Well, Hello There!

Hello! My name is Sarah and I have to be honest, I really have no idea what I am doing here. Somehow my aunt (Hi Aunt Tammie!) convinced me that I should start a blog so that she could follow along on this little journey that my family and I have decided to take this month. When I told my husband what she suggested he asked who would follow me. Good question. My guess is only my Aunt Tammie! But anyone else who has happened across my little page is most welcome as well. I am glad you are here! I guess I should probably start by explaining what we are doing and why. My husband, Kevin, and I have decided that we need to do something quick to get our finances under control. Don’t get me wrong, we both have good jobs and have been able to afford all the things that our family needs (Thank the Lord for His blessings!), but our spending had gotten a little out of hand. We had some unexpected losses (RIP refrigerator and Pontiac) recently and therefore accrued some debt we hadn’t counted on. Couple that with our lackadaisical (and that’s being generous) method of budgeting and Yikes! We had a big mess. We have been saying for several months that we needed to get it under control, but without any specific guidelines, nothing changed. Last month I came across a post from one of my favorite blogs (www.livingwellspendingless.com) where she discusses doing a 31 day spending fast. At first I kind of laughed it off, thinking we could never do it. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this was the right thing for us to do. It would put an abrupt end to our overspending and force us to really evaluate every purchase that we made. And it was only for a month. I can do anything for only 31 days! I brought it up with Kevin, and to my surprise he immediately agreed! January seemed like the perfect time to do it after the frenzy of gift buying in November and December (although I didn’t necessarily think it all the way through, since my birthday is this month.), but I wasn’t going to back out now. So Kevin and I sat down and hashed out the details. We modified our guidelines a bit to meet our family’s needs. 1. Limit our driving as much as possible. And when we do go somewhere as a family, we will take my new Prius (Yay!) because it has better gas mileage. 2. No spending money on a. Eating out (we are making an exception for my birthday. I mean you only turn 31 once, right?) b. Entertainment (we will be using a gift card we were given to go to a movie for my birthday) c. Online shopping (this one will be hard for me. No Amazon, no babysteals.com What will I do?) d. Any other unnecessary spending that didn’t come to mind as we were discussing this 3. Limit our grocery budget to just $50 a week. We have a ton of food in our pantry and deep freezer and I am confident we can stay below this amount. We plan to only buy perishable items such as milk, eggs, and cheese. 4. Keep a detailed list of where every penny goes this month, so we have a starting place for building a realistic budget after this month. 5. We will not go without important items (just make a concentrated effort to eliminate the unnecessary ones) and our children will still have everything that they need. 6. Take the money saved and put it directly towards our debt. So there you have it, the details of our 31 day spending fast. I decided to go ahead and start this blog as a way of recording our adventure and holding us accountable (even if nobody else reads it!). It’s a lot harder to back out of this if I think someone may be following along. I will try to post as much as possible, but with a 1 and a 3 year old underfoot, I have no idea how often that will be. And please be patient with me as I try to figure out this whole blogging thing. Thanks! January 1st spending total: $0 (go us!)