We paid off our first focus loan this morning. That's a little over $8000 in 6 months, Who would have thought, not this girl.(Boy am I dancing the hurray I'm on my way to being debt free dance)

The most exciting part is now we can put atleast $1000 a month on my car. It's the bigger of the two that are feft but it's at almost 7% interest and the smaller one is at 0% interest.

We will be saving tons of interest because for every regular payment $100 still goes to interest. This is so much fun. And we can still afford to get everything we need and tons of things we really really really want.

We aren't going exactly gazelle intensity more like giraffe intensity.

The loan we paid off was our truck and beings it now owned by us we can get the full coverage taken off it and save even more money.

Our lawn mower went out a few weeks ago, and we have been using my daughters while I researched what to get.

We have gone through two high end self propelled mowers in the last 6 years. With that in mind, as I researched many articles said the manual machines had much less breaking down. Being I'm also into exercise....I can consider mowing with a manual machine one of my upper body workouts for the week.

So today I bit the bullet and got a new machine, I had also looked at used machines but that did not seem like the "inspired action" (I'm very
into "inspired action") so I went new. Being we had the money in our EF. (yah for EFs) I spend $217 with tax got a Troy Built with a big engine. My research also said get a big engine. I loooooooove mowing. I'm sure me and my baby will spend tons of content hours mowing together. Here is my little machine.

We went out to lunch yesterday. I wanted nachos. I don't eat that kind of food often, so if I was going to indulge I wanted great nachos. Hence I went to the last place I had great nachos....They had quite serving nachos, but they had something close so I ordered it. We had an OK lunch.

We will not be going out to lunch again anytime soon. We don't go out to lunch often and now I remember why; It's a waste of money. Boy have I changed. We use to go out all the time in our last life.

I don't feel quilty because we make good money and can aford to go out to eat if we want. I just feel like I wasted $32 that could have been spent in a more fun way. I could make a list of other things I would rather have done.

The craziest part is I just waited two weeks for my DH's paycheck to come so we could buy a new tubing tube.

Then turned around and wasted half the price of the tube again on going out to lunch, which was good but not that good.

Oh well not a big deal. And it cool to see how much we have changed, since we became. Living beneath our means fiends.

Also I just started keeping a running tally on the fridge of where my DH weekly check goes, so I will have to look at the silly $32 we threw away at going out to lunch.

We have been doing DR for a few months now, and I find that when I listen to him I have to run it through "my truth o meter" before deciding what is right for me. In the beginning I needed to take what he said as gosple because "my truth o meter" in regards to money was broken......but now it's not. So I still love DR and agree with tons of what he says but not all.....at least for my situation.

DR "strongly" suggests everyone pay off there debt at what he calls "gazelle" intensity. And we all know gazelles are really, really, really fast. In the beginning, I was obsessed (using gazelle or at least deer intensity) with paying off our first focus loan and I think that was a good choice for me and I will continue that until that loan is gone, which will be very soon. But after that I will side step from one of DR's golden rules



DR has what he calls baby steps, baby step 1 is to get a $1000 emergency fund, which we have accomplished. Baby step 2 is to pay off debt at "gazelle" speed which I agree with to a degree. Baby step 3 is to increase the emergency fund to cover at least 3 months expenses. This is where I will be side stepping. After we pay off the first debt we will start using any extra money we have to up our emergency fund to about $3000. I am doing this because it feels like a better choice for me. (And I have learned in the past to always go with my gut feelings) Then we will return to using "giraffe" intensity to pay off our other two loans.



DR also "strongly" suggests supending your retirement contributions to use in paying off your debt. I don't agree with this in my situation. I'm 54 and even thought I love my job and I mean LOOOOOOOOOVE my job, I still will want to retire some day. Furthermore, I believe with the market down right now I would be stupid to not take advantage of buying at such cheap prices.
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Things are going spectacular..just got back from our non-scrimping camping trip that we had more than enough to pay cash for.

So now we're back and focusing on living below our means again so I can pay $350 plus $100 *daycare for the **class I'm taking next week without using our EF. I know we can do this we just need to only buy that which we really need this week and next.

Right now we have $470 in our general bank account. And my dh gets paid at least $500 tomorrow. So we just need to not buy any wants even really really wants for about a week. Were up to the challenge!!!


*The daycare is for my grand daughter who is keeping grandma company a lot this summer.
**I need to take this class because I'm a teacher and need it to top out on the pay scale.

We are going camping for the 4th and taking and paying for my daughter, her hubby and three kiddies.

I love being able to do this and not charge anything and splurge a little and still not charge. I started to write what we had spent so far but I decided I did not want to think about that right now. I am putting it in my budget though. We make good money and can easily afford it.

Paying tons on our focus loan is taking a back seat this month in order to not scrimp on camping. It's all a matter of balance. And "for me" life is all about having fun. Sometimes "my fun" is paying tons on our focus loan and other times it's not scrimping on camping. As soon as we get back from camping we will jump on the focus loan again. Even with the luxury camping we will have it paid of before the end of August at the latest.

LITTLE EMERGENCIES

It sure is a whole different feeling when a little emergency happens and we have the money in our emergency fund to easily cover it. Makes the emergency seem like next to nothing. Sure brings a whole new meaning to the saying "IT'S ONLY MONEY", when you have the money to cover it without robbing from "peter to pay paul".