It’s time to be accountable and look at what we earned, spent and paid in debt during November. Our spending numbers look high compared to any other SixFiguresUnder monthly budgets, but looking back at it we don’t have any big regrets. We spent the month being extra grateful for all of our many blessings. It turns out we’re even thankful for our debt!
Debt Repayment
This month we paid $1,781 toward our student loans. That includes a deposit from SmarterBucks.
Income
Our total net income for November was $4,609. Since we live on last month’s income, this is income that we will spend in December (right now it’s just sitting in the bank).
Regular Income– $2969 This is Mr. SixFiguresUnder’s current take home pay. For more details on his income, see here or here.
Etsy Income– $159 Halfway through the month, I put my shop “on vacation.” The holidays are my slow months since I sell birthday and baby shower things. My slow Etsy months coincide nicely with busy holiday time, I decided to eliminate the stress of filling orders until the new year, so I can focus on other things.
Blog Income– $1,476 I only include income that I have actually received this month (it often takes a month or two to get paid). I also take out blog expenses, which this month were on the low side. I also include some referral credit as income when it is credit that pays our bills (as opposed to allowing us to purchase something that we weren’t planning to buy anyway). This is the case with referral credits we earned when readers signed up for Republic Wireless after reading our experiment and review.
Side note: After posting my blog income each month, I always get lots of questions about how I’m able to earn this with a blog that’s just over a year old. My two suggestions for those of you who are looking to grow your blog and your blog income are 1) Read How To Blog For Profit: Without Selling Your Soul
Spending
Each month we budget down to zero using last month’s income. Our spending in November comes from the income we earned in October. In addition to the debt payments above, here’s how we spent money in November:
Tithing– $436 At the beginning of November, we paid a 10% tithe on the money we earned in October. You can read all about why we pay tithing even though we’re in debt.
Other Giving– $20 Other charitable donations we made
Mortgage/Rent– $0 We live in my in-laws unfinished basement. It’s not pretty, but the price is right. It may be trendy, but living in the parents’ basement with three kids isn’t in our long term plans. It does provide a constant reminder to keep on track to get this debt paid off asap! 🙂
Utilities– $0 We don’t pay any utilities either. We do pay for extra internet bandwidth, but it comes out as a blogging expense.
Republic Wireless Cell Phones– $22 We both have smartphones through Republic Wireless (you can read my review here). With tax, each phone comes out to $10.89 per month. We didn’t actually make any payment this month because our phone bill is covered through referral credits that we earned when they had a referral program (we counted the referral credits as blog income during the month they were earned). If you are paying crazy prices for your cell phone bill, I highly recommend checking out Republic Wireless.
Health Insurance– $114 We have an ACA plan. You can read the details here.
Car Insurance– $97 I think it’s pretty cool that the car insurance for our two ’97 vehicles is $97. I get excited about weird things like that.
Renters Insurance– $14 We have our renters insurance through USAA (along with our car insurance and several other accounts). We were really grateful we had it when my husband’s car was broken into and everything was stolen.
Food– $354 I’m pretty sure this is the worst we have gone over our $300 grocery budget since we started meticulously keeping track over a year ago. I shopped for Thanksgiving dinner at the end of the month, so I ended up buying lots of non-Thanksgiving things while I was out instead of planning a grocery trip at the beginning of December (we usually do one big shopping trip to Winco each month).
Gas– $446 Even with our little trip, we were way under our $500 gas budget. Hooray for gas prices going down! We are lowering our gas budget to $450 from now on.
Fun– $54 This is much higher than usual, but we’re fine with that. The day after Thanksgiving we took the kids camping in the mountains. When we were getting ready to leave that morning we could not find our tent anywhere, which was really strange. My husband and I are both pretty experienced and adventurous when it comes to the outdoors, so we decided we’d just build our own shelter out of tarps and rope. We loaned out our giant tarp a while back so we just figured we’d pick up another one on our trip. After a couple hours in the car (and a stop to get a Christmas tree cutting permit), we stopped by Big 5 to get a tarp. My husband ran in and came out with a tent and a huge smile. “This is the best Black Friday ever!” Those were not words I ever expected to hear from his mouth. After seeing the tarps were $25, he took a look at the tents. He found an 8-man 12′ x 12′ tent (similar to this tent
Household– $70 At the beginning of the month, we spent about $35 on general toiletries and thought we were done for the month. Thanks to the fresh snow on our mountain camping trip, we had to buy some chains for our tires to get home. We picked them up at Kmart and they rang up at half price (maybe another Black Friday deal)! By the time we got back on the road, the snow had stopped and the restriction was lifted so we didn’t need to use the chains after all. We haven’t decided if we’ll return them or keep them.
Clothing– $139 This is the highest clothing number you’ll see all year. I took advantage of an online Black Friday sale to stock up on white dress shirts for my husband. He wears them six days a week, so they get worn and become dingy pretty quickly. I also bought two pair of kids shoes when we were in Kmart on our trip (they were buy one, get one for $1). I got myself an awesome maxi skirt on clearance at Target. I told my husband to wrap it up for me for Christmas.
Law Practice– $44 My husband’s law practice management software has a monthly subscription fee that comes out of our pocket since it’s different than what the firm uses.
Car Maintenance– $906 Last month we came out ahead in this category because of the insurance payout after my husband hit a bear. We used $906 of that this month to fix an oil leak and brake problem and get new tires. We still have just under $300 remaining in the car maintenance category that is left from the insurance payout. We usually zero out all of our budget categories at the end of the month to maximize our end-of-the-month debt repayment, but we decided to leave this money earmarked for car repairs, as they are inevitable, especially with older cars.
Gifts– $38 I bought the Little House on the Prairie box set and the Chronicles or Narnia box set at the thrift store along with a great assortment of other kids books. My first grader is a voracious reader, so she will be thrilled that we’re adding lots of chapter books to our family library this Christmas. I also found some nearly new kids shoes at the thrift store on half-off day for my kids and my nieces.
Life Insurance– $667 This is our annual life insurance premium. In a non-debt-payback scenario, we might opt to take a chunk (1/12th) out each month and set it aside for life insurance premiums. With our debt repayment strategy, we choose to take these large hits on the budget as they come instead and just pay less in debt repayment in the month they occur.
There you have it folks!
How did your finances go in November?
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Stephanie,
I am loving this blog!!! I sat down today just to “budget” out our next few months… I happened upon your blog via Pinterest and now, 4 hours later, I have started the free trial of YNAB (and will probably by it before the night is over)! The hubby and I always “budget” but we don’t actually track if that’s where our money is going. I have looked into the cash system and such but didn’t seem like it would work for us. YNAB looks like a great solution.
My question for you is: Do you keep track of your debt in YNAB or seperately? We have a car loan, home equity line of credit, mortgage, and student loans that I’d like to be more proactive about. I like the idea of seeing everything in one program. I did a few of them on the Off-Budget but not sure that is the best approach.
Thanks!!!
Hi Amanda! I’m glad you found my blog! I am working on an article on starting budgeting with YNAB right now (part of my Frugal Fresh Start challenge series for January)!
We keep our debt separate (not in YNAB). You can do it either way, but for us this works well. If we kept the student loans in YNAB, we would have to update each month with interest charges, which are pretty cryptic thanks to our loan servicer. We have a “Debt” main category with “beginning of the month payment” and “end of the month payment” subcategories where we keep track of the money we allocate and pay toward our loans (right now we don’t have any minimum payments). You can see some screen shots and more detail to our paying off debt with YNAB approach in this post.
So, long story short, for credit card debt, I would have the debt in YNAB, but for other debt I would keep it out of YNAB, but have categories in YNAB where you allocate money to extra payments on those debts.
I’m always so impressed with your dedication Stephanie!
We believe the Lord doesn’t want us to have any debt, and never buy anything unless we pay for the entire purchase (including vehicles, car, land–everything). Even though we never have debt, I STILL have to head over here and cheer you all on. Paying down debt would be a super hard thing to do, and you always impress me! You’re a role model to many. Thank you for faithfully sharing.
Blessings,
Thanks for the kind words Deborah! It’s nice to know that people are rooting for us! 🙂
You have done well so far. Are you on track to pay this off on time? It looks like you will need an increase in income to meet your goals. I see that your original goal was to pay this all off by the end of 2016. This is a lot to accomplish in two years. $43,000 each year? I frankly don’t know how you can do this unless your husband’s law practice brings in substantially more. But I wish you luck!
Yep! We are keenly aware that the math doesn’t work out right now. The numbers didn’t “work” when we set our goal either. We’re not changing our goal though. We’re giving it all we’ve got and trusting that things will work out somehow. We will definitely need more income to make it happen and we’re doing what we can in that department! Thanks for the well-wishes! 🙂
Less than $400 for a family of 5! You are my new role model.
Thanks Mark! This was actually our highest month all year for food costs. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your journey! I just found your blog (through Pinterest I believe) and I’m really enjoying reading through your experiences. It’s refreshing to hear real life perspectives on saving money. Thank you!
Hi Meredith! Thanks for your encouragement!
This is great progress, and even with the cost those are pretty lucky finds. A large tent for $39 will give you guys the ability to take cheap breaks, and clean looking dress shirts with a lawyer are a must have.
We are excited about the tent! Our old tent (the one we couldn’t find before we left) was also large, but it was getting worn. I bought it at a yard sale about 4 years ago for $35, so getting a new one for nearly the same price is fabulous!
I don’t really like seeing another family of 5 paying off massive student loan debt but I love seeing the progress you’ve made. My husband and I have a combined $154,000 in student loan debt. We plan to start tackling it in January. My former boss at the university I used to teach at contacted me recently to ask if I’d be interested in an adjunct position. It’s just 1 class a semester and most people aren’t interested in that. For me it’d be perfect though, my husband would stay with the kids while I teach so we don’t have daycare expenses and we could keep sharing just the 1 car. I hope that it happens, it’d be nice to have some extra money to put towards those loans.
That sounds like a great opportunity to earn some extra money to put toward your loans! I hope it works out for you Amy!
Congrats Stephanie on another fabulous month of debt repayment!!! 🙂
I find it interesting you don’t do sinking funds and just pay things as they come. Mathematically I get it. You aren’t “paying” interest on the money that is just sitting there waiting to be used. Hmm… I may have to reconsider some of our sinking funds. Although, I will keep our car repair/replacement sinking fund because when we move from England in roughly 18 months we will have to sell our British car and buy two American cars and we wouldn’t be able to come up with $10K+ in a matter of a few months. But our quarterly and yearly bills (water, road tax, insurance, etc.) that are less than $600, we could probably cash flow those. Thank you for the inspiration to “tweak” our budget. 🙂
Yeah… we just don’t want extra money sitting around in our budget when it could be doing something. We aren’t worried about not having enough for those annual or semi-annual expenses because we have a big (but not required) student loan payment figured in each month that we can take from when those big expenses come up. Once we’re done with paying off debt we’ll probably go back to sinking funds. I can totally see how you would want to break up the price of replacing cars as with sinking funds though! We should think about doing that soon. As much as I hope that both of our cars will outlast our loans, I bet at least one of them (maybe both) will need to be replaced in the next two years.
I really like the blog’s facelift!
Thanks Juli! I’m not quite done tweaking it, but it’s nice to have a little change of scenery! 🙂
I have YNAB and still can not get the hang of it. I have taken all the classes several times. Any suggestion on how I can get better at using this software.
Hi Paula! I would focus just on the first class “Getting Started with YNAB.” They have great customer service if you have questions. If you have a specific question I might be able to help you out too. I’m planning to post some more details on starting a budget in YNAB in the new year.
You all still did great this year! I would also keep the chains! They were half off and this winter has been a crazy one, so if you need them later on in the year, at least you go them for a good price! =)
Thanks Jessica! My husband’s thought was that the van might not last long enough to need to make a trip in the mountains again. I’m leaning toward keeping them though, because we might be taking a trip over the mountains in February. The van better last at least until then! I think it has 230,000 on it or so (if I remember right).
I love seeing your progress! As a non-blogger, I appreciate your not spending a lot of time talking about growing your blog in this space. One blogger I read has stopped talking about almost anything else, and while I understand it’s importance to her, it isn’t a topic of interest to me. I appreciate that you share information about it but don’t go on and on about it.
Thanks Sheila! I do try to stay focused on personal finance and living frugally since that is what my readers are expecting. I’m glad it’s appreciated! 🙂
I so enjoy reading your blog and am almost as excited as you each month to see that debt figure going down, down, down………………………………………………….
Thanks Iforonwy! It’s nice to have others cheering you along! 🙂
How did your blog income go up so much in the past 6 months?
I have found that the growth in income is directly related to growth in traffic. In the past six months, my traffic has more than doubled. My steady growth in traffic has led to a steady growth in income.
One of the reasons I really love Ruth’s book and course is that she really focuses on building a great blog first, before focusing on monetizing. She also has great strategies for growing traffic.
love reading your blog 🙂
question about smarterbucks…how do you end up getting most of your “bucks”? For the most part the surveys never load and if they do I don’t qualify, and the % back is not a great deal (I use ebates most of the time). Any input would be great–I’d love to take better advantage of it!
Hi Justine! I use ebates most often too, but I compare the percentages. I have done some surveys and task/opinion sort of things. You can have your friends and family sign up and get referral credit when they do (even if they don’t actively use it).
I continue to be amazed at how well you are doing each month! Keep it up! YNAB rocks. Seeing your numbers, I’ve been trying to convince my husband that we can suck it up for a few years and live in my mom’s basement…get out of this mortgage, but so far, he’s not biting. 🙂
Thanks Evelyn! I think my husband has a harder time living in the basement than I do, even though I am the one who is here all the time! Good for you for at least trying to convince him. 🙂