The end of the first quarter has arrived and I have been slowly but surely working towards my financial goals. I managed to pay off my credit cards this quarter as well as get my credit score back up over 800. I was so happy to check these off of my goals list. Next up: student loans, investments and finishing up my emergency fund. I managed to make several big purchases in addition to paying off my cards:

• safe
• trash bins
• doorbell & camera

Videos of my monthly updates are below.

Thanks for following along!

​Until next time,

December is over and 2020 has seen its last day. It was definitely a rollercoaster of a year but I finished out December fairly well I think. I'm down to a little over $5000 in credit card debt with a plan to have it taken care of in the next 4 months and my credit score is on the upswing as well. I'm fairly pleased with this month's progress. ​

Until next time!

Quarter 3 is over and I am so excited about this next month- I get to finally see my love again! Who knows when the next time will be with all of this crazy but, for now, we are excited for just this small period of togetherness while we can have it. This does mean a bit of a setback on funding sinking funds in September and October but I am 100% ok with that as there are more important things in life than money sometimes, and this is one of them. 

Until next time,

Quarter 2 of 2020 has come to an end and wow has it been a wild ride. I don't want to think about what the rest of this year will be like on a lot of fronts but I am optimistic about my plans financially for the rest of the year... hopefully we'll get two to three more debts paid off! I'm excited :P 

Until next time!

I am going to be posting the financial update videos on the blog on a per quarter basis for a while. Let me know if you would like it monthly or if you would like additional textual discussion on the updates over here on the blog. I would like to focus my attention on what you guys think would be either helpful or interesting. 

Until next time!

I moved my financial updates into video format in May and completely forgot to also post them on the blog. I'm so sorry guys, please forgive me! I've been doing pretty well but had a few bumps along the way that caused me to restructure the way I am attacking my debt pay off goals. 

I'll make sure to get them posted over here as well going forward. The next one will be just a few weeks away actually! I'm excited to show you September's progress. :)

​Until next time,

I disappeared again... but I came back with a renewed plan for my blog. We're going visual! I'm going to start incorporating a lot more video content over on YouTube, some of which may not be here on the blog so head over there and subscribe today so that you don't miss any content. The current planned schedule looks like this:

There may be some deviation as life happens but I've got the next several months planned out (that's where I disappeared to... I had to find a way that was both fun and fit my schedule a bit more). You'll still get a weekly post over here but there will be a lot more content over there with condensed versions over here. Let me know if there are any videos/topics you are interested in!

So... first video of the financial nature: May's financial update. Click below to watch or scroll down for a quick recap.

That puts my Net Worth at:

This is a different calculation than the numbers you are used to getting as it doesn't take into account current monies in the bank (sinking funds and daily expenses plus bills that haven't been taken yet for the month). Here is a graph from YNAB.

I also looked at my annual change per year since 2016. It was pretty cool to be able to look back that far... through the good and the bad choices I've still come a long way!

The last thing I did was plan out what my goals were for this month. You guys get to know first that I already know I can't meet some of them 100% due to some unexpected expenses that cropped up. My poor Roxy needs her teeth cleaned asap (she may lose a tooth) and Bella likely next month but she's not as bad thankfully. Plus I had a tire replaced due to a nail and had to have some serious yard work done that I didn't budget for. I should be able to stick it out and accomplish most of them but yeah, that's all going to add up to a pretty penny for sure. 

My other financial goals for month are as follows:

• Get half a month ahead on the following bills: mortgage, auto loan & cell phone
• Pay dental bill when it arrives
• Lower cell phone bill
• Bank extra $200 of ‘just in case’ money for Washington D.C. trip

That pretty much sums up this monthly update. I posted a run down of my YNAB budget as well as how to budget in YNAB earlier this week on YouTube if you are interested in viewing that as well. 

Until next time,

As anticipated March was a not so great month financially. I did some travel that had been planned, and saved, for but there was also the flooring issue. It's about $7,000 later I now have a home I can live in again and the results turned out beautifully so I'm quite happy with the results... it just sucked to put that much debt back into my calculations. I was able to get the new debt at 18 months no interest so my number one priority is to get that debt gone as soon as possible and get back on track with where I anticipated this year's finances going.

A quick and dirty breakdown of my debt as of the end of the month is below. Credit card debt includes divorce debts that are still being paid off, the flooring debt from last month and general consumer debt. I'd ideally like to get that line under $10,000 this year while also paying down some of my other debt and working towards additional financial goals. 

This is a quick post, to be sure, but we're already almost to the end of April and I wanted to get this post out as soon as possible so that we wouldn't miss a month altogether. With the holiday this week has been pretty crazy so I haven't had a lot of time to write unfortunately. I'm getting back on track schedule wise though and have posts coming! 

Until next time.

February was a good month financially but its temporary as the majority of the progress I made is going to be undone in March due to needing new flooring.... it was supposed to hit the budget in February but took longer than expected. They're actually being installed today which I'm super excited about. 

Every month I give you a net worth chart from January 2018 to present but its become unreadable at this point due to the sheet number of months on this journey so we're going to shrink it down a bit. For reference I had a net worth of -$26,291.16 in January of 2018 and for February 2019 that net worth is -$2,068.96 giving me a net worth gain of $24,222.20 which I'm thrilled with. I should to be net worth positive this year despite the flooring set back.

On the debt side here's how it breaks out. I'm most wanting the student loans gone as there are 4 of them lumped into that sum (I've paid off all of my undergraduate degree already so I'm not working on my Master's degree loans) and even knocking out one of those suckers could free up a nice chunk of change to start a faster snowball on the rest of them and my credit card. 

Am I happy that I racked up that much consumer debt? Of course not. I did so mostly when I was first divorced... I used my card to move to Texas, get items that I thought I needed for my new life and generally get myself through the first year when I wasn't making great money choices as my brain was just trying to cope with the aftermath of my world imploding. It's not a good excuse- but its an excuse nonetheless. Now I'm working to reverse that mistake a little at a time. Like I said, I've done really well the last year or so with net worth changes but so much of my monthly payments have to go towards interest that sometimes it seems like I'm crawling when I just want to sprint to the finish line. Patience isn't always easy.

Also, don't buy a new car... I know that's personal finance 101 but its one of my dumbest money mistakes of all time. I let fear and anxiety push me into making a decision- that I convinced myself was a good financial one when it was really an emotional decision- that was not in my own best interest. I had my car totaled in a hit-and-run and only a few days of rental post declaration to find a replacement so I went to the dealership to look at cars and ended up buying a hybrid that I am now horribly upside down on. I won't do that again in the future (the new car, not the hybrid, that I love- gas budget line is AWESOME). Expensive lesson learned.

This month I brought in $134.71 from side hustles without putting any real effort into it as I've been prepping for a crazy amount of things recently so took my side hustling down to slow burner status until near the end of the month. I had several trips to plan, decluttering and organizing my house (then repacking it all due to the flooring situation), learning new music, work projects, getting Learning with Heather Mac planned out (my next project which is in the works) and so much more. This year is going to be amazing!

​I had $124 of that from Facebook sales of items I was decluttering (1-2 minutes to post online per item and then just click to refresh the posts weekly so once they were up maybe 5 minutes of work a week and arranging to meet up with buyers at McDonald's or etc. while I was already heading out so not much added time or cost) and the rest was from cash back apps like CoinOut and Fetch- which I'm reviewing soon. I did work a few hours in February for VIPKID to get back in the swing of things for this month but I won't receive much money and it will get to me in March.  I have 14 classes this weekend though so I'd say I'm back to work again. I plan on working 2 weekends and 2 weeknights in March so should see a few hundred on next month's side hustles income again. It's good to be back in the classroom and I'm loving my office so once the floors are done and everything has been put back to rights I'll give you guys a tour on my YouTube channel. 

I plan on trying to work in another new side hustle trial during March and April depending on my travel schedule. The pups are going to be visiting their Oma several times in the next couple months as I'll be in and out of DFW for various trips over the next couple months- exciting but not great for my current side hustle list (outside of VIPKID of course which can be done basically everywhere so long as you have a set schedule... I taught in my hotel in Montreal last year!). What kinds of side hustles do you guys do? What do you suggest I try out this year? 

​Until next time,