reduced (Oh well) and he gets NO raise! Nothing, nada, zero, zip...

Oh well.. thats life, part of me is really mad at the company because obviously he does above and beyond what they ask, he scored the best he could in every category, but then again I do realize he was breaking the rules by using the internet to do his school work.. I just don't know if the punishment fits the crime. Yet his work has a no exceptions policy (something I didnt know about) and he cant even complain to hr.

They made him the unofficial admin of a certain program, so now he is all upset because he is currently doing more work for the same pay. The worst part is it is all up to HR so there is no point to complain, his bosses have no say in it. His boss did give a little hope. His boss did inform him that they are trying to make him the Official admin, and they said they are working on getting him that title and a raise. Yet we know not to count on any of it. He has been promised so many promotions in the past (by different bosses) that we know enough to not count on any of it.

Im not as upset by the whole thing as much as my poor hubby is. I know that the money doesn't matter, we will be fine without it. But he feels like he could have or should have been a horrible employee the whole year, not covered for anyone, half-a##ed his work and he would have ended up with the same ending score. But no, he worked his butt off and he still gets screwed over : (

FPU- Week 1

Financial Peace University Class one!!

It went well, It was hilarious and we really enjoyed it. John and I look forward to getting out of debt, giving, and saving. We also can't wait to get more involved in this church. : )

Been busy.

Keeping the ball rolling....

Okay, so we have paid off a few more credit cards... just left with two that have balances... one with a lower balance and one with a higher...We will have those paid of by September, possibly sooner. We will see how we do at the yard sale. The yard sale money will be going to paying off our credit card debt.

Today we went through and reorganized the storage room at the back of the building. Next weekend and possibly slowly over the next week, we will be going through our storage that we pay for and throwing stuff out, putting stuff in the yard sale pile and moving stuff into the house or storage here. We found even more stuff to sell while going through the back room, I know we will find more to sell in our storage.. We are on a roll.

We would work on it tomorrow, BUT john picked up some overtime, soo after we go to check out a new church he will be heading off to work : ( But any overtime he works is more to put towards being debt free!

Once we have the cards paid off we will be doubling up the car payment. Then when income tax comes around, we will put what we get back to paying off the car, if there is any leftover then it will go to paying off the student loans. Once the car is paid off then we will attack the student loans. They are quite extensive, so I fear it may take us at least two years or longer for them alone. We will see ; )

The kids are doing good. Auroras eye infection seems to be completely gone, we did all the drops. Today she was able to go back to ballet class, which she was very excited about. Johnny is good, just here there and everywhere, picking up new words all the time. I am trying to work ahead on my school work.

Oh and we got new tires for the car, it was badly needed. I guess the front tires were almost bald, we were happily able to pay cash. We will also be paying cash for our vacation in a little over a week. I almost feel guilty for going on this little vacation because we could be putting the money towards the bills. Yet we did scale down our vacation considerably (We are talking thousands of dollars here...)

Feeling a bit down

Okay, so today has had its ups and its downs. Tomorrow we will finish baby step number 1. Then it looks like another card will get paid off tomorrow, which is awesome. And part of another card will get a big payment to it.

We wrote out our monthly budget, which was cool. Now we have to stick to it. Yet a few people have been negative about this.. Which I know Im to expect, but man it brings you down... But oh well. I WILL DO THIS!

Oh and I am pilling even more stuff for our yard sale, we picked a day. Just in case anyone close by is interested...we will have things like an old xbox plus games, kids toys, kids clothes, a crib, a bath safe seat, a tv, tv stand, possibly a zune (just depends on whether we want to sell it there online...), a single stroller, so on and so forth..

Im so excited

And I know that some people think thats weird.. but i am. Im excited to be on our path to getting out of debt. Honestly I knew we were heading down that road, but now I feel as thought we have a stronger foundation and I have a fellow blogger on her to thank for that! I am a follower of her blog and I have often heard her mention Dave Ramsey... here is her blog:

http://zarikailah.blogspot.com/

Her blog inspired me to find out just who this man is! I had never heard of him, so I googled him, found his website and found out what he was all about. That made me even more interested and now Im halfway through his book that I bought yesterday and PUMPED UP. We will be doing a garage sale, we have so much useless junk around here..useless to us at least, but its mostly in good condition. We are just such pack rats... its time to start getting rid of some of this. So we will see how we do at the garage sale, but whatever we make is going towards paying down the bills... If we keep it up maybe we can be debt free sooner than I thought!

Oh and I already have naysayers! People dont think we can do it, and while I do question at times whether I can, I know that if we sacrifice and work hard we can do it

Its time to be DEBT free!

Maybe If I post this in some public forum it will give me even more drive to see it through. John and I have decided that this year is the year we will get ourselves completely out of credit card debt. Actually we have a five year plan to help us succeed in our financial goals. This year we are just focusing on credit card debt, next year we will be focusing on paying off our car.

I don,t feel like we have a ton of credit card debt, but the amount has grown over the years and we have more than i would like to, like to being zero lol. So right now I paid off one of my cards, one of the lower balances, but a card nonetheless and called and had the card shut down. I know this may negatively affect my credit for sometime, but I felt it was the best route. I do not need it anymore, actually I am appalled at how many credit cards I own, I have already decided to close a few..keeping one major and one minor for emergencies.

John and I need to learn to cut spending in areas that we spend to excess. John is an avid video gamer... and we just dont need all these gadgets.. and my kryptonite is kids clothes, I LOVE to shop for clothes for our kids.. So alas, I will cut back out of necessity! (They are running out of room in the closet!..which i already have plastic pull out bins at the bottom and double hanger rods)

We also need to eat out less...which we actually have been doing for awhile now..we jut have to keep it up. When I worked for that short time, we fell into a bad habit of eating out..but when I quit we have worked to getting back to eating at home.

And of course we have other goals for the next five years.. ; )