Thursday, November 04, 2010

Money is fun, no?

Just when you thought I couldn't get any more transparent....

I am in a rough spot right now. Everything seems to be going wrong. It feels like we just can't get ahead. Some of it is because of bad decisions we (well, I) have made and some of it is out of my control. Nonetheless, I really feel like God is shaping me right now, and boy, does it hurt. I am hoping and praying I come out of this a better person.

As for bad decisions, I have failed miserably in the financial portion of life. Let's be honest here, we are pretty broke. We do make enough money to pay our bills and stuff, but I have badly managed my money for too long. I have begged Eric to manage our finances, but he doesn't really want to. I confess, up until about 6 months ago I had a "Buy now, pay later" mentality about money. What a huge mistake. I am not any further ahead, in fact, I am quite behind. I have a whole lot a debt and not a whole lot to show for it. I am also guilty of just buying whatever I want, whenever I want it. I never really had any restraint or budget.

About 6 months ago I started using BudgetTracker.com to keep track of our finances. I made a budget on there, and I can add transactions one at a time and select the catagory for it to go under. I have tried using spread sheets, but that makes it really hard to keep track of every transaction you do. I LOVE Budget Tracker. It is so easy to use. It was exactly what I wanted and needed. I think I paid around $40 for a membership, and it is worth it.

We used to live paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes I couldn't pay bills on time because I was waiting for the next check to be deposited. But now, instead of tracking my money and bills in my head by seeing how much is in our account, I go by how much is left in our budget on Budget Tracker. It has been a saving grace, so to speak. Now we always have enough of a balance in our account to pay our bills on time.

We had even managed to get some money into savings, but now that is gone thanks to vehicle repairs. And we still have other bills to pay and more repairs that need to be done to the vehicles and to the house. We just don't have the money for that stuff, so I decided to pick up as many Saturday shifts as possible. That means I will be working 6 days a week. I will also be doing as many Partylite and Lia Sophia parties as I can book (PLEASE have one for me). I got us into this mess, so I am going to try my best to get us out. Eric has also been doing some extra jobs here and there. These repairs have been needed for a long, long time( I haven't had electricity in my bedroom for probably over a year). We have just been putting them off because we didn't have extra money for it.

I am starting to realize that maybe God won't let us have a baby just yet, because He knows we can't afford one until we get this stuff under control.

My prayer is that we will learn to be good stewards of the money God has blessed us with.

Yes, I have learned things the hard way. Seems to be my favorite way to learn things.

2 comments:

Stacey said...

Money can be a real slippery slope! It's easy to spend and hard to make. We have a super hard time sticking to a budget too, but thankfully we are both OK with money. I'm definitely more of a spender, so I have to watch myself (especially online!).

You know, it's good that you are figuring this out now, and not in like 10 years, when the mountain of debt is even bigger. You will make it!

Jobina said...

Bugeting is hard, really hard. And sacrificing your wants for needs is excrutiating at times, and believe me, I don't always succeed either. You're on the right track though and even though it's hard to see your savings being used up by repairs, I'm so glad to hear that you have money saved so that you can make those repairs. Keep it up Lindsey, you're doing great! Maybe there's a smaller task within the budgeting that Eric could do so that you feel like he's part of it too?

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