Using a Budget: Cutting Costs

In my last post, Using a Budget to Get Out of Debt, I shared how we built our budget. However, I didn't share specifics on the amounts we spend because it is different for every family and if I shared those amounts right away you would have said, "there's no way we can live with an $80/week grocery budget" and quit reading. For this post I want to share the ways that we save money on everyday expenses like fuel, groceries, and insurance so we can keep our budget at a minimum and put the maximum amount of money possible toward debt.

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Using a Budget to get out of Debt

Since I posted What does debt have to do with it? I've gotten a lot of questions on how we were able to pay off $16,094 worth of debt in six months. The short answer: a lot of long hours, cheap dates, and no vacations or splurge spending. The long answer: we budget every week, use cash, cut expenses, and find ways to save on EVERYTHING.

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How Reality TV Changed Me

Most of my new year's resolutions fail miserably. I think they fail because they're the same every single year (work out, eat healthy, blah blah blah). Not bad goals, but there is nothing measurable about "I'm going to work out more." How often? Where? When?

Because of the lack of success with my earlier resolutions, in January of 2011 I decided to pick something very measurable: give up reality TV. Yep, all of it. I'm not proud to admit this, but I was addicted to Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I don't mean I would watch it once in a while if it was on and I was channel surfing, I mean I would record every episode, watch it, save it, and re-watch it.

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What does debt have to do with it?

Everything. It has everything to do with every decision you will make from now until it's paid off, at least that's what we're learning.

Zac and I were not totally honest with each other about our financial situations when we got married. A few months later when we started combining our bank accounts, the truth came out, and it wasn't pretty. Between the two of us we had upwards of $45,000 in debt. Two car loans, credit cards and student loans. Plus we had just bought a house ten months earlier. We were totally overwhelmed and had no idea what to do…so we just kept working, and living the same way we had been.

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Headaches, Dishes and Stretch Marks

I have to share the most recent uses we've found for a few of our essential oils. I work from home two days a week, Wednesday and Friday. Last Wednesday was not my most successful work from home day…one fifteen minute task took a total of six hours to complete. Finn is teething and only wants to be held, so work was just simply not going to happen while he was up. By noon I had a raging headache, one where I normally wouldn't have hesitated to take 800 milligrams of Tylenol. Instead, I decided to give my Peppermint oil a try.

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What's up with Essential Oils?

I had heard about essential oils at various events several times over the last few years, figured it was some new age fad and didn't give it a second thought. The only medication I took on a regular basis was an over-the-counter allergy pill. I told myself there was a lot worse I could be doing and didn't think much about it again...Until I had a baby. All of a sudden it mattered what I was putting in Finn's body. It didn't hit me how much it mattered until I gave him his first dose of infant Tylenol.

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Why I Work (Part Two)

It was one of those mornings when your alarm goes off and you think “already?” Finn had been up most of the night with a stuffy nose from teething. He couldn’t breathe laying flat, so I held him upright for the majority of the night and laid him in his crib just in time to fall asleep and have the alarm go off a few minutes later. I got ready quickly and quietly while he was still asleep. He woke up just in time for us to leave looking well rested and happy, of course. When I got to work one of my co-workers glanced strangely at my shoulder and said, “Um, I think you have something on your shirt.” Yep. Crusted green snot.

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Why I Work

Let me start by saying I am incredibly blessed to have an employer who genuinely cares about me and my family. I had a very hard time going back to work after twelve weeks of maternity leave. I went back gradually, one day the first week, two days the next week, and so on. Nonetheless, after the first two months, I knew I was on the fast track to burnout from a career I truly loved before having a baby.

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