Budgeting has really made a difference!

I can't believe how much either. I mean, Jason has cash every week for cigarettes and lunch money if he wants, I usually have a few bucks, we use cash for groceries, toiletries, gas for the cars. We always have enough for our bills. I set aside 1/4 (or 1/5 if there are 5 paychecks before the bill is due) of each amount due to a bill from each paycheck. For example, if Jason gets $900/wk, and we owe 950/mo for rent, each week I set aside mentally/on paper in our budget book and an empty envelope marked rent, between 150-200 depending on how many paychecks from the 1st-1st. We either take the leftover 50-100 each week and put it towards our $1000 emergency fund OR towards the next debt we are trying to pay off.

This month? Jason got a health and welfare check from his old employer for the difference in healthcare costs and pay premium they get since that's supposed to be his. We spent some, we saved some and we paid off some. In total, we used 203.25 to pay off a credit card we had used the previous month. We hadn't been charged interest yet, since it was less than the 30 days, so YAY! Then we decided to take a chunk and pay the last of the hospital bill for E from his cardiologist appts. We set up a payment plan for $80/mo, but have been sending at least $130 snowballing from the credit card we paid off before and extra any chance we got. In about 5 months, we lowered it from almost $1300 to less than $700! I sent the payment through online banking today, and we have officially paid that off 13 months earlier than our payment plan is set up to do!!!! OVER A YEAR EARLY! Talk about some inspiration to keep going! Now to get rid of that second hospital bill, high interest CC, motorcycle payment and truck payment, so we can concentrate on paying down our new mortgage!!!

Oh and on another awesome note... our mortgage payment is almost $100 LESS than we were expecting, so that's nice. AND we got some cash at closing, so we went and bought some of the paint and supplies we wanted to get and have quite a bit left to do some other stuff! Tons of pics of our new place on my phone, just have to figure out how to upload more than 1 at a time, since my darn memory card is so tiny and won't fit the computer without an adapter. I've been sending them 1 by 1 and now my phone battery needs charged, LOL.

Anyway, had to share this awesome info. Just excited!