Being Frugal

Once upon a time, 9 years or so ago, my husband and I lived a very frugal life. We had just had our first child, and I was a new stay at home mom. My husband worked at our local Christian radio station, and though the work was fulfilling, his paychecks were very small. At the time I became very adept at stretching our money. Over the years, my husband has switched jobs a few times, and our income has gone up considerably. We welcomed our second child into the family, and our expenses increased also. What they say is true. When your income goes up, you find ways to spend it. I became more frivolous in my spending. It was no big deal, because we could afford it. Two and a half weeks ago my husband lost his job. Fortunately he starts another job next week, but the pay is very commission based, and it will take a few months for him to get off the ground. As we have been walking through the trial of unemployment, I have been reflecting on my spending habits. I don't think I've been a very good steward of our resources. I could stand to make some major improvements. In the short term, we need to make our money stretch, so we don't spend up all our savings while we're waiting for Shannon's paychecks to get bigger. In the long term, we just need to be better managers of our money. I would love to see us become debt free in the next year. We're off to a pretty good start. We don't have any car payments, our credit card balance is around $2000, and our student loan is around $7000. I think we can do it, but it will take some discipline. I thought about adding posts about our frugal journey to my other everyday-life blog, but this area is going to take some intense focus, so I decided a dedicated blog would be better. I figure if I write down the steps I'm taking to save money, it will make me think and grow a bit more in the area of frugal living. We'll see where I'm at a year from now. Related Tags: frugal living, saving money