We Paid $12,324 of Debt in 8 Months with this Budget Workbook
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My husband and I have been through the debt cycle plenty of times. We’ve paid off several debts, including my husband’s student loans, 2 set of medical bills from births, dental work, home improvement loans, and three or four cars, just to name a few.
And yet, we kept finding ourselves in debt, still. It had become the norm for us, as it has for millions of Americans. Now, we’ve finally found a way to not only start to pay off our debt for good, but how to make our money work for us.
You know that feeling where you wonder if/when you’ll ever figure out how to do “adulting”? Realizing I was going to turn 40 soon meant that it was probably official. And yet here we were, in the same spot we were financially when we got together in our mid-twenties. It was frustrating.
We’ve tried several budgets before, but just couldn’t stick to them. They were too complicated, too overwhelming, and the resources that went along with them were zilch.
I thought I’d been budgeting all this time, however, turns out I was just updating a spreadsheet with our spending AFTER it happened, rather than telling our money where to go. Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well.
We finally (thankfully!) turned a new leaf with the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp Workbook. It is the best budget I’ve ever tried – and the only one we’ve ever been able to stick with!
In only 8 months 14 months, we’ve been able to:
- Raise our net worth by
$25,321$58,884 - Pay our debt down by over 80%
- Pay off
$12,324$16,369 of debt - Become free of ALL credit card debt and one car loan!
We were even able to achieve all this while my husband was out of work for 2 of those months!
About the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp Workbook
This $7 workbook takes you step-by-step through the budgeting process. You complete a task every week, so it’s not overwhelming. Each step is simple and manageable. As you progress, these tasks begin to build on one another. It helps you not only to finally make lasting progress, but keep your motivation up. This budgeting workbook features:
- 60+ pages of exercises and step-by-step instructions to build and hone your budgeting skills
- 14 challenges to teach you budgeting, time management, and how to change your perspective when it comes to your money
- A private Facebook group where you can find like-minded people who are on the same debt-free journey (I love contributing and bouncing ideas off the folks in this group!)
- Tips on how to streamline your expenses and trim up your budget to stretch your dollar as much as possible
- What to do if you’re behind on bills and how to catch up quickly
- Plus TONS of other tips!
What this Budgeting Workbook Covers
The 90 Day Budget Bootcamp Workbook really helped us to figure out our priorities, and how to get there. It put us on the same page so we were working together. We also learned:
- How to budget for the fun stuff
- Where our spending weak points are, and how to avoid them
- How to plan and budget for upcoming expenses in the months ahead
- How to analyze our budget and see where we could slowly trim every month
- Calculate our net worth and debts, so we could easily measure our progress
- How creating a schedule for your home life can affect your financial life (in a positive way!)
- How to budget for infrequent purchases such as vacation, holiday gifts, etc.
- How to slash our grocery budget, which was a huge problem for us
- How to decide on and set financial goals for our future
- How to work together to not only set those goals, but to CRUSH them!
Our dirty little secret (literally!): we’ve embraced all of the steps we’ve learned from this workbook except for one. It involves making sure your dishes are done every night. This challenge teaches you household organization and how it can affect your finances overall.
For example, if your kitchen is a mess, you’re much less likely to cook. Which means you’ll probably end up either grabbing fast food or going out to eat. Which, in turn, can screw up your budget. It’s a chain reaction, right?
While I get that, and it makes sense, I still struggle with consistently completing this particular challenge. I’d love to get a load of dishes and/or laundry done every day, but so far, it just isn’t happening.
However, I’m not letting that stop us from reaching our goals. This is just another point in life where I remind myself, “Progress, not perfection.” Someday we’ll be able to say we’ve tackled the dishes challenge!
Now that we’ve completed the workbook, I look forward to doing our budget and tracking our spending. I don’t avoid or ignore it anymore, hoping it’ll just go away. Every month I print out net worth and budget pages so that I can see how far we’ve come. I love checking our progress at the beginning of every month and seeing how our debts and net worth have changed!
Instead of wondering where our money went, we give it purpose and direction. We have goals set that we’re working towards and are actually achieving! As I mentioned, we’ve already paid off our credit cards and we’re thisclose to paying off my car loan. Needless to say – we’re really motivated to get rid of the rest of our debt, once and for all now!
If you’re stuck in the debt cycle and you’re struggling with budgeting, I cannot recommend the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp Workbook enough. It is well written, has beautiful graphics, and is easy to understand and work through. It’s the only way we’ve ever been able to create a budget and stick with it. It’s definitely worth the $7 and then some!
If you have any questions about the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp Workbook, comment below or email me at info@debtfreeforties.com! I’d love to share more tips and information about the challenges, the private facebook group, or the budgeting concepts discussed in the workbook. Just give me a shout below!
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A forty-ish web designer/developer by day, a budget & financial fanatic by night. I’m a mom, wife, avid reader, and DIY enthusiast who’s tracking our journey to debt freedom. Read More
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