Tips like these helped us pay off $127K in debt. You can read our story in Slaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After.
Welcome to 31 Debt Free Missions! This year on Queen of Free, during each day in January, we will provide 31 concrete debt free missions or challenges for you to take on to #SlayDebt and take charge of your finances this year. Each mission will take you less than an hour (some will only require 15 minutes). Whereas, 31 Ways to Kick Debt in the Teeth (which I’m reworking this year and reposting in January, too) focused on some of the philosophical changes you need to make in order to be successful with money, 31 Debt Free Missions are action steps to put into place after you have your thinking straight. Even better, during the month of January, we’re revisiting each of these challenges in order to sharpen our money saving and debt slaying skills.
Are you ready? Your mission is as follows:
Day #25: The Receipt Bowl
Tracking your spending is tricky and complicated, right? WRONG. Here’s the thing. If you’re not intentional, organizing receipts and monitoring online expenditures can get hairy. But they don’t have to. You can organize receipts in 2 simple steps with this debt free mission.
I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a reconciling freak. Someone mentioned to me last week that she had to at least get things down to the dime the other day when she was managing her household Quicken account. Dime? What about those nine other little precious pennies? How could you sleep at night knowing that there were nine pennies running amuck? I’m a nerd and I know it.
However, I know that daily checking the bank account and matching up what you’ve spent with your budget isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. So if you’re brand new to budgeting, you need to establish the Receipt Bowl. It’s a simple practice of taking note of what you spend before you evaluate where you need to make changes in your budget. Keep these pointers in mind as you establish yours.
Spend Normally
There’s a great temptation for anyone who begins a new discipline in life to bite off more than you can chew. You drink so much water that you do nothing but run to the bathroom all day. You restrict calories until you’re weak or emotional or ravenous. You go gung ho on decluttering and throw out things you need. In the same way, when you begin paying off debt, you can feel the need to go all Ebenezer Scrooge on your money. “We’re buckling down and only eating dust from the cabinets while we all huddle in the corner under one blanket!”
This is not healthy. No one should do this.
On the flip side, I’ve met a woman at a speaking engagement who the day before going on a new budget intentionally went shoe shopping, blew a ton of money, just to make the argument that she needed a bigger dollar amount for the clothing category.
Also a no-no.
For at least 30-45 days, you should spend normally. Don’t be insanely overboard either direction. This will give a real baseline for how much your household economic outflow.
The Bowl on Top of the Refrigerator
Honestly, it doesn’t have to be a bowl. It can be a basket or an envelope or a box. But during those 30-45 days, place every single receipt and bill (print out the online statements if you pay bills online) inside of that box. Similar to your Tax Box, this extremely simple organizational system allows you to dump important documents until you’re ready to evaluate them. We put ours on top of the refrigerator for a season, just because it was central in location. You can put yours wherever you will remember to dump your receipts at the end of the day.
Go Through the Receipt Bowl with Your Spouse
After the 30-45 day window is over, go through each receipt and bill with your spouse. Tally how much you spent in each area of your budget (groceries, dining out, entertainment, utilities, medical expenses, clothing, rent or mortgage, and more). Write down the amounts on a budget form and determine where you might be able to scale back. You can also use a spreadsheet or a piece of software to get a good handle on these expenses. Keep those budget meeting tips and ways to communicate with your spouse in mind when you do this!
Rinse and Repeat
The crazy thing about budgets is that they are fluid. Your expenses fluctuate every single month. That means you need to regularly re-evaluate your spending and take into account upcoming irregular expenses. Birthdays, back to school, holidays, summer camp, and more can easily throw a wrench into your financial machine and toss you off track. Unexpected repairs and illness can do the same. So even after a 30-45 day experiment, you may want to repeat the process again and again to keep your spending on track.
You can organize receipts. You can take charge of your money. No one magically extracted it from your account. Track where it’s going and give it orders so that you can achieve your goals.
Did you see the previous Debt Free Missions? Knock them all out this month!
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Take the Restaurant Challenge
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Run Your Credit Report
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Set Up a Tax Box
- 31 Debt Free Missions: 5 Memberships to Ditch
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Adjust Your Withholdings
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Quit Using Credit Cards
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Go to the Library
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Eliminate Cable
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Pantry Prep
- 31 Debt Free Missions: 3 Phone Calls to Pay Off Debt
- 31 Debt Free Missions: The Bank Field Trip
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Make Your Own Laundry Detergent
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Hit Unsubscribe
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Stop Money Leaks
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Maintain Your Car
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Save Money on Prescriptions
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Kill the Fees
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Change Car Insurance
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Reorganize the Game Closet
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Build your Budget
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Appliance Maintenance
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Saving Money on Gasoline
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Start 5 Savings Accounts Today
- 31 Debt Free Missions: Sell Something (NOW)
Have you had any success selling items to leverage toward paying off debt? What methods worked for you?
My book is now available: Slaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After. You can also check out Inspiration to Pay Off Debt: 30 Days of Encouragement from the Queen of Free
This post contains an affiliate link. That means when you get a great deal or maybe even something for free, you also help our family pay off our mortgage early. And for that, we royally thank you!
