Fiscal Responsibility: It's a Grown-Up Thing

It's so frustrating trying to not only live paycheck to paycheck, but to live under your means in order to get ahead financially. That's what we're trying to do by following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. We've set a budget based off my full wages and Scott's non-union wages that he made doing temporary electrical work during his unemployed months last year. We figured if we can live off those wages, we would have extra money each paycheck to put toward an emergency fund and then later, to start our Debt Snowball. It has not been easy, though. We've had to make some sacrifices ranging from cable entertainment to movie theater entertainment to watching what we eat and how much of it. When Scott was laid off, the first things to go were our digital cable package and our unlimited texting package. We also had Scott change to a standard phone that did not require a data package (which he never used anyway because the html browser was unreliable). That probably saved us about $80-90. Not much, but it's a start. Our next plan was to create a budget and get serious about meal planning each week (we get paid weekly, therefore we shop weekly). Until now, we had not realized how much money and food we wasted until we created a budget and aw how much money we were wasting in groceries and dining out.  I am the one who keeps the budget, pays our bills, and tracks our spending and I soon realized that I needed to do some creative planning in order to make our budget work for our groceries, to make sure that we get enough fresh produce and healthy meals while getting the most for our money. Just as important, I also needed to make sure we are satisfied and not hungry. Hunger  fuels irresponsible spending and habits. This is really difficult for me.  I am not a planner by nature and meal planning is no exception. I also do not always like to cook and am easily tempted by fast food technology. That's not to say that I can't meal plan because I can, but rather I have to look long and hard for motivation, energy, and rely on a whole lot of discipline to follow through and make it happen. Planning our menu is probably the hardest part for me out of the whole budgeting process.

As hard as it's been to live like this, it feels so good when it's time to pay our mortgage and other bills that often sneak up on us such as annual car registration fees. It's nice to know that I can pay these fees and not feel like I'm completely emptying our wallet. Things have come up that we've had to start cash flowing because we just don't have enough money in our budget to work them in right now, so we've stopped our Total Money Makeover for the year in order to save up money for these items which include new tires for the Trailblazer, all of our November birthdays,and Christmas gifts. We also need to look into replacing our mattress. It was probably a 10-year old hand-me-down when we got married and it is old and probably full of bed bugs. Hopefully we can achieve these things by Christmas or shortly thereafter and we can then think about re-starting our Makeover Plan and paying down some debt while budgeting for other things we'll probably need, like a new roof. I'm pretty sure we still have the original roof, which would make it about 21 years old. Boy, being responsible is so tiring. But it feels good and I wouldn't have it any other way!