Medical Expenses

We have been generally very lucky when it comes to medical expenses.  All of our adopted kids are double insured and our foster children have state insurance so we never pay anything out of pocket for their medical expenses.  I think my total medical expenses over the past 3 years haven’t exceeded $150.00 and those are usually office copays and prescription costs.

Well our luck has run out.  Poor DW slipped in the shower a couple of weeks ago and landed really hard on her side.  She was sore for several days but seemed to recover. About 3 days ago she started having really bad back pain.  She could barely move and would wake up several times in the night in tears because she was in so much pain.  I finally told her to go to the walk-in clinic this morning.  We literally have no money, but I told her to write a check for the co-pay (hoping it won’t clear until Wednesday) and I was able to scrounge up just enough money for a prescription copay. 

She is at the doctors now and is texting me updates.  They are taking X-rays because they think she has a compound fracture on her spine and the pain she is feeling is the nerve damage which can sometimes take several weeks after the incident to become an issue.  Poor wifey.

I checked our insurance benefits and her deductible is $500.00 and a $2500.00 out of pocket.  So I expect some hefty bills to come out of this.  Here is my dilemma.  When I get the bills do I pay them in full with the money I have set aside for debt or do I make monthly payments.  My gut reaction is I don’t want to accumulate more debt but if you make payment plans with the Doctor’s office they usually don’t charge interest while I have high interest rates on my credit cards. 

I guess I will have to see how much the bills are. If it is under $300.00 (wishful thinking) I will pay it off but if it is over I will have to rethink it.  UGH!

UPDATE:  It looks like it was just a really bad pulled muscle and they discovered she has arthritis on her spine.  We only had enough for 1 prescription so she chose the muscle relaxers and will get the steroids and pain pills Wednesday.  When she checked in they forgot to take her copay. We will get billed for it but at least I don’t have to worry about over draft fees if it clears before payday.

 

Fun with scissors

Besides getting control of our grocery budget, the hardest part of staying on budget is the unexpected expenses.  There are a lot of those when you have a large family and some of them are quite unexpected.

DD2 & DD3 decided, along with a friend of theirs, to cut their own hair.  DD3 did some serious damage and took off about 18 inches of her beautiful curly hair.  After I got over the intial shock I groaned when I thought about the cost of three hair cuts when are funds are so low.  Luckily the girls friend's mom use to be a hair stylist and told us not to worry about her daughters.  Since the incident happened under our roof I felt bad asking her to cut my girl's hair too.  Grandma M saw the damage on Facebook and offered to take DD3 to get it fixed so that was awesome.  DD2 is in the foster care system and we are suppose to get permission before we cut her hair. Since the damage was minimal I decided it could wait until I got ahold of her social worker.  It shouldn't cost to much at the local supercuts but I have to figure out where the money is coming from.  At least I am only paying for 1 and not 3.

I am going to have to have another sit down talk with DW about that it means to be on a tight budget. DW is always on board when I talk about budgeting and watching our spending in theory but in practice she struggles.  First I was noticing charges from gas stations and fast food joints and we had a sit down about how we could afford those expenses and she promised to stop.  Now I am noticing that approved charges are becoming more expense when she is the one picking it up.  For example, she went to pick up my prescription that has a $25.00 copay and the charge on our debit card was $32.00. 

I am beyond frustrated. If she had told me directly after the fact that she purchased some unneeded items I would have been annoyed, but for me to discover on my own that she is sneaking purchases is ridiculous. I am trying to formulate the best way to speak with her about this as we have had a lot of trust issues in our marriage and I am trying to make sure I stay on point and not let the past rear it's ugly head.  How do you talk to your spouse about money?

No Lunch for the Wicked

So I am grumpy....Someone stole my frozen meal out of the work freezer today so I had nothing for lunch. Pre-sense, I would have ran to McDonald's or hit the vending machine.  BUT I overcame and reminded myself I had a huge breakfast and only had two hours until I was out of work so I could deal.

To be 100% honest I probably would have hit the vending machine's but I had no cash and ever since my bank changed from the Visa debit card to the MasterCard debit card, the vending machines no longer accept my card. Grrr... but YAY all at the same time.

I have been really stressed out about the February budget since it became apparent we would be going over budget in January.  The finance gods were looking out for me because I just got the bill for one of our debts and the payment due was $61.00 dollars less than I expected. YAY!!!!  With that and some small alterations in the budget, we should be just fine in February.

My biggest challenge with budgeting is keeping my grocery budget in check.  I did some research and per the USDA website, as of January 2015 this is what an average family of my size should be spending:

Thrifty Cost Plan: $1176.10

Low-Cost: $1509.40

Moderate Cost: $1956.60

Liberal Cost plan: $2238.90

Now seeing as January I budgeted $750.00, but will probably end up closer to $825.00 when it is all said and done, I am giving myself a little slack for finding it difficult to meet the budget sometimes.

The past few months I had done all my grocery shopping on the 5^th and 20^th of each month so each grocery trip covered 15-18 days. The thought process was that the less often I went to the store the less likely I could overspend or buy things we didn’t need.  It hasn’t work out as well as expected and I think I need to go back to weekly shopping.

The first issue I ran into is that you can’t get fresh produce to last more than a week (if you are lucky) and canned/frozen vegetables and fruit aren’t quite the same.  I also noticed that my kids eat more when we have more. For example, we usually consume 2 gallons of milk and 2 packs of fruit snacks each week and usually had some of each left over.  Common sense would say that for 2 weeks we would need 4 gallons of milk and 4 packs of fruit snacks. We just finished the first week and we have no more fruit snacks and only 1 gallon of milk left. WHAT HAPPENED!!!

Another issue is that when you plan that far in advance you lose your flexibility when plans change.  This Saturday we had 3 extra kids and 2 extra adults and none of the meals I had scheduled would have fed that many people on top of my 8, so DW had to run to the store to get extra food so I could double my batch. It was an extra $12.00 we didn’t have to spend. If we had budgeted to do weekly shopping I would have known about the large group for dinner and would have been able to plan accordingly and within budget.

So February we will go back to weekly shopping and see how it goes. Cross your finger!

 

BUDGET 2.0

In my last blog post, I explained how my major budget errors caused us to have to get a  payday loan to make it for the first part of January. We are working out the kinks and the second part of January is looking better.  We are still learning how much we realistically need to budget for each household category as well as attempting to break bad spending habits.

I predict that we will be about $100.00 over budget when our budget cycle ends on February 4th (we go off DW's pay schedule of the 5th and 20th of each month). Luckily I had put aside $150.00 to roll over to next month, to help pay off the payday loan due on 02/06/2015. So while we have the money to cover the overages, the first part of February will be tighter than predicted.

January's budget taught me that I definitely need to increase my grocery budget.  Our grocery budget covers everything from food, toiletries, dog food and cleaning supplies. I increased February's by $50.00 to help cover the basic items we run out of at the end of the pay period.  I also added a 'Other' category of $50.00 so that money is set aside for prescription co-pays,  birthday presents for birthday parties, and the occasional fast food meal.So we will see if these small changes help us stay on budget in February.

Below is an alternated, cleaner version of my budget.  The one I really use it set up like I think, so pretty much all over the place with notes, formulas, and random data spread over the place which makes perfect sense to me but looks like a bunch of gibberish to anyone else.

I will probably end up moving the water bill over to the second part of the month because the left over amount show at the top will be close to $50.00 dollars than $153.21.

The DW/Carmel $160.00 shown on the top right is a allowance that both DW and I get each pay period.  In December we were spending almost $400.00 dollars a month on cigarette. It became obvious that we can't afford that. We agreed to cut down substantially and as incentive to cut smoking all together we agreed that we can either use the $80.00 each to smoke or buy ourselves whatever we wanted.. I am hoping monthly pedicures in my future as soon as I officially kick this habit.

The Discover Card payment this month is higher than it normally will be. I missed December's payment and I am paying higher payments in January and February to get caught up.

The saving's budget isn't really an emergency savings, it is mostly putting money aside for big events coming up. This money is savings towards DS1 (Dear Son 1) and DS2 (Dear Son 2) birthday presents which are coming up end of March and beginning of April.

While we are paying off the Payday Loan and the West Loan this month I still don't feel like we are making much progress towards reducing debt since those are the two newest debts.  Luck holding, we should be able to throw almost $700.00 towards Capital one in March.  When I get our 2014 tax return later this year I am hoping to get Capital One and the Car Payment wiped out at once!! I know I shouldn't count my chicken's until they are hatched but forecasting what my money can do for me if I stay on track really gives me a boost.

THE DEBTS... **queue scary suspenseful music**

This is the scary part, the part I hide from friends and family. I especially hide it from my dad who is  a successful financial adviser and is the poster child for financial freedom.  When he asks about debt I tell him we have a bit but are doing well and quickly change the subject.

It doesn't help that my dad is a huge conspiracy theorist and doomsday believer. Every time I have coffee with him he goes off about how I need to be prepared for the worst and make sure I have at least 6 months of food stored and hundreds of mini bottle of alcohol to barter with when the world economy collapses.... so sharing that I live pay check to paycheck I think might give him a heart attack.  But I could write a book about how crazy my dad is (love him to pieces though) but I digress.

So I have listed all the debt numbers. I researched some of these before my last payment so they might be a tad off.

• Pay Day Loan: $350.00
• West Loan: $500.00
• MIL: $1,300.00
• Attorney: $1,500.00
• Capital One: $2,496.30
• Discover Loan: $16,847.70 
• Discover Card: $8,074.38
• Car Loan: $5,144.0.00
• Other: $3,000.00

TOTAL: $39,277.59

Now to Explain:

Pay Day Loan:  This is a shameful debt because we took it out the beginning of January after we started our debt pay-off journey.  I didn't realize the pay off schedule for our West Loan was every two weeks and not monthly and there were a lot of errors in our first month budget.  Since we were just starting and had no emergency buffer, we ended up with about $300.00 in the bank with a $530.00 check about to clear and a week till payday.  I have this scheduled to payoff in the February budget.

West Loan:  I took this debt out the beginning of December to cover our butt when I overspent for Christmas.  This was the wake-up call debt that made me realize we needed to make some changes.  This debt is scheduled to be paid off in the February budget. 

MIL/Attorney:  These debts are a perfect example of bad financial habits we use to have, spending money before we have it.  We were going to pay the attorney out of our tax return and he was agreeable to this.  We were given an estimate of when the money would be deposited and we started spending it before it cleared the account.  Imagine our surprise when our tax refund was $3,000 less than expected.  So since we already spent the other part of our refund we couldn't pay the attorney and the money from my MIL is to cover our ass for the remaining funds we didn't get but already spent.   Luckily, we are still owed the money and our accountant assured us that the paperwork is all correct.  So once we get those funds within the next 6-8 weeks these debts will be wiped out. 

Discover Loan: This was my attempt at debt consolidation. We did consolidate all our debts but it didn't stop us from running up those credit card again. This also is our biggest debt payment at $558.20 a month.

Discover Card/Capital One/ Car Payment: Pretty basic debts. Nothing special to say about these other than I wish they were gone!!

Other: This is catch all for debts I haven't had a chance to investigate. Off the top of my head this include a parking ticket, old cell phone bill, old cable bill, and pet insurance we stopped paying on. 

So it's a lot of debt. And I don't have school loans or a mortgage to blame for it. 

COMING NEXT: BUDGET

The Nitty Gritty

As promised, here is a look at our income.  Both DW and I have primary jobs and I have side jobs and income as well.  We also have a roommate who pays rent monthly.  For privacy and logistic reason, I am going to include our roommates rent and side incomes as one lump.  

My Income: $1,400 - $1,800 per month

• This income varies as I take a lot of time off for appointments and issues with some of our special needs kiddos. 
• Health insurance for the entire family comes out of my paycheck each payperiod

DW Income: $2630.00 per month 

Side Income: $3,300 per month

• This obviously varies month to month by several hundred dollars up or down.
• These aren't secure forms of income as they can disappear as quickly as they come but since I bill a month behind, we will have at least a month to prepare if a income source is lost.

So we are looking at $7,000 - $7,500 a month.

EXPENSES

I don't have a list of all the debts yet but I can give a quick rundown of our monthly bills and the minimums we pay on all of our debts:

Rent: $2,100.00

Daycare: $1,060.00 (we got a really good deal)

Car Payment: $285.00 (we are always late so is close to $300.00 with late fee)

Car/Renters Insurance: $135.00 (two cars)

Cable/Internet: $135.00

Cell Phone: $220.00

Netflix: $15.00

Vonage: $20.13

Discover Loan: $558.20

West Loan: $150.00

Discover Card: $250.00

Capital One: $75.00

Water: $150.00 (every two months)

Gas: $125.00 (every two months)

Garbage: $135.00 (every 3 months)

Electric: $150-300 (every two months)

Other Debts: $360.00

So we are looking at about $5,700 dollars a month once that is all said and down. 

When I look at the $1,800 a month left over, my instant reaction is "That is a lot, why can't we make that work." Then I realize I have 6 kids, 3 dogs, and a life that is as far away from boring as one can get.  

COMING SOON:  DEBT TOTALS

Why Hello there...

The introduction post to a blog always seem awkward.  How much should I share? What should I save for later? Am I going to have my audience running for the hills in just one post?  

So the basics..  I am 32 years old and have been married for 10 years. We have 6 lovely children that we have adopted or our fostering through our state.  All of our kids have some variation of special needs, some mild some severe.  My DW (dear wife) and I both work full time and have several side incomes to pay the bills.

Since this is a financial blog I will talk a little about our debt dilemma.  Currently we are standing on about $40,000 dollars in debt (details will come later).  We have been down the debt free route before and were successful, but 6 years later we are worse than before.  I am frustrated because I can't provide the kids the life they deserve, and not because we don't make enough money but because we spend unwisely and a large part of our income goes to pay off things we bought months if not years ago. 

So we had a bit of a wake-up call over the holidays and agreed that something needed to be done.  By agreed I mean that it was agreed that I can figure our how to pay of debt and DW will follow along.  I love DW and she brings so much to our family but a head for finances is not one them. It is stressful and has been a point of contention in our relationship before we were even married but I realize I can't force financial competence on her so I have to take the reigns or wallow in financial debt forever. 

So here I am, bearing my financial soul to the world. I had a financial blog during our last debt rundown and I found it really helped me stay on task and gave me a place to vent my frustration and play around with ideas.

COMING SOON: DEBTS/INCOME