by Ashley
Hi all,
Just popping in quickly. I published a post yesterday (10/10/17) titled, “Facing The Harsh Reality” that, sadly, has disappeared into the interwebs.
The issue was caused by a migration of servers and unfortunately my post was caught in the cross-fire. The big bummer is that there’s no way to recover the post and I don’t have it backed up anywhere. It took me a long time to write (and was pretty tough to publish to begin with), so I don’t know that I’ll be able to recreate it.
If, randomly, anyone has any copy of it (e.g., if you were subscribed and received an emailed version or for some reason took a screen shot or have any other electronic copy of it), please post a comment here so I can reach out to you! I’d love to re-publish it if I’m able but due to the server migration it’s been totally lost and I lack the time (and am feeling a little too defeated about it) to try to recreate it right now. Major frowny face!!!
~Ashley
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
So sorry you lost your post after putting so much work into it! Maybe in the future it would be a good idea to compose posts in a document on your computer? Hope someone can help you out with this one!
I do! And I don’t delete until after they’re posted here. But the post was published yesterday and didn’t disappear until this afternoon (so weird!) so I was thwarted!
Ashley, I’ve got your post! I had opened it earlier and didn’t finish reading it, so I still had it in a Chrome tab. I copied it, along with the comments at the time, to a Word doc that I can email you.
Thank you so much!!! Another reader was able to provide a full electronic version so I can get it from that! THANK YOU for your help!!!
Ashley, I had actually left your post open on my phone and I just checked and it’s still there, so let me know if I can text you screen shots or something!
Thank you so much!!! Another reader was able to provide a full electronic version so I can get it from that! THANK YOU for your help!!!
Hi Ashley,
I’ll try to rewrite my comment.
I was applauding your honesty.
And I was wondering if you could do something similar as Ashley L is planning: renting out some space in your house. Either to a housemate or some storage space? Or a garage?
Having a Tennant would probably be quite a change but if it could generate some extra money, it might be worth it.
Another reader suggested Air B n B.
My other question was:
Are you back using YNAB?
Are you trying to get back to living on last month’s income?
I would assume it would be good to do so, because it would really force you to restrict your spending to build up those savings.
Best of luck!
Thanks for taking the time to recreate your comment here!
We are using YNAB – but over the summer it was more like using it as a “tracking” system than a true budgeting system. I am thinking of trying the Every Dollar program from Ramsey, too. I’ll write about this more at some point.
I don’t think it’d be practical for us to rent out a room. We only have one guest room, which we use with relative frequency since our entire family is out-of-state and someone usually comes to visit every 2-3 months. Additionally, the guest room is tiny (I think it was intended as a baby’s room) and shares a wall with our master bedroom so it would be pretty uncomfortable to have someone living full-time there. BUT I do think its good to start a conversation about practical ways for us to increase our income (outside of selling stuff).
Oh good, I was worried you chose to delete it because maybe there were nasty comments. I saw the post but wasn’t able to read before it disappeared. I pulled up the google cache of it and read that. Link to cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qQKNVh2uwfMJ:www.bloggingawaydebt.com/2017/10/facing-harsh-reality/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
And repasted content if something goes wrong with link:
This was a tough one for me to write and to post. I’m about to let you take a peep into our current financial situation. It’s not pretty. I appreciate constructive feedback, but go easy on me!
I’ve already talked about a dozen times about how our finances got out-of-control over the summer months. Everything was fine through April-ish. But then a perfect storm hit that we did not weather very well. First, my final paycheck from my part-time job was in April (even though I worked into May, my contract was written with 4 lump sum payments and the final one was paid out in April). Just like that, we were down $3,000/month (that’s how much my part-time job paid. Note – I had to leave my part-time job because I got a big raise at my full-time job and had to sign a non-compete).
Hubs’ income from his company had been dwindling for months as he was back in school full-time and only had one crew working for him. He continued to pay for all his business (and personal) expenses, but when his licenses and insurances all came up for renewal the best option for us was to call it quits. By mid-June, he was out of money and all his expenses (that he’d previously budgeted and paid for separately out of his business income) needed to be included in the regular household budget. We lost his income and added a few line-items to the “expenses” portion of our budget (specifics in a future blog post).
Our income had plummeted overnight.
We’d grown accustomed to an income of over $10,000/month! And then, just like that, we were down to an income of only about $3,000/month (my take-home pay from my full-time job). We basically kept on spending like it was business as usual. My raise would go into effect mid-August. I thought that if we could just hold out until September (my first full month at my new rate of pay), that we’d be golden! I was expecting to have a huge bump in my take-home pay. I was hired at $55k and when my raise went into effect I’d be at a $95k salary (in 2 years’ time!). I thought my take-home would be over $5,000/month – somewhere in the $5-6k range (note: I have a lot of automatic payroll deductions – see more here).
What I did NOT expect was that my first paycheck with my raise (for 2 weeks of work) would only be $2269. We’re talking under $4500/month. Nearly a thousand per month under what I’d been anticipating, and less than half of what we’d grown accustomed to bringing home.
I spent a lot of time in August (after that first paycheck) looking at our budget trying to make sense of it and see how I could make it work. From an objective perspective, I know $4500/month is a lot of money. Many families get by with half that amount! When I first started blogging, our household income was only $4,000/month so we’d done it before! And that was when our babies were in diapers still! Surely we could do it again!
But the numbers just didn’t work. Our lifestyle had become inflated. Our budget was bloated. We’d picked up a lot of monthly payments that didn’t used to exist (more on that in a future post). And no matter how I tried to look at it, our expenses exceeded our income.
And so, we continued to live on credit cards.
The blog was just purchased by its new owner at that time. I didn’t know if I’d even be blogging anymore. So, I gave up. Without the public accountability and with our financial situation seeming so bleak, I didn’t think it could be done. I didn’t see a way to win.
Fast forward to today. Last month (September) was the first month that we were able to balance our budget since April. For four months (May – August), we were in the negative every month and supplementing our lack of income by relying on credit.
We’re still not in a good place.
Although we didn’t go into the red last month, it was just barely by the skin of our teeth! I had to implement that surprise No Spend Week the last week of the month. And, oh yeah, September was a 3-paycheck month!!! How will we do it with a normal (2-paycheck) month? How can we get by on our current income?
I did change my payroll deductions so I have a slightly higher take-home pay. Instead of $2269, my paychecks are now $2440. Among other things, we also have a huge tax debt we owe. I could adjust my withholdings to get a little more back per check but am purposely not doing so until the tax debt has been paid in full. It’s going to be awhile.
Bottom line, we need to get a budget in which we are somehow living on $4880/month. At this point, our expenses exceed that amount. Heck, our debt obligations alone are over a third of that! It’s kind of scary stuff still.
We’re committed to cutting back in many places. Hubs finishes his personal training course this month and will hopefully be able to land a part-time job. And we’ll supplement in the mean-time by selling everything we can to try to earn some side-cash and STOP increasing our debt by living on credit. Gulp!
More concrete budget details to come.
NICOLE, YOU ARE MY HERO!!! Seriously the best!!! Thank you so much, I know there are more important things in life and in the world going on right now, but I was seriously SO BUMMED to have lost this! THANK YOU for helping to recover it!
Aw shucks, happy to help! I love reading your posts. I’m so happy you’re continuing to post here and that you’re so open and willing to share your life. You’re a fantastic blogger.
I see you have you lost post back now but just Incase you ever have an issue again, your feed on bloglovin was all stil intact! I think it pulls the RSS and saves it so always has a copy xxx
‘Thought for later when you can afford it, but I seem to recall that there was an earlier contributor, Beks from California, who had a brother living with them for a while. She and her husband added extra insulation for more privacy between the guest room and their bedroom. They were very pleased with the difference.