Time for my monthly assessment of our family’s finances. For those of you who are new readers we read and followed Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness.

Time for my monthly assessment of our family’s finances. For those of you who are new readers we followed plan to get out of debt last year. We have completed baby steps’ 1, 2, and 3.

I realize I didn’t update last month. With our vacation, homeschool convention and the move, things got a little out of control. We didn’t even have a budget for the month of June! UGH!

This month our financial goals have taken a bit of a detour. We found out recently that our van needs about $2000 worth of repairs. We have been sinking money into this vehicle for a while and since it isn’t even worth $2000 we have decided to work towards replacing our van rather than repairing it. We would like to purchase something smaller that will be easier to drive and park in this big metropolis that we live in.

One of the great things about having no debt is that we should be able to save for a new (to us) car fairly quickly. We will have to set aside some other savings goals, since we would like to replace the van sooner rather than later, but once we finished saving for the car we should be able to get back on track with our financial plan.

Financial Goals for 2008

Fully Fund Emergency Fund by 2/1/08
Completed on 1/31/08 YIPEE!!!!!

Blessing Others -
10% of our income goes directly into the giving category. I would like to increase that amount so that we would be able to bless others when we have an opportunity. We had a few opportunities last month to bless others financially, I am looking for more opportunities this month. Recently we have been finding great items on the curb that people want to throw away. We have been able to bless others with our finds.

Fully Fund Orthodontics for Oldest- Completed and paid for the braces in March in CASH!!!! We currently have $800 saved for the next child, so we are on track for another set of braces in a few years. (This will be put on hold until the new car is purchased)

Begin saving 10% of income into Roth IRA’s and TSP- My IRA was fully funded last month. We wanted to fund DH’s quickly, but might take a slower route due to our need for a car.

Begin College Funding for Kids-
We will start funding this again in June. We are going with a 529. (On hold)

Begin aggressive savings for house and car-
We have about $1000 in our car savings which would not replace a car for us at the moment. We have not researched things completely, but think we need about $5000 or $6000 for a decent used car. Our goal is to have this amount by the end of September.

Funding all of our expenses for the year- We are still on track for funding our expenses. We will cut back a little until the car fund is completed.

Vacation Funding -
The kids are chomping at the bit to take a Disney vacation. Although this is not my first choice we are saving money every month, plus all of our change, in order to go to Disney sometime in 2009.

Cutting Our Expenses- We will be examining our budget to see what areas we can trim to help increase our car fund.

Groceries- Our budgeted amount for this month is a little higher since we are hosting my husband’s family at the end of this month. On our last road trip I picked up some great ideas for feeding a large group of people. I plan on using some of these ideas when my husband’s family comes to visit.

Clothing - We have been continually blessed with beautiful hand-me-downs. Last month I cleaned out the kid’s closets and have about 10 bags for Goodwill and we passed several bags along to friends. We only need to fill in few gaps as far as purchasing clothes so I think we are doing well in this category.

Gifts –
I have decided that I am okay with the amount in this category every month. We love to be able to give gifts and if we can afford it, I want to continue.

Finding extra sources of income- Can I just give up on this one?! My husband occasionally talks about picking up a nursing shift every once and a while to boost our savings. At this point we are still in the talking stage.

Tax Rebate-Here is what we did with our tax rebate. We finished funding my Roth IRA, used some for homeschool materials, padded our savings account, bought a computer and a sewing machine.

Can I say again how great it is to be DEBT FREE!

For those of you who are working towards this goal… you can do it! The sacrifices can be great but it is worth it in the end.

Check out Money Saving Mom for more financial check-ups.