<< Back to all Blogs
Login or Create your own free blog
Layout:
Home > Starting the year strong

Starting the year strong

January 7th, 2017 at 07:16 am

Last month (December 2016) I started this blog in hopes of keeping ourselves accountable and committing to our goals of paying off our credit card debt and mastering the budget process.

We started with a balance of $40k and are now at $37k, seeing this has motivated DW and myself. We've been using Mint.com to help us understand where our money was going and this helped us cut expenses, which was great but it did lack some features that I am learning are necessary for budgeting. Now that we've cut as much as possible it's time to take it a step further.

One of our 2017 goals is to master the budgeting process and after hours of watching videos and doing research we decided we liked what YNAB (You Need A Budget) has to offer. We are 1 week into using YNAB and we are absolutely loving it! This forces us to manually enter in our transactions and balance our accounts and budget. We know more about our expenses and can be more mindful before we spend. We also love all the reading material available on the YNAB for free. This is my two cents anyway.

So, I'll report back on our new budget mastery skills with an update on more debt payments when we get paid again.

Oh and one last thing, DS got a job! We have decided to let DS in on our budget and debt payment journey in hopes he learns from our mistakes. We recently set him up with a new bank account so a YNAB account is next. We plan to have family budget night every paycheck(All three of us will get paid on the same paycycle) and splurge on a pizza. Big Grin

I have to say, this site has definitely changed our lives for the better and the support on here has been more than I can ever ask for.

Posted in Budgeting, Debt | 8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Starting the year strong”

  1. Dido Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 01:42 pm 1483796542
    1483796542

    Congrats on your early success! The family budget night is a great idea--hopefully it will help DS get off on the right foot when he goes out on his own.

    Good to hear you are enjoying YNAB. I used to use it ages ago and am going to try setting up the new online version sometime this weekend.

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 01:59 pm 1483797593
    1483797593

    We found YNAB was helpful as a way to communicate with each other about spending, too. My husband is a pro at remembering to record his spending right away. I'm a bit more lax, but I get it done within a day or two. And way to go dropping your debt by $3K!!

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 02:59 pm 1483801157
    1483801157

    I can't imagine getting where I've gotten without the SavingAdvice community and the accountability of blogging my progress. Wishing you continued success!

  4. Beawealthywarrior Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 03:04 pm 1483801458
    1483801458

    Good job on reducing your debt. I've been using YNAB for years and love it.

  5. MonkeyMama Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 03:14 pm 1483802055
    1483802055

    That's great progress!

  6. snafu Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 06:30 pm 1483813816
    1483813816

    Delighted with your nearly instant success! We find each small successful milestone keeps us motivated to consider spending decisions carefully and that of course leads to more sustainable success. YNAB is a huge resource and I hope DS will agree to use it from a just starting out position. It will help him avoid the blunders and pitfalls we fell into.

  7. fern Says:
    January 7th, 2017 at 06:46 pm 1483814769
    1483814769

    Keep up the good work.

  8. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    January 10th, 2017 at 02:50 am 1484016629
    1484016629

    YNAB is awesome. I've been using it since around 2005 or 6.

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]