Why does it feel like Christmas (and birthdays) sneak up on you? I mean, Christmas is on the same day every year!! You might be able to relate and you might have the same problem I had. Why did I not have enough money saved up to pay for all of the gifts I wanted to get? It used to be that I had to do some interesting financing to pay for it or put it on a credit card and pay for last year's Christmas until the next Christmas rolled around. That strategy added to my anxiety during the holidays.
So the question I pose to you is why do we not save money for such occasions? Why do we struggle to save money at all? I think there are several reasons why we are not able to do so. We will discuss a couple of reasons and give some remedies that will hopefully help you.
Reason
The Wall Street Journal did a study and found that 70% of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That is across all classes; income, skin color, it doesn't matter. That means 7 out of 10 families in your neighborhood are struggling to keep up with the expenses they have. That also means all of their money is going to other places and they can’t put money into savings.
Remedy
What can you do if you have your money disappears each month? The first thing to do would be to create a budget. Put all of your expenses down on paper. This helps you see where your money is going. When we did our budget for the first time it was amazing to see where our money was going and what our spending habits were. Once you see where it goes you can make corrections and changes to how you spend your money. When we made changes to our budget and how we were spending it seemed like we got a pay raise. Tell your money where to go instead of watching it just slip away.
Reason
One of the top reasons for divorce in America is money fights. I will admit I was nervous talking to Kristen about our finances. For whatever reason she was the defacto family budgeter. I did not help her with it and when she worked on the bills she was not a happy person. Finances scared me for a long time.
Remedy
Figuring out how to budget was the first good step we took on our financial journey. To be honest it didn’t happen until we took Financial Peace University back in 2009. The principles we learned in that class really helped us. The first thing that we did was have a budget meeting together. We agreed that we both had to contribute to the budget meeting and we even made and signed a contract to do so. We sat down and made our budget and we got on the same page. I am not going to lie, it was uncomfortable at first but over time it became easy to work together. Once I saw what was going on I wasn't afraid to talk about it. Kristen was also relieved to not be carrying the burden all alone. We can now confidently relate together with money.
Now that we have a written plan our money does what we tell it to do. So this last Christmas we drew a line in the sand and we said "this is how much we have to spend and after it's gone, that's it!" and that was it. Kristen ran out of wrapping paper after the budget was spent and had to get creative with some tissue paper and masking tape and it worked!
We also want for this to be an interactive site so we can help each other. What things have you done to save money? any tips for the rest of us? We would love to hear from you. Also if you are struggling with a money issue we would love to help. We don't claim to know it all but we have learned a lot on this crazy journey. So comment below and let us know what you need or what you would like us to talk about.
PS- did anyone else have a naked from the waist down Christmas tree? The toddler stage, holy cow!
