Day 4: Our First Sunday

We've told the kids about our January plan, but our son was none too happy when Daddy informed him we were not eating at a restaurant after church today. He was craving McDonald's or Mexican, not lame leftovers at home. We were all hungry and the thought of cleaning up yet another kitchen mess didn't appeal to me. But we stuck to our guns, heated up leftover spaghetti and bread, snacked on grapes and carrots and topped it all off with peanut butter pie and vanilla ice cream. We left the mess until after "family nap", but we all agreed it was worth the $30-$40 that we saved.

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!