I achieved the impossible.
I brought my lunch to work for over a week.
I know. I know. Earth shattering, right? Since we've gotten married we absorbed each others families, last names, futures, and finances. I've had a job since I was 14 and pretty much non-stop since then. Based on this and fantastic credit, I should really have more saved. When I was in college, I was a theater major so it was hard to work any jobs that paid well. I relied on student loans and got scholarships for school. I've never really been concerned with money too much because the bills are always paid on time and no one else cares whats in my bank account.
When you get married, it's all someone else's business. He doesn't demand that it is or anything but I feel like I want to be accountable. I want to set up our future better financially and owe it to our tiny family of two to be responsible. We paid for our entire wedding in cash and that's one of my biggest triumphs starting out this part of our relationship together. Next come the minor credit card debt that we have and then the momma and daddy of all debt... student loans + the mortgage.
We have a plan for all of that and we'll get everything paid as we go. Until then, I'm just pumped about saving $30 a week on lunches alone.
How do you save money? Do your financial plans really work?
We took Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University" class while we were engaged, and we LOVED it!!! In fact, we are currently trying to implement it at our church. We learned about making a budget, paying off debt, saving money, investing, insurance, and lots of other things, too.
ReplyDeleteWe started off making a simple budget- just listing our expenses in order from most to least important. We gave every dollar of income a name- meaning we assigned every dollar to a particular category. If we didn't have enough budgeted for food one week, we'd budget more the next time. If we had money left after all the bills were paid, we applied that to our debts. We paid off all of our debt- almost $16,000- in 19 months this way!! It was HARD and super not fun sometimes, but it feels so great to be free of that debt burden.
We are currently paying for Derek's college with extra income, so it sometimes feels like we aren't progressing very quickly financially, but we are stable and I feel that our financial plans really do work. Our budget does get adjusted as needed, and sometimes we blow it completely and have to start over, but we have come so far since we first started. I highly recommend checking out Dave Ramsey's book "My Total Money Makeover" from the library and checking out his website www.daveramsey.com for lots of great, free financial info.
We don't have many debts but I still feel like we aren't getting anywhere. I know we are but when I'm paying off things, things just aren't adding up in the bank. I'm sure in a few months the story will be totally different and that burden will be gone but for now it just feels like treading water.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation. We'll check it out!