It has been building for awhile now, years at least. We have lean times and our family has always gotten by. Every time I freak out and complain but I have never really changed the way we live. So this time is different. I swear.
Let me introduce myself. I am Kristin. I am 45 years young with a husband who loves me (I love him too) and two wonderful tween girls who truly are awesome! We own a nice home in the burbs of Austin, Texas. We have a pool in our backyard, a cat in our bay window, a SUV and a small truck to drive the Texas highways. We are living the dream, right?
Not so fast. My husband is 100% commission and our bank account has been more like a roller coaster ride then a steady as you go carousel. When we're up... we are riding high, fixing things like water damaged walls, and broken HVAC systems. When we're down.. we're borrowing our kid's birthday cash to buy milk and bread. Sound familiar?
So I freaked out one last time (I hope it's the last time.) Turns out my husband let the mortgage slide for a month or two. Yeah.. that OMF'nG moment you just had, quadruple that! He said we have been spending more than we have incoming for a long time now and it caught up. Well duh?
My solution.. My husband needs to get a better job! He's been offered management before so it's time to take that route. Easy, right? Wrong.
He doesn't want management because it's hours are too long and too much pressure/responsibility. My response.. "Pressure and Big Bucks go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like Tom and Jerry. Like... oh you get the picture. He doesn't agree. According to him the hours are so long that he would never be home. Okay... so the couch and the remote might get a little lonely but so what? HA!! I wish I said that but instead I said something to the effect of "Well think about it..."
When I met my husband 16 years ago he said he didn't keep a check register because ... get this...
wait for it.....
........
............
"He keeps it all in his head!" YES! Ladies and gentlemen I thought he was a genius! And cute too.
16 years, a mortgage, car payments, and two kids later.. not so cute. If you are thinking right about now "Why didn't you do it.?." I would say excellent question but I will have to get back with you after some serious soul searching.
Next idea.. I need a job! Yeah. I don't work outside the home but believe me I definitely work inside the home and in the yard and up at the school, etc. I work. I just don't get paid cold, hard cash.
Last time our finances looked bad for us I took a seasonal job at Target (working the night shift to avoid babysitting costs because I thought babysitters actually made more then I did.. but I digress.) to get us through the holidays. Needless to say it sucked. My back hurt. My feet hurt. I saw my kids for like two hours before I went to sleep at 5pm but I wasn't really there. I made dinners and slept. FUN! All that for a whopping $9 an hour!
So this downturn is going to be different! I will get a desk job! I redid my resume a hundred ways. Combed the papers and online listings. As of today I have sent out 20 or more resumes and got ZIP - ZERO - NADA responses from a single employer! Am I too old? Are my skills that out of date? Is $10 to $12 and hour too much to ask for?
Apparently so.
Okay.. no job on the horizon and Chris (my happy in sales husband) doesn't want to do the management track thing. What is a girl to do?
I know!!! I have to change my family from the inside out. Haven't we all heard a million times that if what you are doing doesn't give you the results you want then you must change what you are doing!
DRUM ROLL PLEASE.....
We will live and spend within our means!!!!!!!!!!!!
How does one do that? After an extensive 5 minutes of searching terms like 'creating a budget' I realized I had to actually know what we spent before we can change anything. What a concept!
I printed off a year's worth of bank statements. Got out my highlighters, pencils and paper and began to chart. It took 2 days to get through 6 months and decided that was plenty of bad spending habits to see where we went wrong.
Tomorrow... Free Budget Spreadsheets and Learning Excel
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