10 Year Reviw - Part I (The Beginning)

Mr. Sam and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage this fall.  As a result, I'm starting to think about what we've accomplished, together, in those 10 years.

We started our financial journey together, before we got married, but January 2007 was the beginning of our effort to pay down our unsecured debt and implement a debt free life.  The journey was mostly inspired by the fact that I wanted and needed a new car, but did not want a car payment.  It was the summer of 2006 and my car, then a 1999, had hit expensive repair time.  I had made some repairs to it and it was calling for more repairs and I was fed up.  So, I was doing some internet research and I came across a Dave Ramsey article about car payments.  I read some more on Dave's web site and I later checked out one of his books from my local library and read The Total Money Makeover.  I read some other books as well like The Millionaire Next Door and others.

We were in the middle of getting ready for our wedding, so I did not have time to implement the plan.  Instead, over the December holidays of 2006 (after the wedding and honeymoon), I reread TMM and we started working the plan.  We began with Dave's baby steps which we also modified a bit as we moved forward (side note, my husband is a lapsed Catholic and I'm not religious, while Dave's books and message can be a bit preachy we just ignored those parts).

We began 2007 with a financial reckoning.   First, we combined our assets and our combined net worth was $807,539.  We were holding real estate valued at $1.27 million dollars (that changed dramatically the next year).  Our retirement savings was at $216,184.  We had the $1000 emergency fund already covered (TMM baby step one).

Second, we had a lot of debt.  We had $679,520 in mortgage debt, our primary home, three rental properties and a piece of land.  And, we had $50,946 in unsecured debt, $27,000 for Mr. Sam's student loans (MBA) and the rest credit card debt.  So, we began 2007 with TMM baby step two, pay off all debts but the mortgage.  We had added up all our debt, we had a chart showing interest rates, minimum payments and totals.  I took over paying all the bills (prior to marriage I paid our joint bills and my bills, but Mr. Sam handled his own bills).  So, we began working the debt snowball.

More on debt later, I also want to look at where we are, 10 years later, with careers, education, family life, savings, real estate, car habits, etc.

Update on Swap.com Experiment

Earlier, I posted about my Swap.com experiment.

Almost a month later and I have earned $80 in profit.  I've sold about 18 items (a couple of which were sets).  The least expensive item I sold was $3.00.  The most expensive item I sold was $15.00.  Initially, the first week or so that my items were posted on the web site (they do the photographing and posting), I sold several items that were lower priced.  Then my selling rate slowed down and I sold an item here or there but the items were more expensive.  I have 8 items (include a couple of sets) posted and priced that have not sold.

I did much better selling maternity clothes that I did selling infant/baby items.  In fact, I have only sold one baby item thus far.

At present, I have another big box of mostly maternity items to send off now.  The items I am sending in this time are my high end, business and fashion maternity items.  I also had almost all of these items dry-cleaned so I will need to price the items high enough to recoup my dry-cleaning expenses.   These items will likely be priced at $30 or more to account for dry-cleaning costs of $10 and original prices of $80 - $130 per item (and many were only slightly worn).

Wish me luck.

$300 Rule & $100 Rule

As I have previously posted, I have a long standing goal to have plantation shutters installed in two bedrooms in our home.  But, since plantation shutters are very expensive I decided that I would update my plan and just get some new, nice shades for these two bedrooms.

I have done quite a bit of research, measured the windows, priced out my options and then I settled on a plan which will run about $800.

But, in our home there is another step I had to take and that was to discuss the project, the expense, the source of the funds (we have this money sitting in our house project account) with Mr. Sam.  We have a rule that anything over $300 has to be discussed and agreed to between us.  Most of the time we reach agreement pretty quickly, but not so this time around.  I've talked to Mr. Sam about this project several times, gave him the pricing, told him about my research, but he thinks it is silly to spend this kind of money on custom shades.   If we can't reach agreement then we don't go forward that is our rule.  We imposed this rule back in 2007, because we were trying to throw every extra dollar at our debt.  But, we have kept the rule because we believe that we should be in agreement that expenditures above $300 are necessary or a mutual want (vacation) or one of us convinces the other.

We did finally agree or he finally gave in, but we did reach agreement.

The other rule we have is the $100 rule.  When we are spending more than a couple of hundred dollars we have to wait a day for each $100 of the purchase.  So in this instance, if we are spending $800 on custom blinds we have to wait 8 days before we actually make the purchase.  This waiting period prevents expensive impulse purchases.

I haven't yet ordered the blinds because of the waiting period rule, but will do so next week.