And I guess after a season dedicated to excess (Thanksgiving & Christmas) in modern America, it makes sense to use the new year to focus on scaling back.
But after spending the last few weeks in prayer and discussion with Josh, we decided to go ahead and get on that bandwagon early. And because this blog is not only about Baby R (although I love writing about and to him) and I am not only a mother, I'm going to document all aspects of life on Self Lane here. Most of the time, that life will be about my beautiful baby boy, but sometimes it will be about J & I fighting our way out of thousands of dollars of consumer debt and struggling to lose over 100 lbs.
We decided to start early because we thought the transition of my going back to work was really a good spring board. For the last year, we've been using our money to save for maternity leave and really put getting out of debt on hold. But, we didn't plan on having some of our financial surprises during my maternity leave. My car is completely undriveable (even after sinking almost $1,000 into it), we discovered breastfeeding is not an option for us, and there were a few gift card snafus. All of which contributed to my returning to work about a month earlier than we originally planned. Don't get me wrong, we've also been tremendously blessed during this period. I don't want to discount that. I just use this time to illustrate how unprepared we are. Also, personally I struggle with materialism big time. I have always wanted to keep up with the Joneses and worried what others thought. So, by getting a jump start on scaling back, I hope to fight the more/bigger is better urge during this holiday season.
Actually, I am pretty excited about our financial plan. J & I spent the weekend re-reading Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover and plan to use that as a basis for getting out of debt. We've agreed to meet once each month to discuss finances. This is something we've never done before. I cannot express how happy/relieved I am about our monthly meetings. Typically when we start trying to get out of debt (each January) we talk about it at the beginning and then I'm left to put our words into action. Eventually I get frustrated and resentful because I feel like I'm making all the financial decisions and I get tired of always being the bad guy who always has to say "no." And in J's defense, he doesn't really know what's going on in our bank account. To him, he works a lot so he should be able to treat himself every once in awhile. And then I get angry because he spent bill money although he didn't know it was for that purpose (or I get angry for having to tell him no). So, to combat that we are meeting every month to discuss the following month and we are also starting the envelope system.
As far as weight loss, we don't exactly have a strict plan in place yet. We are trying to do a few small things each month in the hope that they will build on each other and we will eventually just choose to eat healthy on our own. I am open to ideas, but because of our budget am limited on spending. For november, we chose to eliminate fried foods, sodas, and pre-made pizzas. For December we may focus on drinking more water or making our coffees a little less sugary healthier.
We both really want to teach R about good nutrition and making wise financial choices especially because we struggle so much in those two specific areas. We also know that good health and being able to give back (financially) are ways to obey and honor the Lord. And that is always our most important goal of all.
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