Whittling down the debt

Today is my birthday.  I have avoided the computer some and spent time with my family & catching up on some long over due paper work(bane of my existence).

It has been a good day.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

2 hours of quiet(for the mentioned paper work) from my hubby.  He took the kids out to look at dealerships he said.  I really think they went shopping but we will see later.

They drove home Buick Rendezvous. 

Not a new vehicle but if we go that direction it would eliminate our auto loan.  We haven’t made any decisions yet other than we need to sell the Rav4 we have now.

Back in October when we were in this lovely place. 

We made some hard decisions.  It was time to work towards getting out of debt.  We had had some great opportunities to invest & spend in the past couple of years.  It didn’t work out so we are changing our directions(per God’s orders) and working on it.  We aren’t going under or declaring we are bankrupt but the debt we had was too much. 

It was a burden and suffocating us.

This year will be a year of change and I am actually looking forward to it.

I think it is a great attitude for a birthday.

Now on to cake, presents & time with my family.

What do we spend?

I have been doing coupons & rebates for about 11 months now. I laughed at my friends(shame faced honesty here) as they were doing coupons because I truly didn't think it made a difference($ saved/time invested). Well I am still seeing how it all comes together but I do know that we are able to purchase things for free & VERY discounted prices at times. I also have a much bigger stock pile of food & necessities now than I did a year ago. Also as for the time investment--I have recruited my daughters as my helpers and that has helped save me time in getting coupons clipped & such.

After reading multiple blogs about how much people were spending per week/month on groceries & household items, I began to get curious about how 2009 has gone for our family. I am a big believer that month to month things will fluctuate but over a longer period of time you can get a good picture of your average spending. I know that we have stayed for the most part under our budget each month on groceries & household. So here is how we've made out so far. Remember we have a family of 6 & 2 teens. :)

Grocery average is $557 our budget is $588
Household average is $362 our budget is $555(we save up for some bigger items this way)

At the beginning of the year my $ spent was MUCH higher than say last months spending--$50 more. So I think that using coupons & rebates are definitely paying off! AWESOME!

I want to start to shave those numbers even more--maybe just 10% to start. We will see how Nov & December affect things as we do more cooking & such during those months. However we will be able to use some of the stockpiled items and perhaps off set the additional purchases for the holidays!