Detours Happen...

Well..since the last entry, the house has been reshingled and the roof repaired as in plywood replaced where it needed replacing and a new septic (sewer) tank with drain lines installed because the old one was almost 40 years old and had failed and was costing us a lot in repeated pumpings.  This was not how we'd planned it, but we are thankful to the Lord for it, that it has been accomplished.  We had planned to pay off Hubby's truck earlier this year but the septic tank took that place in our budget.  The wood stove was installed this past winter and what a big blessing it is!  We also had 11 trees taken down, huge trees and some of them were leaning over our home but we were able to salvage the  ones that were oak trees for firewood, which Hubby is still working on accomplishing with his big wood piles he has stacked in the back yard.  The wood stove heats well and I've cooked different foods on top of it also when we used it this past winter.  We have incurred some more debt with the new roof but are working on at least reducing our total debt before retiring this October, Lord willing.  We had not planned on retiring with debt but that is how it appears to be working out.  At least, we are hoping that the debt we take into retirement will be 'manageable debt' since we will be only having social security income coming in, as far as we know.  One of our debtors we owe that we talked with agreed to refinance our debt with them and lower the monthly payment to a more manageable one earlier this year although this action put us out an extra year paying them off and an extra $1000 in finance charge with them.   We should be out of total debt within four years.  To me that sounds like a long time but I know that realistically, it isn't.  It just depends on how you look at it.  Hubby and I have talked about the pros and cons of his working longer and we both agree we'd rather go ahead and retire in October and spend time together and have less income after making loan payments each month, than for him to keep working for however long it would take for us to be totally debt free.  Currently we owe approximately $35,000 total debt on everything, which only includes one secured debt, the truck, which we anticipate we will hopefully have paid off before retirement.  We are also going to try to pay off another loan before retirement if we can.  If we can get those two loans off of us, we will be owing about $30,000 in debt in the remaining seven loans we owe, in October when we both retire.  (I am currently unemployed and gave up looking for work years ago after not getting anything for a long time of looking and being asked at my last interview if I had not already retired and not need the money?  Yes, for real, I'm not kidding.  That sort of did it for me with looking for a job anymore after that interview.)  Anyway, that about sums it up for now.  Hubby is counting down the months til October.  He has worked for many years...about 45 and of that, 35 at the work site he currently works at.  His work is very hard physical labor and he is 62 already so it is time for him to retire.  I have been waiting til he retires to officially retire so we will get more social security income by my waiting to begin mine when he begins his.  So that is it for now and we are very thankful to the Lord for all his many blessings on us, most importantly, eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. 

Car Paid Off, Thank You, Jesus!

Hello to you!
Well, since the last post, the Lord blessed us to get the wood stove installed...(It works really well and it put out a lot of heat when we used it before spring came this year)...and also, to pay off one of our two vehicles.  We are getting closer to retirement, Lord willing, next year and Hubby and I are working on getting totally out of debt by that time.  We still have quite a lot of debt to pay off but we will, with the Lord's help.  Also we need to get our roof reshingled before retirement...this will probably be around $4500 or so...maybe even more.  We've had a LEAK that has been repeatedly repaired (3 times)...recently.  Before the leak, along and along, we have been repairing/replacing things in our home as we can...both commodes...some flooring/coverings, etc.  For a web begun, God sends thread...oh yes.  There are some other things we are hoping to accomplish (PAY) before retirement also but that will be addressed later, Lord willing.  Part of our debt is credit card debt.  A few weeks ago, we made calls and shut down all of our credit cards.  Closed out our accounts.  That way, the temptation will not be there to remax them out when we make a monthly payment on them since they are now unusable (and have been destroyed as well). 

Happy New Year 2015!

Hello to you....
Well since the last entry, Hubby has gotten his wish (and all he has been talking about for the past 2 months) and we now have a free-standing wood-burning heater.  Hubby feels it is a necessity because of the possibility of a snow or ice storm (not very usual here in the south but has happened) taking out the electric power for an extended period of time and we would have heat.  It is an Englander NC30 2200 and the top of it is big enough so that I can cook meals on it.  We do NOT have the heater installed yet as we have been diligently busy making preparations...  We sold our dining room set (large table w 6 chairs) and cleared out the dining room, which is centrally located in our home to the kitchen and living room.  The old carpet is gone and in its place is new laminated wood flooring.  The wood heater is on a pallet in the kitchen, all 475 lbs of it, awaiting its placement in the center of the used-to-be-dining-room but now named the 'wood-heater room'.  First we must build a code-approved hearthpad...yes, I said build...  We currently have the materials to do this with in the dining room awaiting being put together with ceramic tile on top...it will be a raised hearthpad, probably 10 inches tall with the wood heater sitting in the center on top of it.  After building the hearthpad, we plan, Lord willing, to get someone who is a licensed contractor to put together a prefab chimney that we've ordered online and is on its way, going straight up through the dining room ceiling and out over the rooftop.  Hopefully, it will all work out well.  Not to mention, Hubby plans to get some wood to burn in the wood heater.  So, this is our new 'house-project'. 

Also...Hubby plans, Lord willing, to retire NEXT YEAR...October 2016 (his birthday month).  We will both retire at the same time...if we have all our loans paid off.  Currently we have 11 loans.  2 are secured loans which are vehicles we drive, which are close to being paid off and 9 are unsecured loans.  We feel confident that with the Lord's help we can achieve this.  I thought about doing the snowball effect payoff system but have decided against it and am going for  either pay the secured loans off first ...(at least one of them, that is...which will be my vehicle.... because Hubby has not decided whether to trade his truck in on a newer one and work an extra year or two (don't think he will do that, but he is thinking about it) to pay it off, or keep his truck which is over 10 years old.   So I am hesitant for us to pay off his truck yet with his not having decided what he is going to do regarding it)... OR paying off the highest balances loans first.  

So...this is a wait and see deal...  We are hoping that we will get a large tax refund next month which will help us accomplish paying off at least one of our biggest loans.  Yes, I've read about paying off the high-interest loans first...but not gonna happen...different reasons, which I may get into later.

Hope you are having a blessed new year!    

Our Home Is Paid Off! Thank You, Jesus!

The Lord blessed us to pay off our home this past June of this year, 2014.  We were getting close to having enough to do it with but we decided to go ahead on faith and begin putting everything we could into one 'pot'...namely, our checking account...this was Hubby's advice.  We'd been praying and asking God's help to get our home paid off for a good while.  So...we took money out of savings, 401k (Hubby is over 59 and 1/2, so no 10% to have to pay back for being under that age, just the usual taxes, which were withheld from our 401k account to cover the amount we withdrew)...Let me take a minute here to say something about withdrawing money from the 401k...I know that a lot of people, from what I've researched online, would disagree with our tampering with retirement savings, even to help pay off our home, but I am one of those who believes that having a mortgage-free home during retirement (thus no monthly mortgage payment to pay with social security income) is of far greater value than the money taken from the 401k to help pay the home off...I could go on and on concerning this but will refrain at this time...so, to make a long story short, we gathered together all our eggs into one basket, including Hubby's 3-week's vacation pay and what I had in my pocketbook, too.  Also, admittedly, we took out a few small loans to help gather together into our checking account the amount needed to become MORTGAGE FREE!  -(Yes, it feels good to be mortgage-free!)  Finally, thank the Lord, and only by His help, the pay-off was accomplished.  Our home was paid off in full.  To those wondering about the few small loans we took out, they are diminishing and should be paid off next year.  In the mean while, we've worked on rebuilding a small liquid savings. 

Our next goal is to become completely debt-free with loans.  We still are paying on our two vehicles, as well as other loans.  Hubby has announced that he wants to retire within 2 years (actually October 2016).  So, we are working on that together.  He said he won't retire until we are debt-free with loans.  Then, Lord willing, we'll only have the usual items to pay out monthly such as electric, water, food, gas, etc.

I've finally decided to discontinue my cellphone monthly service.  I've had it going since 2007 when I got my first iphone, the original one they came out with, I think.  I did upgrade later to an iphone 4, which I've had a long time and am still currently using, to be discontinued later this week, as I have now purchased on sale a Tracfone smartphone, reduced from $80 to $30 and it has triple minutes for calls, data, and text with each minutes card I purchase.  So I purchased the basic 60 minutes Tracfone card and now have 180 minutes for each of the three features.  I just got it activated today and I think it is going to work out fine.  We will enjoy not paying $60 a month for cellphone service to AT&T.  The Tracfone minutes are good for 90 days, so I figure to save over $600 a year this way.  Hubby also has a Tracfone, also, that he's had for a while.  We have magic jack (about $32 annually) for our home phone, which is connected through our $15/month internet.  So there will be no monthly payment going out for phones, so to speak.  What I'm considering now is getting rid of cable-tv monthly bill and using an antennas on our two tv's for local channels (neighbor has it and says they get 8 or 9 clear channels, which include local channels) and watching dvd's and videos on tv.  Waiting for Hubby to get on board before implementing that strategy.

I must not forget to say that Hubby wants us to change our dining room, which is mostly a 'for-looks' room, into a free-standing wood-burning heater room, being in the middle of our home and open to the kitchen, the living room, the hall and a bathroom nearby.  He says that way if the electric goes out in the winter (doesn't happen often here in the south, but has years ago...and we do get ice storms sometimes), we will have a way to heat and be warm without electricity.  Although we currently have a gas-logs fireplace in the living room, which doesn't put out a lot of heat, we are strongly leaning toward this new idea.  We have both used wood to heat with in our pasts and although at the time I was not fond of it, because it was a lot of manual labor involved, as well as at that time it was difficult to obtain wood to burn, Hubby seems fairly confident that he can get the wood needed to keep the heater going in the winters.  Btw, it would save us a lot on our monthly electric bill if we used it in conjunction with our current main source of heat, the electric furnace, which wouldn't have to come on as often to heat our home with the wood heater doing its thing.  So, we are considering a cast iron free-standing wood heater with two 'eyes' on top that allows plenty of room to cook on top of the heater, which I've cooked on one before and had no problems with. 

So this is our current update.  I would have updated much sooner, but I lost my user name and password and could not remember it to sign in to this account and I finally got help and was able to access it.  Hope you are having a blessed day.

For A Web Begun, God Sends Thread...

This morning, I called our local cable company, which we've done business with for many years, in hopes of lowering our monthly payment for internet and cable service.  We only have basic cable and internet.  We're not into ordering movies nor HBO.  We're content with watching local news, the weather channel,  and old, clean movies...well, you get the idea.  Anyway, she lowered our monthly bill by about $5.  So now we will be paying $64.99 plus tax (which to me is still high, although not quite as high as it was). 

 

Next, I proceeded to call our cellphone company with the same intentions.  I do not use the cellphone much, just mainly when I'm away from home, and infrequently then.  I'd accumulated almost 4,000 unused minutes over the past year on it and well over 300 have been expiring monthly as a person can only carry 12 month's unused at a time.  A woman answered and  told me I could change to the senior plan (age 65 and over) and save $10 a month on my bill and have the  current 450 minutes-plan reduced to 200 minutes per month.  She still wanted to do it although I made it clear to her I would not for conscious' sake accept it, as I am not that age.  So she connected me with someone else, after telling me I would need to wait a couple minutes while she talked with the person before I would, to tell them I wanted my bill lowered and to give them my information.  Another woman came onto the line and said she could lower my bill by $20 a month if I would be willing to accept a 200 week-day-only minutes plan, as well as accept the elimination of the almost 4000 accumulated unused minutes.  I asked her what was I to do if I needed to talk over the weekend on the cellphone?  She answered that she would give me 200 bonus minutes that I could use any time AND that she would also pay my account current ($154 owed on it...WOW!) and she said I would not have a payment due until May (which would be $19.99 for the 200 minutes plus the usual $30 for unlimited data, a total of $49.99 plus tax monthly)...so I was happy over that and told her so, too.  So now the cellphone is paid current and the monthly bill will be lowered by at least $20.  :-)

 

Hubby came home from work and I informed him of the news.  I also told him that we've been paying about $350.00 interest (approximately) each month on our home mortgage.  He and I have been discussing, here lately, as to whether to, Lord willing, save up the entire balance of our home's payoff and then paying off our home OR pay more along and along, to the principle.  Yes, I've learned that doing the latter is the way to go to help eliminate interest payments BUT he and I have been working on building up a liquid savings...We had done it but last year we went through a lot of it...circumstances prevailed and it was not wasted.  We felt thankful we had it to go through.  So, for now, we're just making the monthly mortgage payments while saving what we can.

 

I've been going through the closets, etc. off and on over the past few months and selling some things that have not been being used much if any.  This is helping a little in building savings.

 

I guess this may not seem like much to some, but I'm very happy about this reduction in monthly payments to the cable company and the cellphone company (as well as $154 paid to bring our cellphone bill current included).  Before I close this update, I want to say that I've been receiving high-interest checks in the mail from local loan companies that I've been destroying and getting rid of.  Yes, they are a little tempting but not that tempting.  I got involved with them year before last year...one came in the mail in 2011 for over $2000 and I cashed it and put it in savings and felt pretty good about that for a while and another one came for over $1200 not long after, which I did the same with.  The payments were pretty high and after paying them for MONTHS, I realized that I'd thrown over $800 (interest on the payments I'd paid so far) to the WIND.  I took money from the 'savings' and paid them both off.  Lesson learned.

 

5 Years Later...

The financial goal is still the same...paying off our home early.  Now we are down to owing a little under $49,000.00 on our home, which is about a $6000.00 improvement over five years ago.  That is the good news.

The not-so-good news is we went back in debt with 3 credit cards.   Yes, after paying off 3 credit cards, we got back in debt with 3 credit cards.  One was for things we needed...another lawn mower, a washer and dryer, etc.  Another one was for getting rid of a 2nd one (replacing it) that had a very high interest rate, with a 0% interest rate card, which when it came due to be paid in full so it wouldn't go to a much higher rate with deferred interest added on, it was bailed out with the 3rd one, which was another 0% interest rate card.  Instead of closing or leaving alone the 2nd card that was now cleared, I negotiated a low interest rate which was not 0, but was around 8%, and we used it all the way back up to the full $1000.00 it was good for (buying groceries, gas, eating out, etc.) while saving an emergency fund with what we would have spent money on the groceries, etc.  Top this off with some good news...I found Money Aisle (a vehicle refinance online auction) and negotiated a refinance on both our vehicles at a much lower interest rate and lower payment on them to aid in getting some savings built up.  As you can see...2 steps forward, 1 step backward...at least this is better than no steps forward...right? 

Our goal, as I've stated is still to be mortgage-free.  Hubby is nearing retirement age in just a few more years and if a person doesn't have a lot of savings at that time, I think making a good-sized mortgage payment out of Social Security can't be a lot of fun.

So it goes...we are still hopeful that within the next couple of years, Lord willing and with His Help, we can be debt-free with our home.  We may still be making payments on our vehicles but they should be paid off within a few years, too (hopefully).

In the meantime, I'm still learning...still reading finance journals online...still doing research as I surf for new ideas or as I read about others' experiences in their quests to get debt-free.  I'm praying and believing the Lord will help us to get out of debt. 

Remember what the Bible says...(Romans 13:8) 'Owe no man anything but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. '  Also, (Proverbs 22:7)  'The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.'

Working on Paying Home Off Early

Our goal is to pay off our home early. Because of the economy right now and also the interest rate on our home being higher than what our 401K was earning, we have temporarily stopped contributing to the 401K and have been adding that money, as well as extra, to principal on our home. Hubby and I are nearing retirement age. This blog is about paying off our home and becoming debt-free. The Bible tells us not to owe anyone anything but to love them. I truly believe this.

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Hubby and I paid an extra $132.00 on the principal of our home last month. After that, we were owing a little under $54,000.00. Yesterday, we sent in $500.00 on the principal. Thank You, Lord. For a web begun, God sends thread.

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Goodbye, Credit Cards!

The name, Southern Fried Finances makes about as much sense as our lack of knowledge in finances have in the past. Up until about a year ago, I understood very little, if any, about savings, interest rates, credit scores, etc. Hubby the same. Because of this, we have had lots of high-interest debts, including credit cards. We have recently paid off our three credit cards...yayyy!!!...and closed the accounts. We did this by filing, for the first time, our income taxes using itemizing, instead of the standard deduction, which we've always used for many years. So we got back over a thousand extra dollars than we would have, had we filed with standard deduction and we paid off our credit cards. So...having read lots of personal finance blogs over the past year and learning a 'few' things so far, I thought it would be helpful to our financial situation to do a personal finance blog as well as to others who are in similar situations as we are, also.

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We owe almost $55,000.00 on our home, which we bought 10 years ago. Most of what we have paid on our home thus far has gone to interest. We did a fixed 30 year contract.

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I hope this blog will encourage others to be good stewards of their finances!

Why the title, Southern Fried Finances?

Why the title? The name, Southern Fried Finances doesn't seem like it goes together, does it? Well, actually, it makes about as much sense as how much I knew about finances until a year ago when I began reading personal finance blogs and discovered how little I knew about personal finances.

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Savings? Zilch! Wasn't savings something temporary that you kept back in your billfold or pocketbook which ultimately got spent on a little road trip or a new pair of jeans??? And...'bank savings'...??? What was the use of that when they gave you such a little bit of interest anyway? (Considering the amount I would save and then spend.) 401K? Sure they offered that where my Hubby works, but if we chose that, we might not get to go to the beach or the mountains for our little vacations, would we? No thanks to that, either.

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Credit cards? We paid CASH! That's right! CASH, you heard it! Cash for everything, except checks I wrote to cover some things from our only money account, a checking account at our local bank in town. That was, until a couple of years ago...after Hubby had worked a lot of overtime over a few months and bought me my dream baby grand piano for Valentine's Day in 06, I naturally wanted to make him happy, too, so one night while we were browsing around inside a local store, he surely let it be known he wouldn't mind having a new riding lawn mower, and not having the CASH, the store was more than happy to let us get credit with them, thus was born CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #1. But what is a new riding lawn mower without a new outside building to park it in? So, that also went on CC#1. Another time, I got a new computer at a store and paid CASH for the computer but the other essentials I wanted to go with it were acquired thru CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #2... (the first store d0esn't carry computer stuff)...which, the computer essentials were paid off but still having the card, I decided to get Hubby his dream HD 52-inch color tv for Christmas 06...so here we were with 2 store cards with HIGH INTEREST RATES. Of course we didn't know what the rates were when we were 'APPROVED' and we were in celebration mode over that word 'APPROVED'. Yay, we are approved...we get to get what we want at this store...isn't that grand!? I don't even think we knew what the monthly payments were going to be...all we were concerned with was that we were 'APPROVED'! Next was CREDIT CARD MISTAKE #3 although I'm not sure it was too much of a mistake. You see, when about a year ago I began reading personal finance blogs, I read about a lot of people doing 0% interest balance transfers. It was around this time that I realized that CC#1 interest rate was 21% and CC#2 interest rate was 22.65%. Through an online calculator, I found out that if we transferred #2 onto a new CC#3 @ 0% interest for a year, AND pay it off within a year, we would save HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS!!!! I was so excited I told my dear Hubby and his response was the usual "I make the money and you're the one that pays the bills...you know what you're doing!". Bless that man. If he only knew how rich we could be had I learned what I know now about finances before we got married years ago. Anyway, I got CC#3 and they wouldn't put the whole $1300 or so on it, as it was only approved for $1000. So I figured better some than none, at least that would still save HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS in interest, especially since we'd only been paying the minimum monthly payment. So, we have still been paying on CC#2 as well as CC#3...and of course let's don't forget CC#1 also. Our credit is not the best because of the way I abused it in the past. Not knowing anything about the importance of credit reports and paying bills on time, I would simply not pay a bill or two (or three) when it got time for Hubby and Yours Truly to take a little road trip vacation until we got back home even though I'd saved up the money for us to go on. I thought it would be good for us to have backup emergency cash in case our vehicle broke down or something...so I thought we'd simply make the payments late when we got back home and if we ended up spending that money while vacationing, we'd simply catch it right back up as soon as we could. I did this routinely. Which meant once or twice a year. And we'd catch it up over time and lots of angry phone calls from our creditors, which surely didn't help our credit rating, to say the least, thus the high interest rates.

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Well, would you believe that within a year of my having studied lots of personal finance blogs (maybe including yours!) that I realized my mistakes (probably not all but I'm still learning) and our bills have been being paid on time (thank the Lord) and our credit rating has dramatically improved? (Also Hubby now has 401K at work, which we started at 2% and now have raised it to 3%, hoping to soon be at the full 6% which his employer matches half of up to 6%.) Hubby recently bought him a nice used Dodge truck at 11.0%!!! (That's EXCITING for us! We had BIG SMILES over that interest rate, cause what I've been learning about finances, I've been teaching him, also!) This was a few months after I got a 'new' used vehicle at 8.9% which I was happy with, considering the best we'd done in the past with vehicles was 14.5% and the truck my Hubby 'had' been driving that he traded in on his current one was at 19%! So, you see the improvement although we had on-the-lot financing done for us and didn't try to get a lower interest rate ourselves and I don't know if that would have made a difference, anyway.

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So, I decided to write a personal financial blog to try to help others like myself (are there any?) who have made financial mistakes in the past but who want to learn how to be a good steward of what God blesses us with. Also, we have a goal...to pay off our home within a few years, and I figure that this blog will help us stay on track with that as well. So, ya'll have a new baby on the block...Southern Fried Finances...(btw, my name is Maria)...Hello and Welcome to you!