Welcome to the New Year! One week down and fifty-one more to go! 😁

This year, the goal is to not spend any money on take-out food. Toward the end of summer last year, I started ordering from Panera and on occasion dinner from Outback. Due to the time of year, Joe’s pay increased and so it made it easier for us to spend money on takeout.

I’m guessing, for the two of us, we spent at least $200 a month for the last three months of the year. That’s a total of $600 less that should have gone to our debt. ARRRGH! 😡

Was it worth it? No. It didn’t add to our happiness and only took from our wallets. So this year I’m on a mission of staying focused. The only expenses we’ll make, in addition to the ones that are already in our budget are: broken appliances, house repair, children’s necessities and medical bills if we have any. Anything else can wait until we’re out of debt.

Joe hurt his foot at work in December and we received the bill about a week ago. $323.17 OUCH! And I don’t mean in the foot. 🤣 BUT, it’s the first time, EVER, that we paid cash for a medical bill over $200 that we didn’t charge on a credit card. 🤗 Writing that out almost makes me cry because I’m so proud of our accomplishments.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Some of you have asked me debt-related questions over the past few months and so I decide to include them in this video too.

HOW TO PAY MEDICAL BILLS?

If you don’t have the money to pay your medical bills, be sure to call the doctor’s office, hospital or collections company and have them email or mail you a copy of your bill with an itemized list of charges. Not only for you to verify charges but to verify that you legally owe them the money.

Then get on the internet and google the medical code. It’s usually a five-digit number and you’ll find what the charge means or close to what it means. For example #99203 falls under “new patient” but can also mean “outpatient visit.”

After verifying and agreeing to the charges, ask them to make monthly payments until the charge is paid off. If the pay-off date falls within 12 months, they will usually agree to this schedule. Check out youtube if you have more questions about this subject, as there are lawyers giving out free advice over there.

HOW TO BUY CHEAP RELIABLE CARS?

In my entire life, I have never bought a new car and I’m not embarrassed to write that. For me, buying a new car is not a smart investment so we’ve always purchased used cars and just recently started buying cheap used cars.

When we first got married, we purchased used cars between $10k-$15k. Did we have that kind of money to pay cash? Not at all! So about two years ago we did an overhaul on our way of thinking when it comes to cars. Also in the past two years we’ve helped three of our children buy cheap reliable cars.

Most of the cars were found on Craiglist and all of them are Toyotas. The first car cost $3850, the second cost $4000 and the third cost $5000. They get between 29 and 39 miles to one gallon and are all very reliable.

LIVING SIMPLY

There are SO many ways to live simply. Here are just a few to get you started.

• 1 / walk daily
• 2 / eat healthy
• 3 / stay out of debt
• 4 / buy what’s needed, not what’s wanted
• 5 / rely on savings as back-up and not a credit card
• 6 / and… smile 😍