Fiscal Cricket Figuring out this financial freedom thing.

The budget meeting went well today. With several website/iOS development invoices coming in this month there should be ~$4,000+ extra at the end of the month to pay off credit cards. There is a possibility that this money may go to buying a used vehicle and selling the newer vehicle. This would free up ~$600/month of cashflow and knock out about 30K of car loan debt! My financial advisor is crunching these numbers and we will decide if its better to pay off the cards or buy a used car/sell newer car. Ill update this Friday.

Had another great meeting this week! Unfortunately there is ~$550 of vehicle and income tax adjustments that are due that wont go towards my our debt

There is ~$800 budgeted towards a small personal loan that will be paid off this month as well. I am expecting ~$2700 worth of development work to come in this month and am expecting a $2500 bonus (drastically reduced by taxes Im sure) in my first June paycheck. My hope is that this month well be able to pay off close to 3 credit cards at the end of the month!

Still feeling positive and making progress!

Fantastic meeting with financial planner today. Great news! Since we started the blog weve paid down several credit cards!! Last month I was able to pay off the two smallest cards. Today I was able to pay off another credit card as well! Im awaiting several payments for invoices for development work for several companies. When they arrive I should be able to allocate them for two more cards possibly in the next few weeks!

Current net worth:

Focusing on paying off personal debt is my number one priority. I do, however, enjoy reading various perspectives on what people do to achieve financial independence.

Currently my thought-process is more of Dave Ramsey approach and working with gazelle intensity to pay off debt.

I spent part of this past weekend looking through various websites and reading about personal finance. Im sure everyone has read some, if not all, of the websites I began reading through but wanted to include them in on this site as a reference for readers and myself, just in case.

The sites I began reading through, from the very first post I might add, were:

Lots of fantastic information on these sites. Ill keep adding more resources as I come across other great websites.

I met with my financial planner today. This was a crazy month with my Mrs. FC traveling (a trip planned prior to working on finances) but will be able to pay at least $2,000 on credit cards this month. An additional $1,200 came about because of an iOS app I helped to develop last year for free. The product owner decided to allocate funds toward it. It was for a non-profit. Next month Im aiming for $3,500.

There will be, hopefully, a minimum of $3,200 total will be applied to credit card balances at the end of May! Whoop whoop!

I decided to start writing about my personal finances because I felt that it would help to keep my motivated on my way to becoming 100% debt free. I also wanted to document the process for myself and my family. I especially wanted to have a narrative for my three small children so that one day they could read what their mother and I had to do in order to dig ourselves out of our financial hole. Hoping that they would never have to go to through this and that their parents loved them very much.

I would like this site to ultimately consist of 3 things:

I could see this possibly evolving over time but wanted to point out those main objectives.

Currently our financial coach at Artisan Finance is having us stay one month ahead with our expenses. This has been fantastic and I would encourage everyone to have at least one, if not more, months of expenses in the bank. After we have the next months expenses locked in any excess funds at the end of the month are used to pay down debt. At that time I would like to update the total debt outstanding on this site to keep track of that as a way for me to see progress.

I have learned a lot in the past year about financial planning and goal setting. I have asked and received may additional resources along the way from people and sources online. I would like to document articles, tweets, podcasts and websites I come across. Ill add them in posts and try to keep a list up-to-date for people that find the site as these are great for motivation.

This year is critical. There should be, and will, be major milestones. The goal for 2016 is to sell our vehicle ($35,000) and buy a older vehicle for ~$5,000. Credit cards ($16,000) should be gone. Medical bills in collections should be paid off and cleared as well ($4,000). These will definitely be documented and Im going to celebrate!

I wanted to include our starting point on the About page as a reference to where we began.

Below is our current status:

Any feedback is welcome, send me an email through the contact page.

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Fiscal Cricket Figuring out this financial freedom thing.