Blessings Abound!

Last week my husband got a job! He worked about 15 hours overtime the first week and 22 the second. He was just promoted to second shift also which is a $1.25 pay raise. Wow!!

The week he got the job we also got a letter from unemployment saying the previous week was the last week he could file benefits without reapplying. What amazing timing!

The same day he got a job we got several out of the blue emails and phone calls from friends asking if we needed baby stuff- all of which we still needed!

I've been feeling great and very happy (I think I like these pregnancy hormones) and have several household projects happening, one of which is to try and sell a lot of our extra stuff.

We plan to set our budget at a fixed amount each week and then put the rest into savings. When the baby comes it looks like he'll be unpaid for a week and I'll be unpaid for four weeks. We currently have $8 in our savings account.

I am excited to see how God provides in these next months- we feel quite blessed already!

Shampoo

I ran out of my fancy $10 shampoo last month. It's a small thing and we had cheap shampoo I could use but it was a frustrating reminder each morning of our limitations. I have our renters insurance on my weekly plan but we're paid up right now. While I could have set that $25 aside to pay for the insurance when it comes due I decided to give us a bit of splurging money. I bought shampoo for $10.80. Hubby got a lightbulb for the stove that had burnt out two months ago- $3.84. We rented a movie from Redbox, $1. He went out with some good guys for breakfast and spent $3.84, and needed extra chew (large grrrr here and another post sometime) for $3.84. And I got a black ink cartridge refill for our printer that had broken 3 months ago for $6.63. That's all a total of $29.95, a few dollars over my "found" $25 but we have a small (maybe $10-$20) padding in our bank so I'm not too concerned, although maybe I should be?

I feel sometimes like I'm squeezing pennies out of not so nice places and if hubby says something like "the truck needs gas" I want to sit down and cry! Holding the line is so tiring sometimes, and scraping to get a light bulb or shampoo is just no fun. Yet it reminds me of several of those New Testament verses on perseverance...perseverance must be part of our lives and in increasing measure. And there are blessings on the other side of perseverance...we just have to persevere!

Hold the Line

As a service to its customers our credit union has an arrangement with a finance consulting service to offer free (FREE!!) financial counseling to anyone who would like some. We signed up and meet with a retired man who has been counseling folks for years. I appreciate his advice because he is realistic and wise at the same time. When I met with him after my husband was laid off he said we were really doing all we could do and to "hold the line." The phrase really struck me as it's quite the difficult thing to do sometimes...especially when we want to go out for a movie or fast food or just get shampoo when it's not in the plan!

Proverbs 4:25-27 says: Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.

The verses come at the end of warnings against adultery and wayward eyes/feet but I think fit so well with what our consultant said. Walking a straight line ahead and not turning for temptation...holding our place where we are, not going backward financially and not worrying because we can't go forward much right now. Continuing to learn all we can about good money management (making level paths for our feet) and not falling into any shady stuff like get rich quick schemes (taking only ways that are firm). Also not being tempted to do something dishonest or unchaste to make more money (keep our feet from evil).

Although it's hard we're both on board with holding the line where we are at today. Sometimes I want to push ahead and sometimes hubby does but thus far (two months along) one of us is always there to hold the other from spending any of that money unnecessarily. Our goal is to hold the line not just until hubby gets a job but until we get this infernal diabolical debt paid off!

The September Plan

We are now on a very fixed income. Husband gets a check from unemployment every Wednesday for a set amount; I get two checks a month, also a fixed amount.

I've discovered that I can pay my bills ohhhh so much easier if I separate out what needs to be paid each paycheck. I have a little excel spreadsheet that lists out the six checks we get and underneath each check states what needs to be paid.

We had a bit of built in padding because originally we thought DH would be getting less from unemployment. Last month we just sort of winged it each paycheck and tried to decide what was best to get with the surplus each time. That worked ok but got a little confusing and sometimes frustrating if we had spent everything then realized we needed something else - ugh! So this month I tried to look ahead and see what we would need: small things like new underwear; larger unexpected bills I hadn't been able to pay last month; deciding on an amount to give as a gift for a party. I also looked at the calendar more closely to make sure we would have grocery and fuel money each week...last month we ran out before the next check came.

I am also a new fan of online banking! Wow, it has simplified my bill paying sooooooooo much. On a payday I sit down with my list of what to pay. I open the bank account, pay the bills, mark them in my checkbook. I write down how much cash I'll need to pull from the ATM and get out my debit card (which otherwise stays put away for the month...dangerous little tricky card). And that's all! Previously I was using each websites on line bill pay and it took forever!! Forever! When I wasn't feeling good just the thought of it helped me want to stay away from the bills...which meant a few of them got paid late just from my groaning and procrastination. Now if I spend 10 minutes on the process (other than my one planning hour each month) I am disgruntled. :)

We're living paycheck to paycheck, and husband has no medical insurance, but we're surviving and that's something! We feel God is helping us find the wisdom to walk through these days, and trust that He will provide DH with a job at just the right time!

August Updating

Wow, it has been since March since I've updated here! And what a five months it has been. Here's a quick run down:

A) Got pregnant at the end of March. Morning sickness for full first trimester and a few weeks into second...started feeling better at the end of June.

B) Husband laid off at beginning of July. Gets unemployment checks and we're doing ok, but that's a big change! And not very helpful to our desire to be debt free...probably.

C) Got clutch fixed on car in August. It's needed a new clutch since February but we finally had enough saved to do it. Had to use $135 from credit card though, but that's better than what we could have done.

So that's the quick run down. The first two pieces of news there deserve their own posts, but I just wanted to write that much to try and get back into the swing of things to update here!

Debt Levels: March 08

Here is a snapshot of our debt levels as of today. The student loan debt may be off a bit since we have the loans on deferment while we try and take out some of this other debt.

Compared to November 08 our stupid debt is up $32 and our other debt is down almost $900. I feel like we've paid more...but we did add to our stupid debt in December. Next month we should be in the 82K range!

Credit Card 1	27.00%	$ 7,861.38
Credit Card 2	8.99%	$ 3,086.14
Credit Card 3	14.63%	$ 1,937.27
Credit Card 4	21.90%	$ 383.04
Credit Card 5	12.74%	$ 145.10
Bank Line of Credit	16.75%	$ 462.93
	Stupid Debt Total	$ 13,875.86
Car Loan #1	10.50%	$ 9,003.31
Car Loan #2	6.50%	$ 4,738.63
Student Loan Wife	4.38%	$ 45,676.00
Student Loan Husband	7.22%	$ 9,756.18
	Other Debt Total	$ 69,174.12
	Total Debt	$ 83,049.98

Simplifying

I found this quote somewhere a few weeks ago: the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -Hans Hoffman

I think it captured my attention because I've been preparing for my own little spring cleaning venture. We've been working through our house cleaning one room at a time. The last room to be cleaned will be our overflowing guest room, and it has to be done soon because we have guests on the calendar!

As I'm cleaning I am also dreaming. Dreaming of projects I would like to do, the quilt I'd like to finish, the photo's I'd like to scrapbook. But the thought I keep coming back to is that I can't really do anything till I take care of the rest of the stuff. I need to organize and sort and label and do all sorts of things for things I might use once or twice. And then I read this quote and thought, "what if I just get rid of stuff?" Now I am no pack rat but I think I could fill a few large boxes with things that I don't absolutely need or love. Just things I'm rather "in like" with that I think I could use later.

But what would my life look like if I got rid of all the unnecessary items? I could sell them or donate them. If I sold them I could help my clutch fund along. If I donated them they would be out of the house quicker. And without those items I'm thinking I could actually get to the projects I've been putting off for so long. It's something to mull over.