Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I may be compensated for purchases made via these links; thank you for your support of this blog.

Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I may be paid a small commission from sales via these links. Thank you for your support of my blog.

If you are new around these parts, the Mister and I took the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University course through our church last year. We have a goal to pay off half of our consumer debt this year. You can catch up on our journey by checking out our December update and/or reading our weekly FPU updates.

January Budget

One thing that helped us a lot with our January budget was that for Christmas we asked to gift cards to my favorite grocery store. We received about $120 in gift cards…which equated to about two weeks of grocery budget. We love our family.

The extra income wasn’t quite as rich as it was in December, but I’m pretty proud of what we did make. Honestly, I was surprised to make what we did off the clothing sales since I wear my clothes for years. I had no luck with Plato’s Closet (which was Amiyrah Martin’s first choice), but thus far, Clothes Mentor has purchased several items from me. I’ll be giving thredUP a try this month as well.

January Victories

Let me tell you, having our bills paid well ahead of time has lent a lot of peace to our minds this past month, especially when we both wound up at home sick with the crud. This involved trips to the pharmacy and our favorite Thai place for coconut chicken soup. It’s really nice not to worry about whether we can afford to buy this kind of stuff.

A tough decision that we had to make this month was deciding not to go to our jujitsu organization’s national convention. We just couldn’t justify the travel costs when we have debt and a possible tax bill looming in the not-so-distant future. This might not sound like a big deal, but this year the Mister would be recognized for passing his last exam. It was a hard sacrifice.

Then an amazing thing happened. The senseis at our dojo decided to gift a plane ticket to the Mister so he wouldn’t have to miss the trip. He’s also been invited to be an instructor, which reduces the registration significantly as well. All we have to worry about is basically meals, and he’d be eating if he were at home.

It will be tough for me to stay home and not get to support him in this accomplishment, but I’m so glad that God provided a way for him to go.

We closed two more accounts this month; both were already at zero balance and just hadn’t been called about. Also, we made a big deposit to the Health Savings Account in order to reimburse ourselves for all our 2015 medical expenses prior to starting the course.

Since we started our journey in September, we have paid off five accounts, totaling $1950. We have also set aside our baby emergency fund as well as started a savings fund toward taxes.

Do you want to get started on your journey to financial peace? I’d suggest reading The Total Money Makeover or going to daveramsey.com to find a local Financial Peace University class.

What are your financial goals for 2016? What changes are you making with your money and budgeting processes this year?