I have started taking part of Phoebe's Finding Freedom Friday. I love her topics and her ideas. Not only her, but she has links set up from many people like myself trying to budget, live frugally, spend less and save more. As far as I have seen most of us are mothers. Stay at home moms, part times working moms, and more excitingly, believers! We have the same goals and being able to share them with one another has been wonderful. Make sure you check out her site and the other ladies links that are on there. You will get a few, okay so maybe a lot, of ideas!
Budgeting and How it's working for us...
Most importantly, it's working. We have been on a budget only since Feb 1 of this year. Yep, a measly 6-7 weeks. We have learned SO much. Every penny in designated to a bill or debt. Okay, so maybe not every penny. Lets put it this way, almost every dollar. We plan bi-monthly with the paychecks. We set aside money for gas and food. The rest goes to the bills and debt. Our snowball is getting bigger. In just this short amount of time we have saved Thousands of dollars. By that I mean, we have used it wisely, paid a few things off, not bought anything that is not a necessity. As Phoebe stated in her blog we are not perfect. We have spent money that we shouldn't have. Its hard as we have sold things on our local CL and the $10 here and the $10 there is sitting there and we think, just this once. Well, this area is the only one at this point we need to remain accountable in. We get selfish with our time, I don't want to cook, or clean the mess from dinner so we spend. Argh! It's done, forgiven, will do better this week. One week at a time. For us it is one day at a time sometimes.
Being on a budget has been life changing for us. No exaggeration either. The real thing we ever really argued about was $. Not anymore. We are on the same page, in agreement and love what we are doing. We are accomplishing a huge thing together. I am cooking more and buying better foods. The savings I am seeing in making my own things like pizza, Bread and bagels is unreal. These are things we eat a lot of and the money saving are incredible. Cutting these out of our budget has been great even just this week. We estimate we have saved about $8 just in bagels. Yahoo!
Have great "stick to the budget" weekend. And thanks for stopping by.
A Slow Cooker Thanksgiving
4 weeks ago
so glad to hear that it's working! i too have greatly enjoyed the encouragement from Pheobe's site and the folks i've found there :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words (both you and Snow White)!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to hear that everything is going great with your budget. So amaizing that one little thing can help save so much--and result in less arguing between spouses. (We've done both ourselves.)
So glad you shared this with us!
I totally understand. Its amazing how just talking about where and what your money is doing can save arguments. We are brand new to all of this and I am so excited. Its scary and hard, but thrilling at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAnd funny you mentioned bagels, that is my plan for next week. That and crackers.
well, you beat me. We've ben on a budget for only 4 weeks! I love what you said about 1 day at a time. I fee like every day that I don't spend money is a little victory. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteWow, you are doing an amazing job! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteEating out is my downfall too. For some reason when somebody says "Hey, you want to go out after church and eat?" it is so hard to say no. I guess because we consider the fellowship important. But there are other ways to have fellowship than to spend money. So we need to work on that! At least we're eating at fast food but still it adds up.