The Power of Accountability

We all have urges, whether it is to eat or spend money on something that is not a need!  It is okay to give into those urges from time to time as well.  Recently we have paid off the Chapter 13.  For the first time in years our debt is just our primary mortgage and is below $100k.  We are putting away a good portion of our income into retirement and we actually have cash available.

All this leads me to want to go out and BUY!!!  I have a bad habit of searching Craiglist, and while I have been able to save money on some of the things we have needed to buy, I find myself looking at other items that are not needs.

For example, there was a great deal on a 5th wheel RV - complete with heavy duty truck, lot on the river, and even a golf cart!  This great deal for everything was about $50,000.  I kept looking at the pictures and dreaming of spending vacations with Mr. Breeze and Baby Breeze, and enjoying time together.  I thought, I have the money now, I could even buy this cash, this wouldn't increase our debt.

I was close to picking up the phone, when I decided to look over my Blog post.  Here I made goals for this year to pay off our debt, increase savings and increase our Net Worth.  Purchasing this "cool deal" would cause our Net Worth to decrease (as I wouldn't count these items).  I didn't want to fail in the eyes of my readers, nor do I want to miss achieving our goals for the year.

Why did I want this purchase so badly, because I was dreaming of spending time with my family.  But wait, my goals were set so that I can retire early and are helping me spend more time with my family already.

So I turned off the Craiglist, and went and played "Choo Choo" with my son!  Yep, this blog has helped me to keep focus and kept me accountable!  So thank you!

August 2014 Monthly Update

We continue in our quest for savings, here is how we stand for August.

Net Worth Standing for August 1, 2014:

Assets: $630,441.11 - Liabilities: $92,246.57 = Net worth: $538,194.54

Net Change = increase of $8,127.50

The markets took a little bit of a tumble at the end of July, but we were able to put a large amount into savings (buying stocks on sale, as I am trying to convince myself!).

The emotional weight of the Chapter 13 being paid off has been huge.  We feel we can finally breath without that monster on our back.  But this is no time for a spending spree, if I want to continue to work towards early retirement, then we need to take those funds and put them into savings.  In July, I put $2917 into my 457b (this amount will allow me to put in the maximum for this calendar year).  Since our bankruptcy payment was $2950 each month this doesn't really change how we are living.  In fact, since the Chapter 13 taken out after tax and the 457b is taken out pretax it is actually less.  So my paycheck, even after put money into savings went up $800.  Oh the joys of pretax savings.  We have already learned to live without the money, so the now we get to enjoy watching our savings grow.

Our credit scores have also gone up 5 points since our Chapter 13 was discharged.  We are hoping to continue to improve our scores hopefully get us back to Excellent credit rating.

So we continue to plug along and even with a drop in the market at the end of this month, we are still coming out ahead.  Keep putting little bits away over time, and it will continue to grow.  Until next time. . .