Day 3: Great Timing

Our washer has been terminally ill for several months. Today it died. Sigh. Since we consider a washing machine (and clean underwear) essential, we trekked to Sears and bought a Kenmore, thanks to the 12 months, no interest plan. I know a lot of people swear that off because of the risks involved, which I understand completely. But we have used that option through the years to buy many things, including carpet, garage doors, bedroom furniture and other appliances. We have always paid off the balance in full and have not paid any interest (knock on wood). Just don't tell Dave Ramsey. he he

We're having friends over for dinner tonight, and we talked about ordering pizza for our families. Tempting. Very tempting. Instead, I pulled out a pizza dough recipe I've been meaning to try. It's easy to prepare, quick (rises in only 15 minutes) and is much healthier (whole wheat crust, turkey pepperoni, all natural sauce and cheese, loaded with veggies). We all enjoyed it, unless our friends lied, and I tried something new.

Day 2: Bye Bye Land Line

The phone bill has been making me ill for several months, so I called today to see if I could find a cheaper plan. We have a home phone, high-speed Internet and two cell phones. After my husband and I scrutinized the itemized bill and discussed our priorities, we decided to ditch the land line ($60/month) and add another cell phone ($10/month + $19 for the phone). This will allow us to stay in contact with our teen and pre-teen daughters when one of us is gone and save $45 per month ($540 per year). I'll take it.

Day 1: So Far, So Good

No real temptations today. We have plenty of snacks left from New Year's Eve and all the restaurants are closed. I wonder if I could convince them all to close down for the whole month... Having food in the house is definitely going to be one of our keys to success. I need to regularly plan meals and shop for groceries, both of which I loathe. Here's to new habits in the new year!

Our New Year Adventure

Well, Christmas is over and, like many of you, we're feeling a little financially challenged. Add property taxes and higher heating bills to the Christmas crunch and, well... I start looking at creative options. This year, my plan involves a family adventure, of sorts. Since I feel like there's more month than money every January, it's easy to embrace that as the truth. So, my husband and I totalled up all of our monthly commitments - house payment, car insurance, utilities, phone and the amounts we've committed to give to our church and other ministries. Then we subtracted that amount from our monthly income. The result showed us in black and white that we do have money left after we pay our bills. The only reasonable explanation for the gap between our intentions about how to use our money and the reality are the "variable" expenses. (That's CPA speak for expenses we can more easily control, like groceries and clothes.)

So we devised a plan. For the month of January, we've resolved not to eat out and not to buy anything except essentials. We are going to make a list of any non-essentials we want to buy and reconsider those potential purchases in February.

Let me set this up for you. We're not big spenders. We drive a 10-year-old Jeep and a five-year-old minivan. No car payments. We live in a 1950's Ranch style house that we have slowly fixed up over the last decade. We usually eat out after church and sometimes one other time per week at the "kids eat free" places. I buy many, if not most, of our family's clothes used or drastically on sale. We've only taken one family vacation, which we paid cash for.

But, alas we are apparently still "leaking". We want to be better stewards of the resources God has entrusted to us, and we want to give more, save more and continue to fix up our house. Maybe you want to get out of debt, save for retirement or travel. Whatever your goals are, I hope you'll join us in this challenge, and I'd love to hear about your victories, challenges and temptations along the way.

Good luck and Happy New Year!