(Another old one from Oct. that's a little out of date...)

I've been having a hard time finding the motivation to write again given the major Fail I feel like our money makeover ran into this week. It started out with good intentions. I wanted to feel more certain about Pulling the Trigger on our debt and making a big initial payment from my preliminary budget excess estimate. So I finally put it all down in a spreadsheet for the next year. All our fixed expenses, all our non-discretionary non-fixed expenses, and all the little extras we're still learning to trim. And I compared that with both our fixed and estimated sources of income. I've been doing this with Quicken for years actually, but somehow it looks different in Excel. Or at least, in this case, it looks much smaller. The excess that is. All I know is that somehow the $2000 I found before dissipated into only about $250. WTF?

Am I just that bad at this? I thought I was pretty good with math and estimating/projecting? Why do Quicken and Excel say such different things? The best I can come up with, (other than user error which I have repeatedly checked for) is that it has something to do with me doing month by month totals in Excel, whereas in Quicken its kind of a running average. For instance, the 30 day low balance projection in Quicken isn't much affected by the fact that grocery day will just happen to occur 5 time in Oct rather than 4 as usual. And the fact that some months get 2 paychecks, but a few months get 3 paychecks is sort of averaged out. In my spreadsheet though, each column gets only exactly what that month has (or doesn't) and so some months look much better than average, and others look much worse.

There's also a few things I realize now that I hadn't really included in Quicken. The new car tires we need before this winter. Xmas. The fact that, for whatever reason, my home business is totally sucking compared to normal right now. Basically all the things that tend to fluctuate a lot. I tend to use more average amounts in Quicken, but I wanted my spreadsheet to reflect the worst case scenario so that I would know what we could afford "no matter what". Be careful what you ask for.

Unfortunately, in terms of debt reducing motivation, these first few months seem kind of stacked against us. This month and Jan. look to be especially dismal, and Nov. and Dec. won't be much better. Feb and the spring should kick butt though, if we don't lose steam by then. Ugh. How to get this debt snow ball rolling? And not lose more traction in the meantime? The Total Money Makeover book answer is to start selling stuff. I repeat, Ugh. What if we're just...not that type? Lame, I know. Do I really want this or not? And if so, what am I willing to do for it? I'm still trying to answer that.

Hubby and I actually have talked a little about some things we could sell. Unfortunately, most of it would sell much better in the spring than now, but there are a few possibilities. I should stop sulking and start pricing. Sigh. Did I mention how little free time I have as it is, with two year old twin boys? This is seriously not how I want to be spending my time. There's a lot of things I don't like about the early part of this process though. Obviously, this isn't the fun part. The fun part is coming. Its just a few years out yet.

I need to keep the faith. I need to trust that this CAN happen for us. I need to believe that a stable, healthy and exciting financial future is a true possibility - no, Reality, for us. It's starting small. Very small. But it will get BIG. And it is going to start with this goal: No matter what else comes up this month, or how the numbers seem to change, I am going to pay at least $250 extra (above the $500 minimum we are required to pay already) towards our credit card debt by the end of this month. Hold me to it!