Tax Returns are Beautiful

We got our return back today. Boy that was nice to check the bank account this morning! Anyway we originally planned on using the money to add onto our home. Lets face it with 3 little ones and a house this small we are busting out the seams. We dont own a lot at all and keep things pretty simple. The fact is our home is about the same size as an apartment (at least the ones we lived in) Anyway we worked the numbers and talked about our wants and needs for the new space. We did a TON of pricing and in the end we have put the addition on hold until a little later in the summer (it is coming this summer though, no doubt about it!). With our tax return we paid off all debt other than our home and student loans. Thats it, thats all we have left! :D You have no idea how happy this makes us. Really. We had a very small amount of usless debt (as I call it) especially compared to the national average of $8562 (credit card debt alone) but still it was there and I hated it. So now we are that much closer to being totally done with debt.

We bought the book Debt Free on Any Income today and we will be reading that and implementing their stratagies. Our plan next is to pay off our second mortgage with its outrageous interest rate of 12%. It is an interest only loan so for the last 4 years we have lived her we have paid 4 cents off the principle balance. (Yes I know its horrible. We are a good example of why you should read ALL the info you sign at least TWICE, and not always belive your financer.....thats a whole other post though). Anyway the balance on that is just over 15K but that will free up a nice amount each month.

Right now though the focus is saving for the addition. We have the plans drawn up and ready to go. We have the trusses ready for us to say go. In keeping with our February finance goals we even spent last weekend collecting items for the addition, all from used or recycled sorces. We priced all that we bought last weekend through Lowes and it came to nearly $1200! Our price you wonder, was less than half of the lowes price! That includes the woodflooring for the masterbed, 2 doors, 3 windows, roofing sheathing, roof underlayment, 12 recessed lights, house wrap, and more that is escaping me now. Not to shabby if I may say so. We got everything off of craigslist and most of it from a contractor that was liquidating.

So you wanna see what our house will look like........

We will be adding a new upstairs just like this. It will have a masterbed and bath and a HUGE family room that will double/triple as the school room and craft room. It will add roughly 600 sqft to our 1100 sqft home. That is all we need for our growing family and it costs much less than we anticipated. Over the course of the next 6 months we will search yard sales, estate sales, slavage yards (we found a terrific one last weekend) and craigslist to gather as many materials as we can for as little as we can. If we continue with the trend we will save lots and lots of $$$.