Amount that our bank wanted to charge me to order “free” checks online: $22

Time spent calling a telephone banker to politely ask why our checks weren’t free: 10 minutes

Time spent wondering aloud to telephone banker why our bank didn’t email me that our account balance was low (as should have happened according to the automatic low balance alert that I had set up): 2 minutes

What happened then: got our checks for free and got our overdraft protection charges refunded

Total time spent: 12 minutes

Total amount saved: $46

Result: smug satisfaction on my end

It is disappointing to move slowly on our pursuit to pay off debt, but I have sensed since the beginning of this year that we wouldn’t be able to put extra toward debt in 2011, so I’m at peace with that. I do hope it changes a bit in 2012, but we’ll see.

We did hit one big milestone today, though. We paid off our first student loan! Hurray!

The milestone is a relief, but not as exciting as I’d thought it would be. That it took five years to pay it off, and that we have two more student loans to go, gives me cause for gloominess. We didn’t even get to put one big final payment toward it… it was just a slightly smaller payment than last month, paid automatically just like every month. No big rush of glory. And as much as I am glad to have it paid off, I thought when accruing it in college that it would be paid off in only a year or two after graduation.

On the other hand, we’ve been putting extra toward this loan whenever possible for the last year or two. This one had the highest interest rate of all our debts (a hefty 7.2%) as well as the highest required monthly payment. To have no more debts with interest rates higher than 3.99% is a very nice thing indeed! And if we continue to pay the same amount toward debts every month, the snowball effect will certainly help us pay off these pesky credit card debts and subsequent loans much more quickly.

So I suppose there really is cause for celebration, now that I think about it a little more. We haven’t reached the huge vacation or expensive piece of artwork stage of celebration yet, though we are thinking that giving a few bucks to a poor college student or something of that sort would be a nice little way to celebrate our freedom from this particular shackle. For now, I think I will make some brownies.

We’ve made some great finds this summer. I forget how very worthwhile it is to spend those few hours going to yard sales each week until I stumble across several worthwhile finds in a row. Here are some of my favorite finds from this season:

new pair of Doc Martens for Keith: $3
decent pair of Keen shoes for Keith: $2
about seven pairs of jeans for Keith with lots of wear left: $14
Little Tikes play tractor that Abraham absolutely adores: $2.50
complete Narnia series on CD for Keith to listen to at work: $10
Blueberries for Sal, one of Rilla’s favorite books: $.50
several other good children’s books: about $1 each
several yards of vintage yellow fabric for me to sew with: $3
purple wool blanket to make a jumper for Rilla: $3
several books for our box to send to South Sudan: about $1 total
nice wooden salad bowl (like yours, Morgan!): $.50
nice wooden coat tree: $2

total cost from this list: about $45
total cost for these items if bought new: easily $470 or more

I really love it when I find deals like these. Although I haven’t read it in a while, I remember that the book The Shrewd Christian talks about the importance of having a home manager who is watching the back door, so to speak, while the main income-earner is bringing money in the front door. I love that aspect of being a stay-at-home mom who is in charge of our finances. I love having the time – of course, I have to make time for it, but still – to be able to go to yard sales and find bargains that are better than any online sales. For example, Keith has needed black dress shoes for a few years now. How nice to be able to be aware of that and able to snatch up a great pair of brand-new, good quality ones that fit him for $3! Saving that much money in a few hours makes me feel like I got “paid” quite a lot of time for my hourly work!

Of course, there are the dud days too, when we go out for a few hours and find nothing. But even then, all I’ve lost is a few hours, and I think that the days when I stumble on heaps of useful items are well worth the overall time invested!

I try not to recommend things that give me money back unless I would recommend them anyway. If you sign up through my link, I get $5 credit, but really… I would recommend it anyway. Paying about a third of the price for cute handmade stuff? Yep, that’s a good deal!!

Or maybe the tight budget just makes it more obvious?

Either way, there was a bit of advice on Get Rich Slowly today that seemed particularly timely and useful. Here it is:

The mechanics of conscious spending are pretty simple. Before you buy anything, ask yourself some simple questions:

• Do I have the money to cover this expense, or would I be going into debt for it?
• Does this expense forward my financial goals?
• Can I get this need or desire met without spending money on it? Could I spend less money?
• Does this money need to be spent now, or can it wait thirty days?

One key point of this book is that being a stay-at-home mom (rather than working outside the home) may save more money than you would ever guess. I agree with this. It’s not the first time we’ve heard it or crunched the numbers, of course, but I would just add my voice to the testimonies of this book: In our experience, there is a tremendous amount of money saved by me being able to be home. Beyond the most important benefit of being able to raise our children how we want to, having extra time saves a tremendous amount on food, vehicle expenses, clothing, and all kinds of other variable costs. Even little things like having time to return unnecessary purchases or call a credit card company to question a fee can add up to quite a lot of extra money.

Here are three other principles from Miserly Moms that I found particularly helpful:

1. Chart Grocery Prices. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while but hadn’t figured out a good system. Jonni uses a chart with sections for each food item, and then next to that has columns for Average Price, A Good Sale, and Once in A Blue Moon. I haven’t done it yet… ugh, the work involved to do it the first time!… but I know it’s going to be really useful. For example, I know that 99 cents a pound is a great price for organic apples, but does Costco really have the best price per ounce for extra virgin olive oil, or would that be cheaper to buy through Amazon when they have a sale combined with Subscribe & Save on a certain brand? That kind of thing. Knowing for sure what the best price is in every situation would be a tremendous help to saving money.

2. Take Good Care of Your Teeth. As the author noted, this might be kind of an odd thing to put in a finance book. But it was a good reminder for me. I haven’t been taking the best care of my teeth since having children… it’s kind of easy to forget about things like showers and flossing when you reach a certain level of exhaustion… and the reminder of the costs of root canals (not to mention the long-term effect of bad teeth on a person’s health) really sobered me and gave me a renewed vigor for careful brushing and flossing.

3. Have Good Medical Insurance. I know that some people view this as a no-brainer, but we have never had medical insurance unless it was covered by work (so, for like six months out of almost seven years of marriage). Keith has been unemployed for the last three months, so now is not exactly the best time to add on a new expense, but I think that we will join up with Samaritan Ministries healthshare program in the next year or so. In general we are careful to seek out healthy food, avoid chemicals, take supplements, and use alternative remedies, but we are beginning to feel that it’s time for us to have a better safety net in case of big unexpected medical needs.

One last thing that I appreciated about this book… I can’t find the quote now, unfortunately, because I just returned the book to the library… was that Jonni clearly differentiated between frugality and being miserly. The point of being frugal is to live a better life. We still spend money on things that matter. It’s just that once you start being more careful in your spending, you realize quickly how very many things don’t matter.

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/debtplanner/debtplanner.jsp

… and I must say, this is the best debt planner I’ve ever seen! It is a simple way to plug in all your debts and see what kind of variations you can make in order to pay it all down more quickly. This is the kind of calculator that we searched for but never found when we were walking people through the Money Merge Account program. Seriously, this is a great calculator! You’ve got to try it.

Note: It says that it’s for credit card debt, but it really doesn’t matter; you can include any time of debt. If you’re familiar with Dave Ramsey or Crown Financial, the Fixed Payment option works perfectly with what they call the snowball effect.

I am enamored with this thing. It is a number-cruncher’s dream come true!

I have been downloading these free audiobooks for Keith for a year or more and have yet to actually listen to one myself. But hey, it might happen one of these days.

Today, I will share with you the outcome of those goals.

Goal #1: Acquire $2000 in an emergency fund.
Result: Success! We have that and a bit more in our emergency fund, as well as an extra month’s worth of funds in checking.

Goal #2: Contribute $1000 to our Roth IRA.
Result: Almost. We contributed $700. It would have been nice to contribute more, but something is better than nothing.

Goal #3: Pay off about $7300 in principal on our debts.
Result: Success! We paid off about $10,400 in principal on our debts, so we exceeded this goal by quite a lot.

I am both excited and disappointed, somehow. We set realistic goals, and even exceeded the amount that we paid toward principal on our debts. We had another baby, went on a big vacation, ate well, and still my husband was able to support all four of us on his one income as well as make additional payments toward our debt load… despite having no work for three months out of the year.

Yet we still have debt, and I suppose that is the thing that disappoints me.

I once heard that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in five years. At the rate we are going, we will be out of debt in a little over two years. That’s not too shabby. I want it to be today, of course, but this steady plodding thing is paying off. I hope that five years from now will see us out of debt and being halfway finished paying for a home of our own. It could happen, right?

His work is seasonal, although it doesn’t have to be. It really all depends on who is giving out contracts at what times and for how much. It’s really not so scary as it sounds, although it does require a lot of flexibility and planning.

It’s kind of an interesting balance, though. In the midst of excitedly planning for Christmas presents and Rilla’s second birthday party, I am also minimizing our outgoing expenses: pausing contributions to Keith’s Roth IRA, minimizing the amounts we put toward debts, and putting our NetFlix account on hold.

I am always surprised at how this is still such a learning process for me. I’m not (so) afraid of the possibility of Keith not having work for the next month or two or three or four; we have weathered it for the last two winter seasons, so I am sure we will make it through this one too. It does surprise me, though, to find myself fighting having to put the brakes on so many little outgoing expenses and return to the bare minimum costs for everything. Maybe I am not so frugal as I think I am? Or maybe I just don’t enjoy it all the time. I hate to use the term “feast or famine,” but I do tend to enjoy feasting a little more in the summer and fall months. Preparing to return to the famine of the winter and spring months is a bit less appealing, but that’s okay; we will make it through again.

I find myself thinking now of lots of little ways to make it through better this time. I have a big pile of things that we can put on eBay sometime in February when there’s not much else to do. Maybe I can make some cards or sew some things to sell on Etsy. In many ways, I have been looking forward to the winter months of having Keith at home – maybe I can get some writing done, maybe we’ll finally get Abraham moved into his own room, maybe we can make it through Season Three of 24.

We have made some good progress on debt this year, although with the snow slowing down production in November and December, I probably should have held back more for savings sooner… but oh well. You learn as you go, right? I am getting excited to tally up our headway on debt this year and write a post about that sometime in January. Stay tuned.