Start #2: Total Money Makeover

My lack of posting for the Total Money Makeover is very indicative of our habits with money - difficult to face.  Our modus operandi is to buy the things we need come pay day, our eyes closed to any kind of running balance, then hold our breath, open our eyes, and pay what we can that needs to be paid before there's nothing left until the next pay day. 

If your heart is racing at this technique, imagine ours.  This left us feeling frustrated that the only thing predictable was that we knew we worked very hard for our paychecks, that there was never enough paycheck to last, and that we felt deprived as we tried to make each penny last knowing full well that it wouldn't.  Awful to admit, and I can't believe that I just did, but I believe that this is part of our Total Money Makeover.   Admitting is the first step to recovery, right?  Also essential to recovery are support, discipline, knowledge, and determination, to name a few.

We have for certain found support in Victor Encinas, our financial counselor who supports the Dave Ramsey plan.  Our first appointment with Victor was a painful two and a half hours, at best.  Meeting with him forced us to look at our debt under a bare light bulb that left nowhere for anything to hide.  But what it also did was focus our attention on our financial predicament and future together; for the first time in our married lives, putting Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Kuntz together in the same room with money, debt, creditors, allocated spending plans, savings, equity, retirement, college education funds, insurance options, and as a result, behavior modification, confidence, and hope.

Now we have a PLAN.  We are deprived (and will be for awhile), but with PURPOSE.  We left Victor's office (with a headache) to spend hours creating an allocated budget for December and communicating with all of our creditors to let them know that things aren't going to go as planned for awhile as we work to get back on our feet.  We learned about using cash only for groceries, personal and household expenditures, and to spend within our means - when the cash is gone, the spending needs to be done.  We saved every receipt and knew where every penny went - until the week before Christmas.  And before we could go from Merry Christmas to Happy New Year, we were right back to our old habits of avoidance. True, the month of December was probably the worst (or maybe it was the best?) month to start - holiday gatherings, extra food costs, gifts, and an unexpected vehicle repair don't make for the most desirable of spending forecasts.

The night before our next meeting with Victor, which happened yesterday, we again spent hours together (key word "together"), reviewing our budget and receipts to see how our actual spending compared.  We were happy so happy to see that we were under budget for gas and groceries - even given the extra holiday spending.  However, we were way over budget for gifts, which we expected, but we did do things different to accommodate as best we could: lots of homemade gifts, much less stuff for the girls, and nothing but love exchanged between Andy and I.  We now know that there is a distinct difference between the things we "need" versus the things we "want" when working on a Total Money Makeover. 

We are reinforcing in our vocabulary that, due to having a plan and working hard to stick to it, that the sacrifices we are making now are temporary.  As will be the sacrifice that we will make by selling Andy's car - anyone want to buy a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe?  Yes, a little extreme, but this will be a quantum leap in our plan, enabling us to pay off debt even quicker. 

We left Victor's office yesterday with awareness from our discovery month and a conviction that we can do this, our Total Money Makeover.  Knowledge is power, and tools (with aforementioned discipline and determination) make the power work.  We are grateful to Victor for showing us tools that we can use tell our money what to do instead of having things work the other way around.  In the last few days of this month, we will again set our allocated spending for January, and actually withdraw the cash from our account for our categories of flexible spending.  We will continue to find ways to cut where we can, to be creative with spending and earning. And after suffering late into the night before our last appointment, we now know that we will spend more time on this more frequently to make it all happen, and hopefully (with less of a headache) enable it to all become second nature.

We can celebrate that we now have our emergency fund established, thanks to the generosity of family, and can work towards tackling our debt, starting with the smallest to gain momentum to get us through the largest.

And, something very peculiar has happened.  We are all spending more time together.  What used to happen before is that I would go to bed while Andy would watch his shows on cable in the living room.  Since we cancelled cable as part of our plan, Andy has been streaming shows on his iPad in bed.  I got out of the shower the other night and crawled into bed next to Andy who was watching Top Chef.  We snuggled up, held hands, and watched something together that means a lot to Andy, both of us captivated by the creations of the top chefs of the season.  Cutting back has produced some unexpected gains:)  Here's to many more.