4 Months In

We've been doing financial fasting for almost four months now.  So how has the first few months been for our family?  Just like any kind of fasting experience, or diet, or lifestyle change, or culture shock--the first part is always the hardest.  The first month involved selling some things on our "want" list and decreasing some of our "thought we needed it but not really" list.  After purging a lot of financial burdens, the next month we were able to pay off almost all of our remaining debt.  Then the focus of the third month was on getting past Christmas and the usual spending frenzy.  Now this month we've started settling into our "new normal", and guess what?  I kind of like it!

• Items sold: RV trailer, two bicycles via craigslist; storing other items for future garage sale
• Monthly bills eliminated: cable, two pet insurances, RV loan, decreased auto insurance, decreased life insurance
• Debt paid:  appliance credit card, emergency credit card, RV loan
• Total financial gains: $9615 debt paid + $572 monthly (which will keep multiplying every month) = $10,187......in just four months!

But.....I'm afraid there have been a couple of set backs which did not end up benefiting our financial plan.  In our quest to eliminate cable, we ended up paying out more up front than originally planned.  Despite my extensive research into various money saving options--we ended up having to pay an unexpected "buy out" of our current cable contract.  Of course this was not mentioned AT ALL when I closed our account.  They just sent us a bill thankyouverymuch.  And they were not willing to budge when I called to complain.  So we ended up paying two months worth of cable, plus the initial cost of buying a laptop.....this financial choice will take almost eight months to actually save us money.  But--it will eventually be an ongoing savings after that.  Very frustrating!

We also did not make any financial gains with our natural gas bill.  Bryan is the person home during the day, so he turns the heat down--enough that when I come home for lunch I complain that it's cold and leave my coat or sweatshirt on....but he is saving us money!  Also when we went on vacation for a week, we turned it down even further.  And then our gas bill came three times higher than last month!  WHAT?!  The nice man at the gas company explained that the average temperature this December was a full five degrees lower than last December--and that five degrees makes a huge difference.  He also explained that while turning the heat down while on vacation is a good idea, the "usual" day-to-day things that normally contribute a small amount of heat--such as body heat, toasters, ovens, computers, etc--are not happening on vacation, so the thermostat has to work harder.  And while it initially saves energy while the heat is going down, once it gets to the set level it still has to run in order to stay at that level.  Moral of the story: decreasing the heat really does not pay off.  Very frustrating!

However.....there have also been plenty of unexpected blessings.  Shortly after we made the decision toward financial fasting, we received some unexpected checks--I got a raise at work, we received some money gifts for Christmas and birthdays, a series of gift cards found in various places.  We also were able to schedule some family vacation time--for free!--courtesy of my lovely mother-in-law who had too many timeshare points and she was at risk of losing them.  Well alrighty then, we'd be happy to take those points off your hands for you!  While on vacation, I had coffee dates with several different friends--every one of them paid for my latte before I could even unzip my purse!

So where are we now?  We now have ZERO debt other than our house mortgage.  We actually had money left over after Christmas (um, this has never happened!)  January bills have been paid and we have almost an entire paycheck still leftover.  We aren't in our usual how-soon-until-our-tax-refund desperation at the first of the year.  We have returned to regular tithing--something we should have prioritized even in our worst of times.  Our goals are now on building our savings account, and focusing on specific areas God might want us to give more.

I'm reminded of our theme verse for this period of financial fasting:  "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." Malachi 3:10

the whole tithe
test me in this
throw open the floodgates
so much blessing
not enough room to store it

amen. amen.

Goodbye Cable

If you're just joining this blog, check out the beginning of the story to understand why we have made the decision to financially fast and therefore eliminate cable.

This week's financial journey revolved around finding the best method to eliminate cable, yet still watch the shows we regularly enjoy--at least some of them.  Our local cable-internet company has had great service but by removing cable--and therefore the bundle package--our internet bill was not as low as I had hoped.  So shopping around, we found a better deal for us.  Our rates will change after one year, so we'll re-evaluate then--after our year of fasting, we'll see what we really need and what we don't.

So here's what we've discovered this week:
(that's right, it's another list!)

• Almost all networks have episodes of their shows on their website.  However.....this would require we either buy a laptop or five of us crowd around our desktop computer.  We could (hypothetically) watch those internet shows via our smart phones or our e-reader tablet, but it would be very small and very grainy.  (And yes, we could give up watching our shows for a year.....or not!)
• You can watch a lot of shows through a streaming media player like a Wii (which we already have) or a Roku or many others.  You can then subscribe to Netflix or Hulu Plus for only $8 a month, and they have a gazillion movies and TV shows, some even have current episodes.  Or you could do regular Hulu for free with a smaller selection.  However NO ONE has shows from CBS--my guess is this is a CBS we-won't-play-in-your-sandbox issue, but no one seems to really know why.  Want to guess what network the majority of our shows are on?
• There's also this cool contraption that is a TV adapter thing (I never figured out what it's actually called!) and it allows you to use internet through your TV.  Some TVs are "smart TVs" and already come with this high-tech function, but not ours.  However.....we learned immediately after we bought it, that it's not exactly internet browsing--it's more like downloading apps, and it's fairly limited.  And yet again, guess which network doesn't have access? So we returned it two hours after we bought it.
• We also discovered that--lo and behold--it seems we are actually behind the times with getting rid of cable.  Turns out tons of my Facebook friends have eliminated cable years ago!  Many of them use one or more of the methods above, and it's way cheaper.  Where have we been?!?

So, our emotions went from "oh good we're not going to spend any money at all!" to "oh no, we're going to have to spend a lot of money!" to "oh we'll only have to spend a small amount" to "oh we're going to have to spend a fair amount" to....."why are we doing this again??"  In the end, we ended up buying a laptop which will (we hope!) connect to our TV and we will watch shows via the internet.  Yes--it's spending money in order to save money.  BUT, with the selling of our Civil War football tickets, we were able to buy the laptop without any debt involved!  Woo hoo!  And we will save money on the no-cable thing in about six months.....and if we decide not to return to cable after the one year, it will keep saving us more and more!

The bad news?  We got the very last laptop in stock for the sale we found, so it will take a week to ship from the warehouse.  So for this week, we're doing the ole rabbit ears and just have a few basic stations--plus a one week trial of Hulu Plus.  So as I type this.....Bryan is out in the garage by himself, reclined in his lawn chair, wearing a coat, drinking a cold one, and listening to the Beaver game on the radio.  Such a devoted fan!

The First 48 Hours

If you missed the first post explaining why we're fasting, scroll down to the bottom and read it first--or click here.  If you'd like to follow our journey, enter your email to the right of this post.

We're 48 hours in to this year long financial fast.....so far, I'm not yet counting down to how many hours left.  I'm sure that day will come soon--and probably multiple times.

Day One
Bryan researched possible options for trading in our camper trailer and our car for a straight-across trade-in for a different car.  We had a very busy weekend with various different events going on, but we had a two-hour window so we went to the dealership.  Of course the nice man he already talked to on the phone wasn't working that day, so we talked with nice man #2--a little bit quirky, but nice man nonetheless. 

We quickly decided that Car #1 was not the right car for us--the kids were cramped in the third row and even the two youngest didn't have much leg space.  I could already envision long car trips with constant complaining, whining, and fighting.  Plus we'd have to put the middle seat down-up-down-up all the time to get into the back seat.  It just wasn't really a good fit.

Car #2 was a much better fit--a mini-van obviously built with family needs in mind, much better space, easier to get in and out.  We laughed that "this is our life now" when we judge a car based on how much groceries it can hold.  We sat at quirky-nice-man's desk while he went back to the black hole that car salesmen go to in order to crunch the numbers.  Meanwhile Bryan changed the satellite radio station to play Christian music throughout the showroom.  :)  I was melancholy and excited at the same time, but praying that God would make it obvious whether we should proceed or not.  So after more waiting, he finally came back with numbers--$16,000 worth of numbers.  Um, no.  The idea here is to get OUT of debt, not to accumulate more debt.  Thank you God for making it obvious!  So, no sale today--but at least we know now what the trailer and car are worth (not as much as we hoped) and now we at least have a starting place.

Day One ended with us keeping our trailer and car for another day.

Day Two
Bryan made it in and out of Costco for LESS THAN TEN DOLLARS!  Is that even legal?!  Our Costco membership itself is still good for another nine months, but we're only going to use Costco for specific items with a specific price.  We also have a Cash & Carry in our town, so if we really need something in bulk, there's always that option too.  Then he made this week's menu with relatively inexpensive dishes, and easy-to-make-ahead meals since Grammy will be staying with the kids for four nights while we go out of town.  (Grammy cooks even less often than I do!)  He made it out of the grocery store with around half of our usual grocery bill.  What a savvy shopper, that man-o-mine!

My task was to cancel cable and price compare for internet-only options.  Multiple phone calls and internet clicks later, we are now stopping our local internet-cable company and changing to Century Link for internet.  Our first bill of internet-only will be equal to what we're currently paying for cable-internet....but for the next 12 months our bill will be less than half!  So we have exactly one week left to hurry up and watch everything we have recorded on our DVR.  There's only a couple of shows we won't be able to get on the internet--the kids and I love watching 19 Kids and Counting (TLC doesn't have full episodes on their website) and Bryan won't be able to watch Myth Busters (junior high boys getting paid to blow stuff up).  We'll both be sad about that.....but.....it's only one year.

    

And I contacted our friend who got our Civil War tickets for us and they'll easily be able to sell them.  *Insert sad face again* but we'll be using that money to go toward the purchase of a laptop.

Savings So Far

• Home Depot kids workshop = free family fun
• Swim lessons = turns out we paid double for this session (weird website thing, I guess) so our next set of 5 lessons is almost free--ok, technically speaking we already paid for it but it feels free!
• Star Wars day at Barnes and Noble = free family fun
• Library = free family fun
• Fall Festival = Kaela spent $3 of her allowance on grapefruit soap which will probably last her all year.
• Movie night for Kaela's play "It's A Wonderful Life" = free movie and free pizza
• Graeson's football team pictures = saved $17 by taking my own team picture instead of paying for the professional guy's picture and floppy cardboard frame, which will probably just go in mom's memento box in the closet anyway.
• Costco = saved well over $200 from what we usually spend
• Groceries = saved close to $70 from what we usually spend
• Cable = will be saving $45 a month (that's $540 a year!!)
• Civil War tickets = $180

TOTAL SAVINGS = $512

I'd say the first 48 hours of financial fasting have been successful!