Moving Month

So many of you may know that I Jessica am 1 of 4 children in my family. It has been a crazy busy month for any of the current/previous Studer Children. All of us have moved in the very same month! My sister is the oldest and she and her husband just purchased there very first home in Arizona and closed on it this month, I am the second oldest and we are moving into a larger town home with back yard for Ellie near Fort Eusts, VA, I then have 2 brothers. The next in line moved to California to do his internship for sound engineering and then last but not least my youngest brother left for the Marines early this month.
Our wonderful mother has been super busy helping every one (even us, via facetime entertaining Kaiya). She helped my sister pack and watch her kids while the movers moved things, she helped my brother get everything to Cali and find him a place to live and the youngest she said farewell to with high spirits that he will succeed in his dream of a military career. Its crazy to think that not even 8 years ago we were all still living with one another or close to each other and now we are spread out everywhere.
Its been a very fun month learning about each one of our new adventures and we cant wait to create many more and see where the future takes us.... Maybe a few less moves.

*Jessica*

New Things to Come

Things have been going great lately. We put the decision to buy a home in Virginia on hold and have found a new townhouse, that is a little bigger then our current one with a fenced back yard and only 1 person next to us to rent. We are super excited to be moving in 2 weeks and cant wait to start this new "rental" year off in a new home and a place for Kaiya and Ellie to play.
Cody was recently promoted (which was over due) and he has some up coming field training and other events.
We are so excited to be taking our first family trip to Arizona over the holiday season. We cant wait to see all of our friends and family and then jet back home for the new year to come.
We will certainly post pictures of our adventures.
Have a blessed weekend,

The Schlotfelds

Family Visits

We were truly blessed this month with a wonderful 2 week visit from Cody's mom. We had so many fun things to do on the list not all of them were done. However, we do hope that she had a fun and relaxing trip out here.
Among some of the days laying around the house we did get out to Virginia Beach, Fireworks, Swimming, Mariners Museum, and the Norfolk Zoo. Kaiya loved every spoiled minute of having her Grammy here with us. We are just not getting back into a regular schedule and cant wait for the next visit.

3 Week Re-Cap!

We have had a lot going on the past few weeks, here is the re-cap for you.
Jessica had surgery early in June to remove some Ovarian Cysts and Endometriosis scaring, she is doing well and is cleared to go back to all normal activities and will monitored closely every couple of months to make certain nothing returns. She also turned 25 during part of her recovery and got to spend some down time at home in bed while her mom came to visit and help out. Cody celebrated fathers day with a nice dinner with friends and a few new movies and video games (which he enjoys playing). Kaiya has done really good with her potty training, she hasnt had many accidents and we couldnt be more proud of her, she is excelling and learning in school every day and amazes us with the funny things she likes to say. Kaiya is at the repeat stage of her life so anything and everything we say she likes to say too.... its a HUGE reality check as to what we say. Since Kaiya has been doing well with everything she recently got a new big girl bike. She LOVES it! Hopefully in about 6 months we can take off the training wheels and she can be a big girl. Its time that Cody and Jessica get bikes again, you have to run to keep up with Kaiya.
We will be moving soon (our lease is up the first of September) we have been looking for homes to rent or even the option of purchasing if this is where we will be for the next 10 years. So far anything we like is WAY over our budget, the down side to living in a "Historical" area. Hopefully when the time comes to sign a lease for something we will be able to find what we like and wont have to move for a few years, unless we decide to purchase a home.

We have a few exciting weeks ahead of us, Grandma Kera is coming into town for almost 2 weeks. Cody and Kaiya will both be home most of time with her, Jessica doesnt have any vacation time left to  be able to take off of work. We have scoped out some fun things for them to be able to go and do during the day and it helps that we have a pool at the complex. Kaiya LOVES the water.

We hope that everyone has a wonderful blessed day!

The Schlotfelds

Military Medical

It fascinating to me that people believe that Military Medical Insurance is sooo great. Well do they know that it can take up to 4 weeks to get an appointment... Say what! Yes people 4 weeks, and if its something that is specialized you can forget about getting that taken care of under 6 weeks.

It is truly sad that people who are on food stamps, WIC and the state given medical can see better doctors and get appointments within hours.

Not to mention if you have a small child who even so scrapes themselves and have to get looked at they send you directly to the ER. Yes a scrape, something that needs no stitches just a little note saying its okay for you kid to go back to school, all because they don't do "la-serrations". Is this a joke you are saying? That answer would be NO!....

Yes it has some benefits of you don't pay for it and you get all prescriptions free (if they carry them) and the pharmacy on which ever instillation you are located on. Other then that its truly horrible. You have cold and insensitive doctors who think you are crazy or that you "have" to vaccinate your child because they say so, well I'm sorry that you aren't a parent but as one I choose not too.

Forget about them being "reliable" to do surgeries. They will tell you one thing and do a completely different thing and make you wait all damn day for a surgery that was supposed to be first thing in the morning. Isnt it lovely to be a military spouse forget about your spouses possibly deploying or the fact that if they do deploy they may never come home or be able to meet their kids... So along with all the turmoil and sacrafice that they provide its a HUGE EFF YOU in the face when they straight up lie to you about every little thing.....

So all of you who are for the Negro of a president who thinks the "Healthcare Reform" is so great it will be like military insurance.. you keep on thinking that because its not great at all!

Getting out of Debt

So this post is yes about our family and financials but also a little bit about how I plan on us getting out debt and some of the knowledge I have learned from my previous experience with lots of debt.

So most of you know that Cody is military- so that covers 100% of all of our bills. I have broken down a budget on what we spend on our every day things, bills that remain relatively the same and then I took our max on the floating bills and inflated them a little so we have some wiggle room. The only thing that I didnt put in our bills under his pay would be the child care expenses and extra gas (since I work these are the bills that my money goes towards, if I didnt work they wouldnt exist). I, Jessica, also work full time and make a pretty good salary, that pays for child care, car expenses and other fun things that we get to do.

Luckily we have been pretty good with our money (some financial set backs before we got married but we took care of them with a hit to my credit). When Cody was in training we lived with family so we could save money there, I also put away as much as I could so that we had money to move and get settled with. The military will pay to move you, however you have to pay all the money upfront and they will reimburse you at a rate... so depending on how frugal you are you can end up making some money for it. All of the "extra" saved money that we had after being paid off we splurged a little but we made certain we had a savings account for emergency money.

Once I started working the budget got a little more loose, however more money was being put away/paying off debt. Our financial statement is that if we dont have the money for it, we dont buy it. We have 3 credit cards, one with the military and 2 with our bank. However only one of them currently holds a balance. We will not allow our selves to put anything on them that we can not pay off if we have to. Our savings account has grown and is looking pretty good, we are half way to our goal, not too shabby. I want us to have at least 3 months of living expenses, how we currently live, in our savings... so roughly $10,000.00. Now some may think that's a lot of money, when you have rent and food and all your bills it goes very quickly when no money is coming into the house.

The only "large" debt we have is Cody's car payment. So now that we are down to 1 credit card balance around $300.00- easily payable, we can start to make double payments on the car.

For the longest time I thought that having a running balance on a credit was good, I could show that I could make the minimum payment every month and I would be fine. The problem with thinking this way is that you get another card and say oh well I can pay the minimum on this one too.... Then the interest charges occur, what some done understand that you get charged interest on the card which makes the balance go up, you next interest fee goes off of the current balance... now you are paying interest charges for the previous interest charge. Something so little can take so long to pay off due to interest and minimum payments. The best thing to do is to pay what you can over the minimum payment, if you pay an extra 5.00 on your minimum that will go towards the interest that you owe. If you can pay off the card/loan at the end of every month so that you dont pay any interest.

Our new found philosophy about living with in our means, means that we have more money to spend. No we arent making anymore money then we were but we are always cutting the bills out that we dont need and in return we have more money. Its easy and simple, yes credit cards and loans are easy to fall on when you are stuck in hard times. However they shouldn't always be there for your every day needs.

I broke our budget down onto a spread sheet. I has on it what bills are paid which paychecks and what will be remaining. That way when payday comes around I immediately go and pay all of the bills for that check, mark them off on the spread sheet and what is left over is what we have to spend for our every day needs. If we want something that we can not afford that paycheck we save it and say next paycheck we should have more left over and wait until we have enough (with out taking from savings) and make the wanted purchase. 

Now that our family is living with less debt we feel a lot more free to splurge on the things we want over having no money left over in the end... It was hard at first to tighten down the budget and stop spending on the cards no connected to our bank account. However if you want to it is possible.

Thanks!

I know it has been a little while since we have posted.... Here is an update:

Cody is doing well, he is currently on gate guard duty (which sucks for Jessica) and he has been working a lot on his car lately. He is replacing old parts and parts that he wants to have perform better. He will hopefully be getting ranked up sooner then later, hello more money, he still currently have 3 years left on his Army contract and then who knows where we will end up.

Jessica is holding everything together with the extra hours Cody is working plus her work. She has to have surgery June 5th due to some cysts that have formed on her ovaries and will pretty much on bed rest for the better part of a week. Thank goodness for friends and family coming to help out during that time.

Kaiya is fully potty trained. She does wear a diaper at night so we dont have to wash sheets every/every other night. She is still doing good in school, Jessica and Cody and wanting to switch her to a different center due to some incidents that have happened recently. She is still the vibrant typical 2.5 year old who thinks she knows everything.... We have a feeling that this will not end anytime soon.

Ellie is relaxing around the house as always. Barking at every known sound ever made.

That is our little family,
Blessings and love,

The Schlotfelds