Have a Plan

I believe to be successful in anything in life, you need to have a plan. Success doesn't just happen by luck, it takes a lot of hard work and preparation. What is it that you want to accomplish? Write it down, and then write down the steps you need to take in order to make it happen. I happen to be a natural planner. I'm not sure how this happened, but I absolutely love to plan. My absolute favorite is planning vacations. I mean who doesn't like doing that. But I also enjoy making financial plans. Our financial plan changed a little bit when we found out we were going to have a baby. This meant my wife would start working part time when the baby arrived, and we needed a plan in order to make sure we could do this. Here's what our current plan looks like.

Any and every extra dollar we have is being saved. We're trying to accumulate as much savings as possible to cover the expenses that lie ahead. We'll then use that money to pay off all our doctor/hospital bills. Then our savings will help us while my wife is off for maternity leave for 2 months with no income. We'll continue to keep $2,000 in an emergency fund. And whatever we have left will go towards paying off my wife's car. At this point, my wife will working part time ,which means paying down our debt will be a slower process. But it will still be a major priority. As soon as my wife's car is paid off, we'll start working on paying off her student loan, then my student loan. Hopefully we can be debt free, aside from our mortgage, in under 2 years.

Now, there's a variety of things that can throw a wrench into all these plans. At some point my car is probably going to need some repairs. Right now it's at 150k miles and still going strong, but I'm sure it will need some parts replaced before too long. When something like this happens, you just take care of the problem, and then readjust your plans accordingly. I keep saying your plans, and that's not really accurate. The key to a successful plan involves God, we'll discuss this in my next post.

Back in June I posted a blog about what we have our thermostat set on. You can find that article here. We had recently upped our thermostat to 78, and we're having some trouble getting used to it. What we had no trouble getting used to was our very low electric bills. Our bills were half of what most of our neighbors were. I think I can deal with getting a little hot if it means extra money in my pocket each month.

At the time I posted a survey on this site asking what others had their thermostats set to, and I was a little surprised at the findings. 50 percent of the respondents had their thermostats set somewhere between 75 and 80 degrees. It was split with 25 percent saying they kept it between 78 and 80, and the other 25 percent keeping it between 75 and 77. Most of the time when I tell people I keep my thermostat at 78, they look at me like I'm crazy, so it was nice to see I wasn't the only crazy one. We did have one crazy person though, they said they kept their thermostat above 80. How crazy is that? I'm just gonna guess they live up north, and don't have many hot days.

Another 25 percent kept their thermostat between 69 and 71, and 18 percent kept it between 72 and 74. These are the people that like staying cool and comfortable during the summer, and don't mind paying for it. Surprisingly, no one choose any thing under 69 degrees. I thought there would be at least one die hard person that would keep it at 68 or below. I know a few of my friends that keep it at those levels, and we always have to wear jackets when we visit their house. What amazes me, is these are often the people who can't figure out why their electric bills are so high. Kinda funny.

We're now moving out of the summer months, and headed towards fall. I'm sure some of you are excited about that. I personally like the warm weather, but I enjoy fall as well. I just hate those wet and rainy winters. But fall means even lower electric bills, so I can't complain. It also means Christmas is right around the corner. I hope you've been saving up. I know I have.

What's your favorite season of the year? Why?

Wednesday Rant - Fast Food

I'm trying a new idea out today on my blog. It's called my weekly rant. Each Wednesday I'll pick a topic that's really getting to me and just go on a rant about it.

Today's topic - Fast Food

Is it just me or does it seem like fast food prices keep increasing? My wife and I will easily spend on average $11-$12 eating at a fast food restaurant. This may not seem like much, but it seems that it wasn't too long ago that we would've just spent just $7-$8. Now I realize that fast food is still relatively affordable, and more people are turning to it during the recession. But it still doesn't change the fact that if I eat fast food once a week, over the course of a month I'll have spent close to $50. I imagine that number goes up to over $75 for a family of four.

Sonic and Hardees have to have the highest prices. While Hardees has reinvented itself with the angus burgers, they've also reinvented their prices. Sonic just recently added a $1 menu, which was long overdue. But have you seen it? It's a joke. It includes a small coke, a junior banana split, or I think an apple. Meanwhile you'll break the bank getting anything there big enough to fill up a normal person.

McDonalds is still keeping it real with their $1 menu. Yes, they had to change the double cheeseburger to a McDouble, but I don't even miss that extra slice of cheese. The problem is I can't get my wife to eat off the $1 menu. She always wants a Big Mac, and seeing how she's pregnant, she gets what she wants. Unfortunately, I read McDonalds may be raising prices because of the recent minimum wage increase.

Yes, I realize there's a simple fix to all this. Stop taking the wife with me when I eat out. And if prices keep going up, I may just have to do that. Which fast food restaurant do you think is way too high? And what fast food item do you just have to have no matter what the price?

Who I Am

It's come to my attention that maybe we haven't been properly introduced. You may have been visiting my blog for several months now, and realize you don't know anything about the genius behind CMM. Let me set the story straight.

My name is Travis. I'm a 28 year old married guy with my first baby on the way. That's right, first baby, which means all kinds of craziness. It means more money for baby, less money towards paying down debt. It means instead of having a wife working full time, she'll now be working part time. It means saying goodbye to my dream of owning a BMW, and saying hello to 200,000 miles on my Nissan Pathfinder. It means I'll no longer be called Travis, but soon I'll be called Daddy.

I work at an explosives distributor. While, that may sound exciting, it's really not. Hard to believe I went to college for 4 years to end up sitting behind a desk and answer phones for 45-50 hours a week. But, it pays the bills, and I don't hate going to work everyday, so it's really not that bad. However, I'm way more excited about my church and my Savior. He's an amazing God, and it's awesome to serve Him within a really cool church.

As far as my financial background, I wish I had a really amazing story to tell. Most financial bloggers have stories about going bankrupt and having massive amounts of credit card debt, etc, etc. I don't have those type stories. I have a dream. I dream to one day have enough money to do what I want. Work the job I want. Go on the vacation I want. Buy the car I want. Give away what I want.

This isn't really a blog about what I've learned, or how much financial knowledge I have. It's the story of a man who's trying to get to the top of the financial mountain. I hope my story will inspire you, and I hope many more of you will join me on this journey. It's not going to be easy, and I'll need all the motivation I can get.