JANUARY’S 10 THINGS

January has finalllllly come and gone (well almost). It’s been a crazy month in different ways than usual. I am very ready for summer time and for my twinnies to be here but I’m trying to not wish time away, because every old person I know says not to do that.

On to January’s 10 things! As usual, these are 10 things on my mind, some personal finance related and some not.

(1) I’ve been on bed rest for basically the whole month of January. 

We got back from our trip to New Zealand around New Year’s. Just a couple of days later, I had a big bleed that wound me up in the antepartum unit of the hospital. I spent a night there and seemed ok so they sent me home. Just two days later I had another really bad bleed and they admitted me for 5 days. These twinnies are already trying to kill me and they aren’t even here yet! 😉 Being on bed rest has been very challenging for me. I’m usually very active, plus I have an active 5 year old so it’s definitely been an adjustment. Danny’s had a lot of pressure put on him and we’ve had to rely a ton on family and friends, for whom we are so thankful.

Fortunately, bed rest aside, I seem to be doing pretty well. No more bleeding since I was admitted at the beginning of the month so we’re hoping we can keep these babies inside until May!

(2) Our debt payoff app will be hopefully launching in spring. 

All this time on bed rest has given me time to work on our app 😉 I CANNOT wait for it to launch, mostly because I’m honestly excited to use it ha. Follow me on Instagram for some sneak peaks of it. It’s gonna be so good.

(3) We stocked up with our produce rescue. 

With the holidays and such it had been a while since we’d made it out to our produce rescue, where we get 70 pounds of produce for only $12. We usually only go once or twice a month and then freeze a lot of the extras for future use. It’s citrus season here in Arizona so we were well stocked with oranges and tons of good stuff. Click here to see if there is a similar produce rescue near you.

(4) We paid off $5000 of student loan debt this month. 

We paid off $5000 in student loans this month. Our minimum payment is $4246 and we aim to pay off over $10k each month. This month, we decided to make a smaller payment because we weren’t sure what our hospital bill was going to be like and we’re also trying to get the app going.

(5) I negotiated a hospital bill from $6000 to $2000. 

I was very nervous about our hospital bill, especially during my first hospital stay. The only time I’ve had to stay in a hospital previously was to give birth to M, so I just had no idea what to expect. Going into it, I told every single nurse I encountered that I didn’t have traditional health insurance (we use a health share ministry) so if there was anything they knew of we could do to save money, to please help! And they did! They advised that their prenatal pills, which they were supposed to ask me if I wanted to take every single day, cost a few dollars PER PILL. So, I had Danny bring mine from home. They also had someone from the hospital’s billing/finance department come and chat with me.

(6) This month reminded me how important life, and disability insurance are.

If there’s one thing emergencies teach you, it’s how important life and disability insurance are. We got a life insurance policy towards the end of last year and it’s given us so much peace of mind. The last thing you want to feel stressed out about during a time of tragedy is money. We chose a policy with Haven Life insurance because they are underwritten by MassMutual (aka a huge company that does an amazing job of paying out on it’s policy owners) and they offered us the cheapest rate we could find. If you don’t have life insurance, take 5 minutes and see what kind of rates you can get here.

(7) We saw the new Star Wars. 

We saw Star Wars and I kind of have a crush on Kylo Ren. Is that weird? I know he’s like murdered people including his dad and would probably be super creepy in real life… who knows maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones but I was kind of crushing. Am I crazy? 

(8) We haven’t gone out to eat in weeks. 

This month I’m really proud to say that we haven’t really gone out to eat since the beginning of the month! That is usually the hardest part of our budget to stick to. I think being nervous about how devastating the twinnies are going to be to our debt payoff journey has made all the difference haha. 

(9) M got another Kids on 45th box. 

If you have kids and you haven’t heard of Kids on 45th, check out my Kids on 45th Review here. Basically, it’s very gently used clothing that is personally picked out for your kid(s). We’ve loved it! My little guy plays hard and playing hard means he wears out his clothes fast. So having Kids on 45th send him a box of high quality gently used clothes that he can play in to his heart’s content has been perfect for us. Plus they are basically thrift store prices but I don’t have to go to the thrift store!

(10) M turned 5!

Ahh how is my little guy already a 5 year old?? I can’t even handle it. We had a super chill party at our house for him, which I literally threw from the couch. I got most of what we used on Amazon, including these cute LEGO glasses, some lego candy, and a sheet cake from Costco and he had some neighborhood friends over and they ate LEGOed, and jumped on the tramp to their hearts’ content. [Related: Cheap Places for Kid’s Birthday Parties]

How was your January? Drop a comment, I’d love to hear from ya. 

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Here at Deeply in Debt, we offer tons of personal finance advice based on our own journey paying off $650k of student loan debt. If you have student loan debt and aren’t sure where to start or what to do, I highly recommend the CFA’s over at Student Loan Planner to help you put together a solid financial plan for your student loan debt. We personally used them and it literally saved us over $200,000 on our student loans. You can check out the Student Loan Planner here.