I've heard a few times now from others that my husband and I live in a very tiny house; essentially a "starter home". Our home is 1,260 sq. feet with 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath, dining room, living room, kitchen and an additional 350 sq ft finished basement. At a little over 1600 square feet of livable space I don't think we'll have any problems when we have our 1st child. Am I being naive?

The only issue I see with even 2 children is the bathroom situation might get a little difficult. We are thinking about paying cash for a family room addition in a few years (and trying to do most of the work ourselves) that would include a half bath in it. Is it so ridiculous that my husband and I plan to stick it out and try to pay off this house in 15 years while raising a family? Sorry to rant, but hearing the word "starter home" makes me feel like people are implying we're a failure for not moving to something big and grandiose once we have kids.

Some days I find myself getting overwhelmed with all of my financial goals. I know I have to just break it out and take baby steps, but it's so hard.

Right now I'm at the point where we want to seriously consider children. I wrote in the last post about staying home and needing money to cover my lost income for 6 months. I also wrote about the SUV which I got beaten up a little bit for. I understand the SUV (even a used one) is a bit of a luxury so I agree it isn't necessary at this time, but the 7-8k to cover expenses is. For some reason paying off that much in debt is do-able for me. Once I put money on a debt I know I'm not getting it back and I see immediate results when the balance goes down. For some reason I don't feel that way with money saved so I know it's going to be harder to build this fund up. I know I know, it's all mental. I'm' sure as soon as I find out I'm pregnant I'll be more motivated to save, but at the moment I know I'm not so it sorta feels like this thing that may happen in the future and I'm not as dedicated. We'll see..I'll keep you updated on the progress!

T and I were thinking about little ones and I started crunching the numbers. If I want to stay home for 6 months after having my first, we'll need to have 7-8k to cover expenses without my income. I figure two 2-door cars won't be of much use, so I figure we should sell one and go with at least a sedan. Since we're into home repair and at Home Depot more often than we should, we figure a SUV would be roomy enough for kids and a few pieces of drywall should we need it. We're interested in a used Kia Sorento at the moment. Even if we sell the volvo for 4k (thats generous with all the miles it has) we're still going to need at least 4-5k to buy an SUV without to many miles. So much money and I don't even have any kids yet!

I've been down this road before. I want to refinance and I can't. It's so frustrating to see all the money I'm losing every month by not being able to. Here's the quick recap...

-Bought home in Feb 2006 for 166k. They had to break it into two loans 8% and 11% to avoid PMI? I was still in college and my husband had next to no credit either. We took what we could get.

-By December 2007 our home value went to 225k and we refinanced our two loans into one home equity loan at 7.24% fixed for 25 years. Looking back we should've refinanced into a mortgage at that point, but we were stupid and didn't realize you could roll the closing costs of the mortgage into the loan and would've had a better interest rate.

-So now, 2.5 years later I'm desperate to refinance to a 15 year loan but our equity has dropped to 0. Just had an appraisal done last week and the value came in at 160k. So disheartened. All the work we did (building deck, knocking down walls, reconfiguring kitchen, painting, etc.) and the home is now worth 2 thousand less than what we owe. The mortgage consultant at PNC is trying every avenue, but so far no luck. Right now we need to bring 15k to closing and that's not going to happen. I've tried refinancing at every other bank in the last 6 months and nothing has panned out. We're not behind on payments. We bought a house we can easily afford. Why am I penalized for trying to be responsible??

My husband likes to make fun of me. He thinks it's a little strange that I carry this excel spreadsheet with me everywhere I go on my USB keychain. I think it's a little strange that he is content to go through life without the slightest idea of what our finances are. On occasion I bring up the spreadsheet on my laptop at home and indulge in my fantasies and have him watch. "See - look what would happen if we put all our excess money on this loan?! Or or if we pay down the house!? Look at that!" "Right..yeah..great." On occasion, when I feel like we've made great strides with reducing debt, I break out into song and sing The Circle of Life from Lion King (of course replacing "circle" with "spreadsheet" whenever I can).

Yep. I guess you could say I'm a little bit crazy.

Since I am a state employee, I know what all of my pay increases are based on our current contract, and in one tab of my spreadsheet, I've listed all the increases and on what date they occur. I've guesstimated the increases for my husband as well. I deduct taxes and retirement contributions and figure out our current and future net income.

Another tab is filled with all of my expenses. A column for necessities and another for supposed "necessities". My husband is a smoker, so unfortunately I have to budget for his vices. I tried enticing him to smoke by saying he could keep all the money he didn't spend on cigarettes for 6 months and buy himself something but so far that hasn't panned out. Moving on..

A third tab includes a breakdown of future paydates with allocation of moneys. We pay all the monthly bills and the mortgage and the rest plunk on debt.

A fourth tab shows all debt incurred since I graduated college (3 years ago) and what we've paid off so far.

A fifth charts (or should I say charted) daily exercise. Sadly that has not been updated in a while.

A 6th and 7th tab even breaksdown... dare I say it? Maybe not. Perhaps I'll divulge another day.

As you can see this has become a rather unhealthy obsession. Since I've started these spreadsheets around a year ago I've becomed much more disciplined and organized and motivated.