The Plan - Part 1

Throughout my time on the road I will be providing you with an inside look on how I was able to quit my job, and join my husband on his job in the month prior to our Texas move.

WE PLANNED! We didn’t just wake up the weekend after Thanksgiving and look at each other and decide I should quit my job and leave our home. It was after we arrived home from our April Texas trip when we started discussing our desire to move and for me to be able to spend some quality time with Ray prior to our move. We quickly realized if we were going to do this we needed to have a plan.

·  We immediately reviewed the schedule for the master’s degree program I was currently enrolled in and decided that I would not quit my job and we would not leave our home until I had completed the program (completion date of Nov. 12, 2011);

·  We reviewed our finances and determined what we could do to decrease our monthly expenditures:

o Pay off a small $500 student loan immediately (we used money from savings to do this – money is fungible – this could be replaced later and would save us from paying interest on the loan );

o Pay off the gas credit card ($600-800) over 4 months;

o Sell my paid off car and split the proceeds in half: using ½ to pay off a credit card and putting the other ½ aside for future down payment on another vehicle. This still left us with Ray’s truck which I would use until we left because he didn’t need it;

o Changed insurance companies: this took about 1-2 hours total and saved us $300+ per year;

o Cut driving down to only necessary trips I would do all of our errands on my way to or home from work to avoid wasting gas on the weekends;

o I would continue couponing to save money on groceries.

·  I cut back my IRA contribution – while this generally isn’t advisable I was contributing almost 20% of my paycheck to my retirement account – which is a lot for a 26 year old – so I cut it down to 6-7% which is average for a 26 year old.

These three things were all just part of the plan. Each person and family is different and thus there are likely areas you can’t cut back where we were able and likely there are areas you might think we should have cut back on but we chose not to.

Again the key is come up with a plan and be realistic – for us knowing we “couldn’t” move and I “couldn’t” quit my job until I completed my master’s degree program was a perfect speed bump. It allowed us time to think things through and adequately prepare. 6 months was enough time for us, but you might need 9 months or maybe your plan would work on a 3 month time frame – whatever the time frame its best to set one because then you have something to work towards.

In the planning posts to follow I’ll detail more how my couponing obsession helped us save a ton and allowed us to help others too.