Second Update- 3-24-2019

3/24/2019

Hello friends and family,

As Joseph Hughes and I head into our 9th month of marriage, I wanted to update the public world! In my last post Joey and I had made some goals. We have thought through them a little more and decided some goals that were not mentioned.

Goals for our next 5 years updated!!

– We still value debt payoff as one of our top goals. In January I did the math wrong on our current debt. We actually had $52,994.60 in debt. Since January we have paid off $2,247.32!!!! Due to interest we now owe $50,985.70. That is 4.407% of our debt paid off!!!! We are very excited to persue the elimination of debt in our lives.

-We have paid for a ticket back to Colorado for my sister’s wedding and are saving money for spending in Colorado.

-We have created an emergency fund of $500 and plan to add to it monthly.

-We have been looking at multiple Youth Ministry Positions in many areas.

-We are thinking about foster care much more seriously. We may start the process soon as it takes quite a while to be able to actually foster. We also would like to get rid of a large portion of debt if not all of it gone before fostering just to be in a better financial state to hold a child.

-Traveling is still on our mind. As our 1st anniversary comes up we are looking for a weekend getaway that will be on the cheaper side and not require me to take time off of work (I have to take time off for our trip to Colorado and time off at my job is hard)

-We want to unpack and organize all of our stuff (we highly appreciate all that our friends and family have already helped!!)

-Joey is looking for a new job as he is receiving very low hours. It was also announced that Lifeway will be closing in June 2019. We are both very sad about this store closing not only do to the job portion (Joey was looking for better hours anyway) but also because this store has meant a lot to us. It is a solid store to find good books for life as a Christian (not saying its the only one) and also to get encouraged from both staff and products. Joey had an interview with one job already and has another one this week so I have high hopes.

Some of our hobbies include:

– Law and Order Svu (Im obsessed)

-Swimming as a mermaid (just me)

-Doing puzzles

-Bible studies with our friends

-Watching movies on the Lizt (a movie list of movies I have not seen. We just finished Lord of the Rings)

-Budgeting. I like this activity now as I finally understand it and have a grasp of our monthly needs (for example gas is $90). I also like to see how much we can realistically put towards loans. One of my favorite things to do is to budget based on various amount of hours, assuming we have the same living costs, how long it will take to pay off debt. The longest I have figured is March 2024 and the earliest I have figured is January 2022. I know this is ambitious and probably not realistic, its at least helping with motivation for loan repayment.

Overall, we are doing well. As you can probably tell by this post, we are very financially minded right now. We don’t want to waste anymore resources or time on trying to payoff debt than necessary. Have a good one and I’ll do another update soon.