Frugal Friday- Update

It's been so long since I posted about our families journey of getting out of debt I thought I'd post a little update. We are doing so much better than we were two years ago.Back then were living paycheck to paycheck, a lot of times we were already into our check before we even got it. It took a LOT of work, sacrifice, and patience but it is so worth it! Both of our vehicles are paid off and we hope with maintenance to keep them a very long time.  We ended up having to buy a new washer and dryer and that was a huge expense that we didn't count on. And we bought Ashley a car which we paid cash for (using our tax refund). We were so tempted to go to a dealer and get under a note but we stuck to our cash on the barrel plan and paid it straight out. Unfortunately she ran the car with no oil and blew the motor up! So we went back on our plan and borrowed the money to fix it. We have been very aggressive about paying it back and only owe about 9 more payments. Even with these setbacks though I'm very proud of our progress. We still use the envelope method of budgeting. I am really amazed how well it works! We have adapted it a little bit though. Now I try to only pull out the bare minimum that I need for bills and leave as much as I can in the checking account. Then the night before payday I check our balance and transfer whatever is in the checking account to the savings. By doing this we finally have money in our savings account for the first time ever. It's not a lot yet but it is slowly building up. And the kids all opened a savings account and we even opened one for our grandson. I took a tip from The Automatic Millionaire and called our mortgage company and did two things, first I set up our mortgage payments to be paid every two weeks instead of once a month, Second I set up to pay a little extra each time to go straight to the principle. Just by making those two small changes we will knock almost a year off our mortgage which means our house will be paid off in a little over two years! Yeah! I have to admit since money isn't as tight we do eat out a little more often, but try not to eat out more than twice a paycheck. We were able to reduce our phone bill nearly to half but ended up getting Hulu and Netflix (less than $20 for both) so we still came out ahead. Ashley graduated so we were able to save $70 a month on her school. I think the hardest thing is not making any new bills. It's so tempting to just go buy it on credit, but it is so nice not to worry every single payday how we are going to pay everything when we have more going out then coming in. We were even able to use some of the extra to start a retirement fund! So that's where we are, It took along time and we aren't where we need to be yet, we still have set backs, and Shane's job is so up and down but at least now when he gets a low paycheck it's not such a stress it usually means there won't be any left over to save instead of there won't be enough to pay all our bills.