I Feel Like We've Won the Lottery

It seems like it's been ages since I blogged anything (besides last week). Or maybe it's that I have about 10 different things I've wanted to write about but every time I go to sit down and blog, my attention is needed elsewhere. Or I'm too tired or want to veg and read a book or there's so many other things going on that it just doesn't happen. Just the same old same old. :) Really, though, how DO you ultra-mommy bloggers out there do it? Tell me your secret formula for keeping up with the dishes, laundry, nurturing kids, serving in church or other volunteer activities AND writing thoughtful interesting blog posts often with fabulous pictures to accompany them? Just a hint or two will do.....

To the title of this post, I finally figured out why things have been a little tight money-wise lately. A few months back we decided to get serious about our finances and stop using our credit cards for those "not sure how much I have left in my checking account so I'll just put it on the credit card" and "I want this now and don't feel disciplined enough to save for it" purchases. Plus we used our cards a lot last fall/winter while we were moving and in between paychecks, etc. It was painful yet liberating at the same time to take that $5,000 chunk of cash I was hoping to upgrade the bathroom with and pay down our CC balance. So way before any of the recent Wall Street crisis stuff was going on, we'd had our own little crisis when we realized we needed to reign things in a bunch. We weren't living frivolously, but realized we could be more frugal in some key areas. Yet at the end of each paycheck I kept wondering, what is going on? Things shouldn't be this tight!! It was getting to the point where I was considering finding some contract work using my GIS skills and doing some night/naptime work hours.

Finally I got around to looking at our income tax withholdings (well duh!?), remembering that we'd been getting some pretty big refunds lately and probably hadn't adjusted for having three kids, etc. WELL, here's where I feel like we won the lottery (and pretty sheepish for taking so long gettin around to checking on it). Turns out when Matt changed from USDA to US FWS that they automatically put him down at a withholding level of Single with no Exemptions/Allowances. This means that we've already overpaid the Fed (um like, back in May) and can stop our withholdings the rest of the year. WAHOO!! Life is suddenly rosy again because I CAN spend more than $100 a week on groceries and household supplies. Because lemme tell you it wasn't really working out. I don't have to cut our DSL connection or DirecTV (although I did get some really good discounts when I called and tried to cancel). We can very quickly pay off the lingering balance on our last credit card. And most importantly we can turn our stress level waaaay down.

The other good thing about this is that along with stopping the credit card usage we've also started on the Dave Ramsey financial plan (7 Baby Steps to Financial Freedom, Total Money Makeover). It's kind of like healthy eating/diet for your finances. We got the book for Christmas a few years back (thanks Roy!) and a friend had also recommended it (thanks Jerry and Angie!). I kept meaning to read it. But it wasn't until things were tight and my mom had recently borrowed our unread copy and gave it back saying "you really need to read this" that we finally did. We didn't actually READ it, but skimmed and got the gist of it. Like most diet/exercise books, the whole thing usually only needs 5 pages to tell you what you need to do but it's published as 100+ pages so you feel like you're getting your money's worth. Or something. Oh, and it also features large in your face photos of whoever wrote the book. Usually that's a big turn off for me. The whole personality selling the product thing. In this case though I'll make an exception. He has a really good plan and it's exciting to hear success stories from others. We Tivo his show and watch some of it a couple of times a week.



Anyway, my point was that because we've already been living rather frugally lately, we can now give ourselves a bit of breathing room and then completely put the rest of our income (that we'd been giving to the Fed interst free to hold on to for us til early next year!) to paying off our remaining debts. Our car loan in 2 years instead of 5. And then our student loans and then the big goal is our mortgage. But we'll work on the 3-6 months of savings first before we tackle THAT behomoth. :) Oh, and food storage/emergency preparedeness. Definitely need to build up that supply. But it's exciting to think of being in the position of having more cash than we have debt. And, mortgage aside, being in that position long before the kids are approaching college.

So this little financial adventure has been taking up a good chunk of my mental energy lately. I'm so happy to have my mind and optimism back. I'm still pressing forward with trying to master meal planning and bread making though.