I am posting this in response to those of you that commented on my Home Theater Project.

It's been a few weeks and I am happy to report that my family and I have no regrets as to side stepping the financial plan to work on the HT project and we enjoy the room almost daily.

Here is a link for those that wanted to know what we put in the HT: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/members-theaters-ht-projects/283558-first-home-theater-progress-pictures-opinions-suggestions-coments-welcomed.html#post3522872

I keep my wife in on all financial decisions, this has helped me over the years to assume control of our finances and build her confidence in my decisions pertaining to our financial future. The bottom line is, when I plan projects like this, she pretty much goes along with whatever I plan. It helps that I keep money in her pocket too We all enjoy going to the movies so it was easy to convince her that the HT was a good idea.

Thanks again for all your comments

It's not as bad as it sounds though. As some of you know, we recently became debt free save for the mortgage. The next step was to build our emergency fund and move onto the mortgage... but something got in our way.

My wife and I decided to install a modest home theater in our home. We took our computer/storage room, cleaned it out, then started from scratch. With a goal of spending no more than $5,000 dollars, we wanted to have the feeling of the movie theater (Save for the sticky floor, bad smell and babies crying). Well, I am happy to report $8,000 dollars later we have our theater.

Though it cost a little more than we planned (And truthfully, we still have a few more improvements that we would like to do) we are very happy with the turn out. The thought process is we will have the ability to stay home and watch a movie on the weekend and save us some money in the long run. (Maybe not but the entertainment will be worth it)

The equipment was charged on a 0% credit card and since we no longer have any debt, we were able to save enough money in the two months we took to install the theater to pay the balance in full. The only ongoing charge will be our Netflix subscription that will provide weekly movies for us to watch (We shut off our cable TV to save us almost $70 dollars per month).

Thanks for reading,
Ray

UPDATE: Thank you all for your comments, please view this link to see my HT progress. I will need to add current pictures but this link walks you through the steps I took.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/members-theaters-ht-projects/283558-first-home-theater-progress-pictures-opinions-suggestions-coments-welcomed.html#post3522872

Today marks a great day in the Paseo history as today is the day we completed Dave Ramseys Financial baby step 2, "Debt snowball".

We were able to pay off $67,200 worth of CC and vehicle payment debt in 22 months thanks to some savings, the wife picking up a job and a 15 month deployment to Iraq.

We ended up paying off the debt a month early from our projections which means we can get onto the next baby step a month earlier.

In order to stick to a budget, there must be a failsafe. The failsafe is your emergency fund. We like Dave Ramseys Total Money Makeover so these are the steps that we are following.

Step one involves saving $1,000 dollars for emergencies. We store our emergency fund in an on line account. Currently we use www.ingdirect.com; our current emergency fund is $1,000 dollars.

Onto the next step.
Raymond