Well, sorry haven't been posting much here, I have another blog I keep going regularly, but I really like this format and alot of the blogs I read here, so I want to keep this one going. Here's my ramblings, updates, etc:

Debt!
Well we are making progress, I have two cards left to settle, one I'm waiting for a DV letter, if I don't get the validate by 4/8 I will send a 2nd request via certified mail again. So far they haven't responded and if they want me to work with them I want them to validate and proof they own this account. The 2nd card, nothing much, just going to put this one on the back burner until I get the first one settled.

2nd heloc on primary house - well after two calls to two different people, and me offering 3K to bring this account current if they would work with us, still nothing, no call back. Weird, I spoke with the 2nd attorney two weeks ago and he said he would call me back. So I've done my part, I'm going to keep waiting on this one, maybe another 2 weeks and then I'll check in with them again. In the meantime I'm focusing on paying other stuff off.

Here's what I'm working on

$9340 - business CC
$4800 - medical debt
$15000 (est needed in addition to my 5K savings to settle 2 cards)

Thats it for now, should have a good update on the cc in a week or two.

Man oh man, once the business CC and medical debt are done and I can strictly focus on the DS I think I will be almost in heaven.. lol

Progress is being made!

Last weekend we got our rental painted and did the touch ups. We have a few more items to finish up, but we did meet with the management company and now they are working to rent the house. Let's hope they get that done soon! We can't keep these payments up for long, and it really puts a damper on our debt reduction plan by having to pay each month for this house. But we do what we have to.

On another note, I've paid about 3K to my DH's medical bills, we managed to pay off our embroidery machine and now I'm working on snowballing our business CC. As others attest to it sure is easier to get into debt than it is to get out! Sometimes it is very hard for me to really imagine what it will feel like having no consumer debt. We have had it for so long, I don't have any idea how it really feels to be without it. I'm sure the feeling is more than I can imagine, and each day, we are working towards that.

Well this past weekend we did the walk through with our tenants, and thankfully, everything looks great! Everything was cleaned, scrubbed down, etc. It looks almost like it did when we first rented it out. The only issue was they filled the holes in the walls, so we need to do touch ups, and fix a leaky faucet, and one of the stove's burners, but all in all small repairs we can get done in a day or so. I did call the lady who has a management company, we were playing phone tag last week, but now I've left her two messages and haven't heard back, wonder if she is out of town. They were referred to us by some friends that use them and I think this will be much better for us. We also received the 1st payment of $250 from our previous tenants so looks like we will be getting February's rent after all

Things are looking up!

We went to court this morning, and they gave us an opportunity to work it out with our tenants, at first I didn't want to but our tenants said they would really like to work something out and not have a judgment on their credit file. So the new agreement is they will be out by 3/6. They will pay us a total of $1358 for Feb, this includes the late fee, court costs and the cost to serve them - $250 will be due every Friday starting this Friday 3/7.

They will still owe March's rent but I told them we will do our best to rent this out as quickly as possible, but this will be prorated from the time it's actually rented. Our tenant said she felt she shouldn't have to pay for March, so I said right back to her/him, and you think WE should? You did not provide me ANY time to try and rent this due to this situation. I think she finally got the point.

I explained her deposit would first be used for any damages, the remaining would be applied towards the remaining March rent. We signed the court paperwork and it's been submitted. If they don't keep to that our case is still open and we can go to trial without having to start this process all over again.

So - that's good news at least! I really wanted to get our money back for the Feb payment and it looks like we will!

I guess sometimes tenants do want to make good. Although I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch, first step, see if they are ready for the walk through by Thursday as we agreed.

Well thought I would post my numbers for everyone to see. February was the first month I tried to track everything, but in doing this I noticed I missed some categories, so I will be adding them to our tracking for March. I still think I managed to capture about 90% maybe 95% of all our spending. I do have one question though for readers, when tracking your spending do you track spending for items like shipping, items you need for other "business". For example we sell guitars sometimes, well my DH does, he might need to purchase strings, so we buy those, then he sells/ships the guitar and I take only the true "profit" and count this as income. Should I be tracking that as well? And what about our rentals, anything we pay for above and beyond should be tracked? And what about items I'm reimbursed for? Like my cable bill, it was 62.63 but I'm reimbursed for $46 dollars of that? Any suggestions would be welcomed!

I'm still working some of this out, but here's my totals, first number is budget, second is actual spent:

I haven't included all the mortgage payments either, they are on my master budget spreadsheet, but not much I can do about those, they are what they are and included in my master.

Groceries $400/$247
Childcare $200/$200
Pet $30/$16
Cable $62.63/$62.63
Utilities gas $125/$292 - I forgot to pay Jan's so this amount is double what I would have spent.
Electric - $130/$126
Water - $45/$43.20
Cell - $104/$103.27
Dining - $100/$166.90
Auto fuel - $120/$135.16
Auto/insurance - $530.68/$530.68
Timeshare - $60.22/$139.70 - had to pay yearly property taxes this month
Home Repair - $25/$14.20
Life Insurance $58/58
School - $10/20
Medical - $142/58.68
DH misc- $100/119.51
cigs - $100/153.83 - I did buy some lozenges and will work on getting rid of this habit.
Household $50/147.97
entertainment $100/132.77
My misc - $70/67

Some we were over, some under, overall we came pretty close to our budget, the goal for this month is to reduce our total budget by $200 - we should be able to do this. Cutting costs from household, cig's and reducing/staying within our budgets. We'll see! I already started tracking everything again!