This purchase is not a need but definitely a want. Last month we tried to fix our spa (I believe you call them hot tubs in the US) jets and found out that because our spa is so old (it's around 20 years old) that we cannot get the jets anymore and in order for it to run again we would need to put a new jet system in and re-plumb it, which is more work than my DH would be able to do (and I certainly could not do it).
We loved using our spa so decided to bite the bullet and buy a new spa. We shopped around for a few weeks and did research into the best spa we could get with our budget that also had the lowest running costs and two weeks ago put a deposit down. The company we bought the spa off have given us a trade-in of our old one for $500, which is good, especially as we now do not have to worry about trying to sell it on Ebay (it may have sat in the yard a while).
The spa cost is definitely expensive but we will call this our big purchase for the year. The price is.... $9790. We considered getting a loan for this, but ended up deciding to pay half cash half credit.
The actual end result is we paid $5950 on my credit card (but we have already repaid $750 and will be repaying $1000 tomorrow) and $3840 cash.
Last month we had a quiet month so were able to save $1150 towards it and this month $850, so have cash-flowed $2000; will have $4200 on my credit card to repay and the end result will be $3590 withdrawn from savings.
My credit card rate is 14% however we want to have it repaid fairly quickly - I would definitely like us to repay $1000 next month to bring the balance down to $3200.
EF savings have now dropped a bit - cash is now $2506.96, while shares are actually around $6500 roughly. We will rebuild it a bit more next year.
I feel like this has been the best possible way to fund a large purchase, and am very happy that we won't have the burden of loan repayments for a set period of time and didn't have the burden of applying for finance. We hope to have this repaid by the end of the year.
I will need to adjust our goals on the sidebar because they have now changed dramatically!
We are so looking forward to the new spa though, and are very excited about it - it is a lovely silver pearl colour with dark wood on the outside 
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New Spa (Hot Tub)
July 10th, 2017 at 12:04 pm
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July 11th, 2017 at 07:54 am 1499759666
Special Agent- it is a better quality spa than some others sold - it is fully insulated which retains the heat and lowers the running cost and is also 5-6 person which is why it was a bit more expensive... the four person spas are less expensive so you would save money there.. the only thing with soft sides is how long are they guaranteed to last? And what is the running cost? That's a couple of things I would look into.
Debt free- don't feel too bad because you are in summer season.. because of the heat in the spa we don't use it as much in summer as the other seasons.. maybe you can aim to have it ready in a few months?
July 11th, 2017 at 07:27 pm 1499801254
July 12th, 2017 at 12:13 pm 1499861587