A reapproach

As the year moves on and the days pass and I'm feeling better of course the daily routine starts to come back.  It's been a long 24 weeks and although I'm so excited about our little girl that is imminently on her way, I can't help but think about how hard its been.  And mainly, how hard its been on the budget.

I strongly feel like we have not been the best stewards of the gifts we have been given.  My husband has tried his best to make things work and although we aren't behind on our bills we are behind on our goals.  Our budget has continued to fail us, or rather we have failed the budget.  I make the budget and consistently every month I find myself changing the numbers to fit our spending.  Totally wrong way of doing it.  We are making our budget fit us instead of us fitting our budget.  Now, we always pay our bills on time and are not behind on anything but all the extras keep sneaking up on us.  Oops, I spent a little over our blow money- well, no big deal I'll just increase it and then it won't be in the red.  Crap, I spent too much on junk food- oh well, I'll just increase the amount so we stay out of the red.  We are again allowing our money to tell us what to do instead of us telling our money what to do.

So with the return of our tax return we put over half of it into savings, including some savings for Christmas.  Now this in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.  We have never put so much into savings!  Wow, what a feeling of relief and security.  To know that if something goes wrong or there is an emergency we could handle it.  We also decided to pay ahead on our car insurance and pay off 2 credit cards.  Again, wow, what an accomplishment.  These things would typically just sit there and eat away at our budget every single month.  And then the splurging reared its ugly head.  Now granted some of the things we bought we were needing for the house to make it run more smoothly but really when it comes down to it, it was splurging.  These things could have waited because really they are just things. (I think I may have just contradicted myself, lol)

I finally sat down with my husband and said this needs to stop.  We need to get real.  We continue to kid ourselves every single month.  We need to understand and feel blessed for what we have.  And lately, sadly, we haven't.  Greed has allowed us to blow some of that money on essentially nothing.  While the deep conversation had persisted with my husband, although most times one sided, we decided that enough was enough.  We HAD to stop.  So starting today, that's it.  We are done splurging our money and taking much better care of it.  It will not last forever and the Lord could potentially strip EVERYTHING away from us at ANY time.  But my question is, why did it take until now?  Why did it take a large sum of money to smack us in the face to realize what we were doing wrong?  Is it a blessing in disguise?  Is it a lesson that needed to be learned but took until now for us comprehend?

So just like human beings do, we evolve, and now so has our thinking towards money.  We have even decided to forgo a vacation this year in an effort to save money.  (Having a newborn helps with that too!)  I have decided that since I am feeling better that doing more things from scratch including some very common things like butter and couponing need to be a priority again.  My husband has stepped forward again as our penny pitcher so that to tell me no in times that I "so desperately need" something.  We have decided that numbers are what they are and there should be absolutely no increasing them.  We now have savings in order to help with emergency situations or things that come up that we weren't expecting.  That's what having savings is all about.  We are taking a re-approach to something that has always been.  Mint.com has been a huge help but it has also been a huge damper.  They just make it so darn easy to change the numbers!  So I'm working on this and the impulse to just change the numbers.  One thing my husband and I haven't approached again is the cash envelope system, but I'm sure it's coming.

Dave Ramsey always says, "Live like no one else, so later you can LIVE like no one else."  It is our time to live.