I'm sitting down to write and am rather numbly blank on where to even begin. At the beginning of May we had over $2000 in savings. I left my part time job to become a full time stay at home mom. My husband was hired on as a permanent employee at the job he's been a temp at, gaining great benefits from the first day. We were healthy, all the vehicle's worked, we were paying down our debt, filled our expensive propane tank and things were plugging along.
The first bump was that somehow in switching from weekly to bi-weekly paychecks when my husband was hired on I missed a weeks pay. Did we spend it? Did it just disappear? I really don't know and feel like I should. My husband was making so much money (for us anyway) that to be honest I got lax about my tracking.
Bump number two was the truck...it decided May was a good month to gain a strange noise in the engine. $300 later the strange noise is gone, but two more (albeit minor) problems have been found.
Third bump: my husbands teeth...or number 31 tooth to be more precise. We spent two weeks trying to get him free from awful pain in that tooth. After a pained weekend he got a root canal on a Monday. Took lots of prescription pain killers Then a week later he had the same tooth pulled. Because he had insurance it only cost around $400 total, but the tooth came out at the end of the month and we had to charge the tooth pulling...groan!!
Because he was off for some of that time, and because things have slowed up to 50 hours a week at his job our checks have been smaller. By about $400 a check compared to what we had planned on.
So beginning June we have no savings and may not be able to pay all our bills this month. It's humbling and sad and frustrating and depressing and just an overall bummer to be in this place...again! In the midst of last month I found myself just weeping and crying out to God, confessing we have wasted his resources, asking for forgiveness for this awful debt load we carry. Because really, it is sin. I don't care how you splice and dice it- God says don't get into debt and we did...and in my book going against something you know God says is sin. I open my checkbook and feel broken and humbled.
Is it all bad news? No. The truck could have had a much worse problem, and certainly cost more than $300 to fix. The tooth could have caused him great distress in April when he had no insurance at all...and then it would have been several thousand dollars to fix. We could have cancer or the loss of a loved one or our house could have burned down or a plane crashed into it. We could have been in an awful car accident and our son could have died from SIDS. There are millions of possible things that could have happened to us last month but didn't. And for those millions of things that didn't happen I am truly thankful. Because as frustrating as it is to start over I have a home, my husband and son, a drivable vehicle, food in the fridge, diapers in the wash and friends near and far. These momentary troubles will pass also and I don't want to become so fixated on the bad I forget the good.
And so we start over. More than that, I'm going to "start over" this blog. I'm finding that as I learn and grow in my desire to learn to manage our finances well I also am learning about other frugal things...how to use cloth diapers, make homemade cleaning solutions, bake bread (though I am an awful baker), eat better foods and generally live a more frugal life. Since this is all part of the journey too I'm planning to incorporate whatever new adventure I find myself on into this blog. And hopefully I'll be able to look back here someday and marvel even more at the grace and mercy of God in our lives.
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