It's been a while...

It's been a while since I wrote a post.  I've been doing a lot of thinking regarding our personal finances.  Our current plan is using the debt snowball method to pay off  my wife's student loan first and then our car.  If we were to stick to this plan religiously, we would be debt-free (minus the mortgage) in about two years.  Now that my son is approaching the age to send him to daycare, that's a cost that I need to factor into our plan.  Another cost to factor in is daycare for baby #2 sometime in February/March.  With daycare costs for both children, that's significantly going to reduce the money we can throw at our debt snowball.  The good thing about personal finance is exactly that, personal.  So with that, there are two options we can pursue.

Option #1 is to continue with our current debt snowball method and pay off as much as we can until baby #2 starts daycare.  Once baby #2 is in daycare, we need to go back to the drawing board and readjust our budget.

Option #2 is to stop our debt snowball immediately, and instead, pay our monthly bills and sock away all additional income into savings while increasing our miscellaneous and grocery budget.  The reason for the increase is because since starting this blog, we have managed to go over it each month.  It's funny that once you're on a plan, these extra expenses seem to pop out of nowhere.

I am leaning towards option #1 because how satisfying would it be to be debt-free?  It's all about sacrificing now to enjoy later.  The good thing it, with a toddler and baby #2 on the way, we'll probably be pretty busy for the next two years or so and won't have much of an opportunity to travel.  Once we are finally debt-free, it's been way overdue for a nice vacation with the family.  By then, our children will be old enough to be able to appreciate a nice vacation and they'll actually remember it.

I also need to come up with a financial strategy on how I can space out my bills more evenly.  Around the beginning and middle of each month is when a majority of our bills go out leaving us with only a couple hundred in our checking account and then have to wait for our next pay period.  That's definitely stressful so let's see if I can readjust.

I've also been thinking of ways on how to make additional income on the side.  A few times I was able to offer my web development services on the side which was nice but I haven't come across any new opportunities yet.  I am also always thinking of really simple things to invent that will improve peoples lives but the ideas always seem to be taken already.  I never stop thinking so I'm sure a good idea will come along sooner or later.

Last Saturday, a terrible thing happened.  As I was running the dishwasher, I heard a loud continuous spray of water.  As soon as I heard it, I KNEW.  The hot water hose that feeds my dishwater ripped off from the attachment.

As you can see from the picture above, the hose just ripped apart from the connection piece to my main hot water pipe.  Luckily I was able to turn off the main water valve to the entire house.  My sister-in-laws husband tried turning off the hot water valve that feeds the dishwasher but was unable to.  I don't think I could have either as hot water was bursting out at a very fast pace.  A lot of the water leaked into the basement and on top of my washer/dryer and puddled on the floor.  Not much I could do except crack the window open and let it dry out.

Fortunately, when I purchased the dishwasher back in 2012, I also purchased the protection plan.  So I called Home Depot yesterday and they said they will send someone out today between 8-12 PM.  Well, unfortunately, when the guy arrived, I spoke with him on the phone and he said that the protection plan DOES NOT cover this incident.  Reason because the protection plan only covers the dishwasher itself and if something breaks with the dishwasher.  He was saying this is an external issue and that I should call a plumber.  I tried fighting it as much as I could, but I was unsuccessful.  As you can imagine, this definitely ruined my morning/afternoon.  But as I was thinking about it, I started to be more OK with it.  Stuff like this happens and should be grateful there wasn't more damage or that no one got hurt/burned trying to turn off the hot water.  The good news is, all I have to replace is the water hose and luckily I don't have to remove the dishwasher to replace it (I hope).  My plan of attack is to tape the new hose to the old hose, open the front kick panel, and disconnect old hose and pull the new house through the back to front.  I hope its that simple.  And then I should be good to go.

On a more positive note, last Sunday, we went out to Petsmart and bought a new bed for Juliet.

Those things are not cheap!  That bed cost $140 and we would always have to buy her a new bed every year because she gets it dirty and it's really hard to clean.  So I suggested, why not put on one of Eli's crib sheets over the bed?  She called me a genius and that's what we did.  The brown cover is Eli's chenille crib sheet.  Man is it soft and velvety.  Eli loves playing on her bed now and Juliet was even snoring last night!  I'm pretty sure it was her and not my wife =P.

These are some of the events from last weekend and I'm going to give it until the end of this month if I'm going to continue with option #1 or option #2.