Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Spend, Save, Give

As Joel and I go through the Financial Peace University Program in small groups our kids are also going through FPU Jr in their Kids Church Programs.  For Joel and I we are so shocked that just the awareness of our money flow has made a huge change in our financial situation.  Our kids though have truly started to look at money in a different way and it so neat to see them going through this.  I would have never thought that instead of feeling how are we ever going to get ahead and save for the future could truly be changed by such simple steps and a mind awakening.   Now we can start putting our money to things that would please God and it's all from trusting Him to give us what we need.

As we proceed into the future our outlook for the kids future of money has changed as well.  With the Spend, Save, Give plan we are showing them to be wise and also to honor God in the process.  We have changed it a bit because we also feel that they need to save for more than just their current wants.  So we have broken down the percents of how the incoming money is broken down.  They get to have 40% for Spend, 30% Save, 20% Long term Savings, and 10% Give.  I can see that for the most part the girls are planning for now only keeping a very small amount of the Spend and putting the rest into their Save for their next awesome purchase.  It's so great to see that!

I hope that by next month I can truly say that the 2 credit cards we are planning to pay off are paid off and closed accounts.  They aren't interest growing ones just those pesky no interest pay plans we set up to buy things from certain stores.  How ever they keep money from going to other things.  At a long term plan we hope to be 100% Credit Card Debt free by end of summer and hopefully by Sept 2012 we hope to have no payments for anything but the house!  That is the point we will be screaming we are debt free.  So we will fully pay off the student loans of mine, the camper, and our car all about 4-6 years early saving us money in the long term too!!!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Updating

So today was a day to see where things are at Post Operative for Allie and both of the girls in school.   It kept me pretty busy because it was also a school day for Logan as well.  Allie is doing well and was given the okay to go back to school on Friday.  Granted they do not have school Friday so she will go back next week.  It was also our ENT's last day before retirement so it was nice to see him one more time.  We will see a new doctor in the office next time we go.  So that was a nice visit with good news about her progress.

Conferences went well for both girls as well.  Maddie has come such a long way since she was in Kindergarten and it's so awesome to see how great of a student she is!  The only concern is that she needs to slow down and put her best effort forward to each task at hand or problem instead of trying to look ahead to the next.  It's not a huge issue but one to take care of now.  Allie is doing really good as well and is right where see needs to be.  The only thing that her teacher would love to see come out of Allie as the year goes is for her to exhibit her self confidence.  She is really quite and hard to get to talk to groups without prodding.  It also applies to writing workshop and just giving her sentences a try.  We are going to try and work on both here at home as best as we can.

Monday, October 18, 2010

TRX...

Holy cow so today I got myself back to a class at the gym.  I was a bit nervous because it involved a new system called TRX and it looked really hard.  It was not as hard as it look but it really pushed me to new levels in my workout.  I have a feeling after doing that for 30 mins plus a 30 min kickboxing session as well that I am going to be sore for days!  Granted it felt so good to go and I totally plan on going back.  I can't wait to be more than just on top of my financial plan but to really be true to a healthier lifestyle of eating right and working out at a consistent rate.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Baby Bear

Our Allie Bear had surgery today to have her adenoids and tonsils removed and had T-tubes put back in. I was not worried as much about the actual surgery but the post op time worried me some. She has had some really yucky coughs along the way and I was worried that if she started to cough it would make things start to bleed. Thank goodness that did not happen and she did really well. She did have some face swelling mostly in the lip area due to the tubes and clamps around her mouth. It make it so we had to stay for an extra hour but she did awesome. She doesn't seem to be in too much pain at this point but it's not going to be as obvious until tomorrow because she has been given some good meds. Hopefully we can keep her drinking and just get back to normal. I know that they prayers have helped us to get to now and some more for the next week or so would be appreciated!