1.)Set up a weekly budget--take out cash--no debit card purchases
2.)Cook more, eat out less.
3.)Get weekly food budget WAY DOWN
4.)Continue to work towards paying off debt.
5.)Build savings back up to 5,000.00 (&STOP USING IT!!!)

1.)Come up with a budget and stick to it
2.) Open a savings account and deposit at least 5% of our monthly income in it.
3.) Get dh enrolled in the 401K plan through his work

__________________
Crystal
Mom to Paige & Faith

well here it goes.
1. get cc payed off.
2. Get daycare up and running.
3. Save more on food. (menu will help.)
4. keep our one house payment in the bank.
5. keep a record of what we have. don't over buy.
don't worry so much. we will keep it together.

put the check card away! put the check card away! put the check card away!!!

actually, i should just cut up the damn thing....ohhhh that sounds scary!

Well, I have worked hard on making a budget system that works for us. So we have that in place. And we consolidated all our accounts down to just one so there is less to keep track of.

2007 are goals

No more overdrafts (should be easier with just one account instead of five!)
-keep accurate register and work with a "do not spend below" amount that
increases by 25$ every pay eriod
Pay all of our bills on time (no more late charges and we are almost there)
One thousand in an emergency fund
Pay off 4,000 in debt next year (500 a month for 8 months)

I'm also making it a goal of mine to lower our food expenses. With a good combination of organization, stockpiling, coupons, price book and scratch cooking we should be able to lower our grocery bill quite a bit. I'm working on that 15 minutes a day.

I'm making some big life changes in 2007 too!

1) I'm going to try that Cindy's Porch plan that someone wrote about on this board. It looked pretty good, the hard part for me is I start off strong, then start slacking off later on. But I'm going to keep with it this year!!!

2) Spend a lot less on everything!!

3) Barter a lot more, buy only what I can't barter for or do without!! This board has been great for bartering, everyone is willing to work with you!! I LOVE this place!!

4) Put money in savings, we had a savings account, but closed it because our bank started charging $5.00 a month, we were loosing money faster than we could put it in!!

5) De-cluttering, yeah I know it doesn't seem like a financial resolution until you think about all the stuff you've bought because you couldn't find the one you had!! So I plan to de-clutter and barter!!!!

I'm sure there will be more to add later!!

Tonya

Can someone tell me what the Cindy's Porch plan is? Thanks

Sheila

Cindy's Porch is a site that talks about saving money, and has financial worksheets you can print and track your spending and helps you with ways to save money and things like that. I just started it for 2007, but it's real basic stuff, you can get an E-mail newsletter and it has hints and tips in it of free and frugel things to do instead of spending money.

Tonya

I think we are going focus on paying off credit cards and medical bills. We are hoping to buy a house soon. NO MORE RENTING!!!!

I've been pondering this question for a while now. Financially I would like to try to cut back on a lot of things and pay big bills all at once (home owners and car insurance). So there is a lot of things that go with my resolution.

1) Clean out all the "clutter" in my house (put it in the shed for a yard sale- put that money into savings). Get everything organized and do whatever it takes to try to lower food bill even more.

2). Instead of scooping out clearance racks for clothes- buy gift cards from local grocery store (which is on the higher price side, but has double coupons) that offers fuel perks points (for every $50 spent you get .10 cents off a gallon of gas).

3) Cut back on electricity- our rates went up this past month and they are crazy high!

4) Pay all big bills at once and get them out of the way. Then I don't have to worry about trying to "juggle" the bills at Christmas Time- they always seem due then!

5) Quit smoking- me and my dh smoke and that's where a lot of our money goes. If I quit smoking that would save us a lot of money- even better if he quits!

6) Cut back on Christmas! We did fairly well this year on Christmas- but I think we can do better! I started to track every cent I spent so far on next year- I also plan on buying the gift cards through the grocery store and use that towards Christmas purchases throughout the year.