February 2019 Debt Update

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February brought our second monthly paycheck, and with it a lot of insight on our budgeting strategy. So far though, I’m liking the switch to a monthly paycheck. I’ve started saying no to things more often – simply because I know that even though the money is there in the checking account, I need the money to stay in there for the bills that I’ve scheduled out. Plain and simple!

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The first insight is that making the switch from a weekly paycheck to a monthly paycheck has not been as hard as I thought. As a matter of fact, it’s allowed us to keep on top of our savings goals, since we are able to save right away rather than waiting until a week that isn’t bill heavy. And it’s also allowed me to not worry about waiting to mail out a check or schedule a payment until after payday. The month’s money is there, and I can schedule them out all at once.

Another insight is that I have to modify our food budget. When we were paid weekly, I would take out $160 each week for our groceries. Doing the math, that’s approximately $693 per month on food {it averages out months where there are 5 weeks vs 4 weeks}. When I was setting up our monthly cash envelopes, I set our food budget at $650.

It may be enough once we get used to this new budgeting, but during our January budget where we had 7 weeks on our month’s budget {December 27th – February 14th}, I stuck to our grocery budget, but at a toll of using up a lot of what we had on hand in our freezer, fridge and pantry. When it was time to start with our February food budget, a lot of what has been spent has been on stocking back up. So I need to reevaluate our grocery amount for the time being so we don’t continue to overspend because we are forever restocking.

One drawback is that any leftover money from the previous paycheck gets used as our snowball on the 14th of the month. Based on our budgets in the past, it’s a bit too early in the month for it to be a “snowball”.

It’s simply because it’s been during the last week of the month for years now, and it will take time to become accustomed to in the middle of the month. No matter where in the calendar month your paycheck hits, your snowball is any money that’s leftover before the next paycheck.

Throughout February, we paid $1,269.31 on debt.

Credit Card 1:  $211.31
Credit Card 2: $278
Student Loans:  $230
Mortgage:  $550

Also throughout February, by numerous requests, I’ve started filming our weekly budget set ups. You can find them on my YouTube channel. I was really against this at first, simply because I’m not a fan of putting everything out there, but decided to start sharing our setups with you at your overwhelming request. I have found that it’s motivated me to stay on top of our budget even more!

With all that said, I’m impressed with our February debt payment. As of the writing of this post, our February paycheck isn’t done yet. On March 14th I’ll know what we have left for our debt snowball payment, and that will be on our March 2019 budget update. So stay tuned.

During 2019, we have paid $2,690.83 to debt.

I want you to remember throughout your debt repayment journey is a thing called life. There will absolutely be months where you’re crushing it, and months where life happens and you’re just getting through. In the end, all of that is completely okay! Give yourself the grace to learn from it, and to move on.

The end game is financial freedom, and financial security. The journey is all about changing your financial habits, learning to spend within your means, saving for the known, and having a little money on hand for the unknown.