We're Debt Free!!

It’s been quite a while, but we really just wanted to update you all about where we are now! We finally paid off all of our debt! March 16th, 2018 was the day of days! We paid off Chrystalain’s last student loan! We were a little shocked at how we didn’t feel any different! I was kind of hoping for a huge explosion, but it was a little anti-climatic actually. We were still super excited about being debt free of course! We were finally able to breathe! We were finally able to shift to the next step, saving profusely for our emergency fund!

This is honestly the reason for not feeling huge emotions, we know that we still are in the process of saving up the money for our emergency fund! Once we are able to do that, we will feel much better! Of course, we are now paying ourselves, but we still can’t be completely free to spend on whatever we want (and that is what freedom is going to feel like to us)!

All in all, we are over the moon about what being debt free is going to mean for us and our future family! Now our money is going to get to go in our own pockets (401K, IRA, savings, etc.) v. being paid out to a mass amount of creditors. We most certainly can’t wait to see what the future holds for us now!

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Sometimes it feels like it's never ever going to end and then one day you wake up and it's only 8 weeks away!  It's hard to believe that we've been working on paying off ALL of this debt for almost two years!

When we first started it felt like a massive mountain we were going to have to climb, something truly impossible, or maybe a desert we were going to have to cross, I could barely make out a city in the distance, maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, maybe it was just a mirage.  We were never going to get through $200,000 in debt!  That is basically a house!  Who could pay off a whole house' worth of debt in two years?   (Apparently, we can!) 

If you feel like you are stuck in Baby Step 2, here is some encouragement.  It does end.  There is an "almost end".  You will get to a point where you too are counting down the days!  And believe it or not, it will sneak up on you sooner than you know.  

I think the things that got us through the times that we felt like it was never going to end were:

1. Making sure we had some fun money, so life wasn't ALWAYS boring or so intense.
2. Keeping tracking sheets all over the house.  We have a debt free sheet that we fill in on the fridge and we have thermometers in our office that get filled in every time we pay down on debt or pay off a debt, so now everything is almost all the way filled in!  This could be ANYTHING -- it could be something you color in, it could be moving beans from one jar to another, it could be removing paper chains!  As long is it is something visual that gives you hope that progress IS happening!
3. I always think Chris Hogan sounds super cheesy when he says it, but have Dream Sessions - it didn't sound like us sitting down and saying, now let's dream about the future, but it sounded like us talking about the next steps.  Ok once we get our emergency fund, what does investing going to look like for us?  What are our investments going to look like in 30 years?  And that got us REALLY excited!  It gave us hope for the future, that we were actually doing something that was smart and worthwhile and that was going to help our family!

If you are at all skeptical about Dave Ramsey's methods, you should be!  Never take someone's word for it, you've got to try it for yourself.  His methods can sound a bit weird and extreme, but that's probably because you learned to handle money a totally different way.  That's totally ok.  I would suggest you try it out for 30-90 days and see if it works for you!  It has definitely worked for us and many other people around the country and even the world! 

As always if you ever need any help getting started, feel free to reach out to us, we would love to hear from you: abbettroad@gmail.com

An Abbett House Update

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This is a long time overdue.  In March, we hit the official one year mark.  We have officially been married for one year.  We survived!  We did it.  This is a huge accomplishment.  It's a big accomplishment for marriage of course, but it was also a huge accomplishment in our goal and our plan to get out of debt!  When we started our debt free journey, we had just under $200K of debt to defeat!  Starting out, after we returned home from out wedding, staring at the debt-pay off chart on our refrigerator, it seriously looked like Mt. Everest.  I didn't know if we would ever be able to do it.  It really wasn't until right around the one year mark that I started to get REALLY excited....

Drumroll...

As of March 2017, we paid off $93,631

When I saw that number I was floored!  Even though we filled in the chart each month, I hadn't really been paying attention to how much we had paid off overall until then, so it was actually a huge relief!  We were half way!

Since then, the momentum has picked up even more!  We have been cutting things out that we don't actually think we need and committed to getting rid of this debt as fast as we humanly can.  As of mid-May 2017, we have paid off $102,057.

The momentum continues to build!  If you are feeling stuck or like you are sacrificing a lot to get out of debt right now.  You are not alone.  That is exactly where I was a few months ago.  I encourage you to look how far you have come.  Watch the snowball build.  It is actually quite amazing.  You will see it go from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars by the time you are on your last few debts (depending on your budget).  We just wanted to take a few minutes and celebrate all that we have accomplished in the past year, but we also wanted to encourage you on your journey down the road of financial success...

So here are just a few ways that you can stay the course when it feels like you are driving through Texas for days and days and days!

1. Give yourself mini-goals!  
   • When you are in the earlier stages of your debt snowball, the smaller debts are your mini-goals!  Pay off the $500 credit card next (goal 1), Pay off the $927 credit card next (goal 2).  But when you get further along, you are waiting longer and longer to get those wins, so you need to find a way to reward yourself for making progress as you move along towards paying off each of your bigger debts.  You can choose a specific amount or a specific time to achieve those goals and then you choose a specific reward for yourselves.  The reward needs to be within reason, but it doesn't hurt to have a little reward here or there along the way!
2. Make sure you have some fun money in your budget
   • It doesn't have to be much, but make sure you give yourself a little fun money or blow money in your budget.  Your budget is going to be pretty restrictive while you are working on your goals, and you need to make sure you are meeting your personal needs as well as taking care of your debt and your emergency fund!
3. Make a chart!
   • Make a chart with your progress & keep it in a place where you can see it every day!  This is going to give you a little boost when you see how far you've come and the amount you have left to pay off starts to get smaller and smaller!

Do you have other ways that help you to keep you from going crazy and stay the course during your Debt Payoff or Emergency Fund Savings goals?!  Leave them in the comments OR leave us some love on our Instagram or Facebook Pages!  We would love to hear from you!

3 Vacation Alternatives For This Summer

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Summer is fast approaching and we all are itching to get out of town.  But those of us who are hustling to get this debt paid off or build up our emergency fund are hard pressed to pay thousands of dollars for an all expenses paid get-a-way vacation to a beautiful resort.  It is something we are planning to do once we are done with our goal!  We will get there!  But until then, we need to keep our heads down, maybe stay away from social media for a bit, and find a few alternatives to the huge vacation this year!

We have thought of a few alternative vacation ideas for this summer, for those of us who are really living on a budget!  Here are just a FEW ideas!

1. Camping!  It's our favorite!  Summertime is all about being outdoors, we love taking our favorite pups up to Shenandoah for a weekend camping trip.  It's super inexpensive and you can take food that you have in the pantry for your meals!  
2. Invite Family & Friends to Visit You!  Take them to see the sites around your city!  If you're anything like us, we have family spread out all over the country!  We are lucky enough to live in Washington DC and there are a TON of free museums, monuments, and activities year-round, but especially during the summer.
3. Staycation!  If you really want that hotel-experience, grab a groupon, or use some sort of discount code to grab a hotel in your hometown or in a city close-by.  If you are still in debt and SUPER Gazelle intense, even better, make up your guest bedroom and pretend your house is a hotel, or pile everyone in the living room for a weekend sleepover with movies and popcorn, take a day or two off from work and JUST RELAX!

*BONUS - Day TRIPS -- take a day trip to the beach or the mountains to have a relaxing day by the shore or some fun hiking through the forest, complete with picnic lunch from home at either site!

Do you have more ideas for alternative vacations!?  Leave them in the comments OR leave us some love on our Instagram or Facebook Pages!  We would love to hear from you!

5 Tips to Help You Win with Money This Month!

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There are many ways we can work towards debt freedom and building wealth.  Whatever your goals  may be, here are just five ways that you can work towards winning with money this month!

1. Only buy what you need (and can afford). -- Just cause something is on sale doesn't mean you NEED it!!⠀
2. Give yourself some fun money so you’ll stay on budget. -- If you don't give yourself a little blow money, over time you will start to get bitter about your goal and it will start to take a toll on you.  You do need a little fun money or you might go crazy!⠀
3. Set up a savings fund for irregular expenses. -- If you don't have sinking funds, you might want to consider them!  Think about expenses that come up once or twice a year that are just a little too much to cash flow (i.e. tires or brakes for your car, the property tax for your vehicle, etc.), and set aside a little each month in preparation to pay for those expenses when they come up.⠀
4. Don’t believe everything society tells you about money. -- There will be nay-sayers!  People might scoff at you for not using or keeping a credit card or because you are paying off your car loan (everyone has a car loan, right?) I have conversations with people daily who truly believe there is such a thing as "good debt"! I am sorry to tell them, "There is no such thing as good debt", not only is "the borrower slave to the lender" but it has literally "robbed my joy" and I am done giving my money away to people, I want that money to go in MY pocket, I'm tired of paying people for the "privilege" of using theirs, I will be using my own from now on, thank you very much!⠀
5. Make daily decisions with the end goal in mind. -- Getting out of debt will become your family's reason for existing for the foreseeable future, and all of your decision making will run through the lens of "will this help us get out of debt faster"...keep that in mind and making it your daily mantra!⠀

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5 Reasons You Should Be Budgeting

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Budget is not a four letter word!  It means freedom!  Here are five reasons why YOU should start your personal budget TODAY!⠀

1. A budget is you telling your money where to go!  It gives you complete control over what happens to your money, instead of getting to the end of the month and wondering what happened to all of your money!⠀
2. A budget is a look to the future instead of looking to the past! Poor people plan for today, wealthy people plan for the future.  Make sure you are thinking about the consequences of what your plan for the next month is and how it is going to affect your future!⠀
3. It's not that hard! Simply put, your budget should be that your income minus your expenses equal zero!  This ensures you are not going into debt and you are living within your means.⠀
4. It helps you reach your goals, whether they may be getting out of debt, saving for emergencies or saving for retirement, if you are planning where your money goes each month you are taking steps to ensure those goals are being met!⠀
5. It's a part of being a responsible adult!  If you are married it is something you work together on, it will cause you to communicate about money and money issues on a regular basis, something that might be new to your relationship!  If you are single, it is a big part of your life, you need an accountability partner you can discuss money and money issues with who will love and support you in your goals!  For both marrieds and singles, a budget is something that is important to achieving ones' goals and will need both patience and persistence!⠀

Let us know what you think!?  Is this helpful!  Let us know in the comments below!

5 Awesome Dollar Store Finds

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I LOVE the DOLLAR Store! I grew up going to there with my brothers and sisters, but recently rediscovered it when they put one in close to my house!  My husband and I love going there to pick up a few things that are AWESOMELY cheaper there or unique to the Dollar Store!  Here are 5 things you can get at the Dollar Store that are worth your time:⠀
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1. Health & Beauty Supplies - They have all sorts of health & beauty supplies at the dollar store, from finger nail polish (& remover) to shower poofs, even some name brand shampoo and conditioners.⠀
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2. Greeting Cards & Gift Wrap - All the greeting cards are (at the most) $1, some are 2 for $1. Gift wrap and gift bags are also $1!! So exciting!  Especially when you pay triple or more at other stores!⠀
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3. Paper products - Napkins, plates & take out containers?! I never would have thought!  But we love to send home food with our friends after a game night or dinner party, take out containers are the perfect and you get several for only $1!⠀
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4. Small Kitchen gadgets - When you are on a budget and you need a quick kitchen gadget such as a basting brush, or spatula, the Dollar Store is the perfect place to grab one of these.  Depending on what it is, you might not expect it to last, but there have been a few items we have picked up that have surprisingly lasted us quite a long time and not broken down over time.⠀
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5. Kids books - Our dollar store has a great selection of children's books and coloring books!  What a great place to pick up coloring and activity books for the kiddos!  I even saw Adult Coloring books there the last time I was there!⠀
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What are you some of your favorite things to get at your local Dollar Store?? Leave us a note in the comments below!!⠀
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May Madness

You've heard of March Madness, right?  It has something to do with Basketball, I think!?  People go crazy over college basketball in March!  I don't get it!??  What if in the month of May, we go crazy over tightening down our budget?  What if we put one-quarter of the energy into our budgets that we put into paying attention to the "brackets" during the month of March!  I'm issuing the challenge, will you accept?

This month Aaron and I are going to try and tighten down our budget and put the rest towards the debt.  We realized last month that we have just been "following" our plan (and sometimes not even that well), but now we want to get really intense this month and try and put some "extra" money towards the debt (even more than we already do)!  How much do you think we can add?  An extra $200, maybe $300!?  That would be amazing!  

We definitely pad  some areas of our budget each month, these are areas that we think we can do better in!  Our groceries is one that we struggle with a lot!  We want to cut our grocery bill quite a bit!  

What is an area that you think you can cut down this month to put towards whichever step you are on (debt, emergency fund savings, retirement savings, etc.)?

Here are some ideas of an area that you can look at to cut down your expenses/budget this month:

• Groceries
• Restaurants
• Household Items
• Fun/Blow Money
• Entertainment
• Water/Electricity/Utilities???

Let us know how you plan to cut your expenses in the comments!!

<3 C&A

Goodbye Ashley...

0% down, 0% interest for 72 mos!  Don't worry about the price- your payment will only be $150/month!!  That sounds like an amazing deal, for an expensive, real wood bedroom set right!  Did either of us have the money to buy the furniture in the first place?  Nope!  It sounded like a great idea to us at the time!  Aaron was just getting settled into his new house and he desperately "needed" some "grown-up" furniture!  He was still sleeping on a double bed, after all!  What grown-adult man who made a ton of money NEEDED to be sleeping on a tiny "double" bed!  I definitely didn't help!  "Yeah, it was the first thing I bought when I got my "real" job -- in all reality, I did the same thing, I financed my entire bedroom set, 0% down, 0% interest for 48 mos!  It is these types of "payments" that have kept my money out of my pocket my entire adult life!  

To make matters worse, after Aaron had been making the required payments for a year, the card issuer increased his credit limit and he decided it was time to replace his saggy entertainment center with real wood as well.  We had been dating for a while at that point and had even gone through Financial Peace University together, and still bought the furniture thinking "We'll pay it off when we're married and our income goes up."  It was one of those furniture stores where the posted price is vastly inflated and the manager "works" with you to "get your payment lower" by adjusting the final price and the loan terms.  We started out trying to talk about total purchase price rather than payments, but just like Dave Ramesy says not to do, we ended up deciding based on payment terms.  The new payment was only $190- totally worth it, right?  Another year went by, and again the needle barely seemed to move...

Well, today we paid off our furniture!  Like we talked about last week in our post about bi-weekly pay, under a bi-weekly pay regime there are two months a year where you'll get three paychecks in the same calendar month.  April is one of the "magic months" for us, so after tithing, we turned our checks into an extra avalanche for our debt snowball.   In one day we wiped out the entire amount and stopped 4 more years of cash flow draining payments.

Have you fallen for the hype?  That's totally OK; Dave calls it stupid tax!  Hahaha -- we all do it at some point in our lives!  It's all about taking the right steps to get out of it and move towards not ever paying stupid tax again (at the end of the day at least we didn't pay interest on it?!  at least there is SOME bright side, right?) -- but it would have been better to shop around and find a good deal on the furniture or save up and shop an estate sale!  I have grown to love finding treasures at estate sales, they just don't make furniture like they used to and you can find some great stuff at some of those sales!  

From now on we will be paying cash for all of our future furniture purchases and we definitely won't be paying FULL PRICE for them!  Nobody wants to pay full price OR be paying for them for several years!  That just seems silly!  Thinking back to when we made the "deals" at the furniture store, the total purchase price seemed entirely based on what kind of financing we chose.  When we added the entertainment center, we could only get 0% if we chose a 12 month term.  Anything longer at 0% would have resulted in a higher purchase price!  Imagine what kind of real DEAL we could have driven if we walked in with a fist full of CASH!!

Until next time...Happy Budgeting!

<3 C&A

How to Budget if you get Paid Every Other Week!

I've seen a few blog posts about this and surprisingly they have been from people who don't even get paid bi-weekly!  I don't understand that at all!  Nothing knocking them, but unless you're in the situation, it's a bit harder to see how you have to manage your money properly!

This is how I have managed my money for over a year now being on a bi-weekly pay system and this is how we do it now that we are married.  They key is to get on a schedule where the last check of the current month is actually used as your first check for the next month.  That way you can start paying all the bills you have in the first half of the month with money you have in your checking account when the month starts and then when you get your first check in the month, pay the remaining amount with that money.  Confusing? I'll explain.

Say your pay schedule looks like this...

• February 5
• February 19
• March 4
• March 18
• April 1
• April 15
• April 29
• May 27

We have 7 bills due between March 1-15th (and every month) including things like our mortgage, cell phone bill, gym membership, two credit cards, etc.  And the rest are due between the 15th and the 30/31st.

This is where it "sounds" tricky.  We use the last check from the previous month, in this case February 19th, as our first check for the current month, in this case March.  So the "two" checks we use for the month of March will be February 19th and March 4th.  This allows us to pay ALL of our bills for the month on time with no issue.  Make sense so far?

What happens to the extra check in April you ask, how do you handle that?

I'm glad you asked!  If you get paid bi-weekly and are used to living off of 2 paychecks per month, that third paycheck twice a year can be a huge blessing!  Now we are on the Dave Ramsey Plan and for those of you who know what that means, we are on Baby Step 2.  

For those of you haven't heard of Dave Ramsey, that just means we are in the phase where we are "Getting Rid of Debt!"  So depending where you are at in your Personal Finance Journey would depend on what you did with those "extra checks."  --  Because we are in debt, we put the entirety of the check towards our debt snowball (after tithing on it), which is a huge victory!  It's awesome to see a huge chunk of money chipped away at our massive debt!!  For those of you who have NO debts, you can save it if you are working on your Emergency Fund (3-6 mos of Expenses) OR you can spend a little and give a little OR if you have children, you can a put some away for their college funds.  It really just depends where you are in your journey!  For us, we will be putting those checks towards debt for the foreseeable future and imagine a lot of you will be doing the same thing!!  DOWN WITH DEBT!!  :)

So in the case of a 3-check month, the middle check (of the month) would be your "extra check" and then you go back to business as usual.  The check at the end of the month goes towards the following month, in this case, the April 29th check is earmarked for May as well as the May 13th check.

*Note: If you can, work with your bill companies and spread out your payments so that some of them are later than the latest date your second check will ever be (for us that is the 13th of Month).  I have our bills set up so that half are due around the 15th.  --  You can usually get a yearly pay schedule from your company, but if not, you can use a yearly calendar and circle out all your pay dates for the year!

I hope that this helps some of you who might be struggling or who might just be starting out trying to budget on a bi-weekly basis.  I know when I moved from getting paid once a month to getting paid every other week, I about had a panic attack, but once I took a breath and realized that if I got just a little ahead, I would be ok.  This method may not be for everyone, some might need to get an entire month ahead, and that's ok too!  The goal is to make sure that you are able to pay each of your bills on time every month, regardless of the fact that your paydays fluctuate!

Happy Budgeting!!

<3 C&A

Happy Birthday Aaron!!

This past week was Aaron's Birthday!  He turned a ripe old age of 31!  His favorite saying is "Who cooked this Wellington?" and "It's rawwwww!!"...As you've probably guessed, he's been watching A LOT of Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen recently!  Aaron LOVES to cook.  He's always loved to cook, but recently, it's become an obsession!  Everything is about cooking.  Last year for his birthday I (Chrystalain) got him a Chef's Coat with his name embroidered into it.  It was his favorite gift next to the cooking lessons to learn to make Beef Wellington.  Throughout the year he has come quite a long ways in his culinary education and so for his birthday he received his first Global knife, a Chef's dream.  He quickly expanded the collection with some birthday funds and bought two more!  It's exciting having a husband that can cook, it's great not having to do all (or much of) the cooking!  I do enjoy helping in the kitchen though....although sometimes I get kicked out (especially recently)!!  

I will say that his exploration in cooking is a GREAT help with our pledge to live as frugally and put as much money towards our debt as possible!  We work with the ingredients we have in the house and it helps him work on his culinary creativity (it's kind of like the MasterChef mystery boxes sometimes)!! -- hey that could be a fun afternoon! 

As you might have read in our bio/intro to the website, we are working on paying down almost 180K in debt.  I am happy to report, in the first 2 mos, we have paid down $16,927 as of today!!

We are so excited about getting rid of this debt and moving towards freedom and peace!  We will write more about the process and things that we are facing as time goes on, but we want to give you a solid picture of where we are as we begin the journey!!

For Aaron's Birthday we also made Beef Wellington and had Creme Brûlée for dessert!  There were a few things that we could have done differently, I will let the Chef discuss in another blog post, but I still thought it was fantastic!  But what am I but someone who loves food, especially DESSERT!!!

<3 C