Lately in the news all they've been talking about it seems is how much debt people are in, but yesterday, I was shocked to read about a couple of people who were seriously trying to get out of debt and were accomplishing it.
One was a young woman who found herself in a ton of credit card debt with no way to pay it off. She just decided to track everything she spent and put herself on a strict budget. Somehow she paid off $28,000 in two years. By living frugally she found she could live without all the things she thought she needed. One of the things she did was put herself on a "shopping ban" where she only bought the necessities, like toothpaste, but went without unless it wore out, like a pair of jeans. It was very inspiring.
The other case study was of a young family who had already managed to pay off their mortgage with 3 young children. Seems impossible! They did have two incomes, but they were just super frugal, too, and stuck to a budget. They even managed to get quite a bit of money in investments and savings so when the husband lost his job, they weren't in a big panic.
I always need to read good stories like that. It is so easy to get off track. I think I live frugally, but reading their stories reminded me I could still do better. I asked a friend of mine to ask me at the end of the month if I kept track of our finances. My husband usually manages our finances and still will, but I'm definitely the one in charge of the grocery side of things and all things kid-related, clothes, etc. I am supposed to go through what we spent this month and where to keep finding the holes in our spending. I'm actually looking forward to it. I had been very careful for several months in a row and wrote down every single expense, but it was so hard to keep up, so I ended up just kind of "doing it in my head" thinking that I was still on top of it, but, truth be known, I don't think you can really have it all in your head and be accurate.
So once again, I have to be more on top of it! I'm starting to see some spending habits in my children that make me think that we are all prone to self-indulgence. However, my son did learn an interesting lesson this week. He has saved his money this summer and definitely wanted to put it towards a pocket knife. But my husband had no idea how much money he wanted to spend on it. He discouraged the high end knife and instead encouraged him to give it a waiting period to cool off and think about it. He was so disappointed at first, but then a couple of days later he realized he was so glad he hadn't spent his money when he did as it really wasn't wise to blow all that money on a knife when he could get another perfectly fine knife for a much lower price somewhere else. He actually admitted that he was glad he had waited.
That is something the other couple did, too. Anything over $20 had to be discussed and waited on. They couldn't blow their money on just anything at anytime. That saved them a lot of expensive decisions.
It is still hard to imagine that kind of freedom where there is no bank manager in your life, but I still long for it and pray for it. I read a verse in Psalm 40 the other day and it said, "I waited patiently for the Lord....". So I must remain patient and that is the hardest thing I've ever done.
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