Thank God for Payday!

My husband and I have been trying to rein in our spending and actually stick to a budget. We started at the end of October when we realized our once unused "emergency credit cards" were seeing more and more "emergencies" of late. I read a book that was recommended to me by a dear friend that really helped me get excited about budgeting and paying down our debt. It's called The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. He's a financial guru who also happens to be a Christian and keeps a biblical perspective about money and living within your means. Ramsey associates financial freedom with being debt free - makes sense to me!

November was difficult, but awesome. We made a budget and it was tiiiiight! But we stuck to it and we made it to the end of the month with even a little money to spare! We employed the "envelope method," which is another of Dave Ramsey's suggestions, but I'm pretty sure smart people have been living on cash only for decades. Anyway, we took the totals we budgeted for the month for different categories like food, gas, personal care, recreation, and clothing and then filled the envelopes with the cash amounts. And then, when it was gone, it was GONE.

The main philosophy behind this is that spending cash "hurts." So often, I would swipe my debit card for this or that, and it never actually feels like the money is going away. Until a week later when I would look at the bank account online and gasp in shock thinking maybe someone stole our debit card when in reality, those lattes at Starbucks just add up quickly!

Anyway, I was nervous about Christmas because we have so many loved ones to buy for. Thankfully, I worked some extra days and my husband got three paychecks in December (LOVE when that happens!) so we made it work. Or at least I thought we did. Now we are still days away from the first January paycheck and we. are. struggling!

I mean, we'll be fine. I got some groceries today (at the cheapest grocery store around!) and now we have everything we need to make it to Friday. It's just going to be Velveeta Shells and Cheese and scrambled eggs for dinner until then! But you know, there's something oddly gratifying about having to work to make ends meet and think about where the money goes. There's also something extremely gratifying about being able to tithe to God's purposes in recognition of the fact that what we have isn't really ours to begin with. He give and He takes away - and He has blessed us with more than we ever could have hoped for.

So thank God we'll make it to Friday and then...thank God for payday!!!