What, Christmas is when???

There is an interesting phenomenon that has plagued me for several years. It took me a really long time to figure this out. Are you ready? Here it is.

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!

Starting Over Again

And again. And again. And one more time.... Okay, so this could go on forever. But I think you get my point. None of us are perfect, very rarely do we ever do something perfectly the first time and then keep hitting perfection each time.

Like my oldest daughter says "h space a space h space a" (10 year old sarcasm, heaven help us). Most of the time life is a series of high, low, high again, serious crash, repeat and repeat.

We started getting serious about getting out of debt way back in 2008. Nope you didn't read that wrong. We only had 3 kids, we were younger and we had less than half of the debt we're carrying now. So what happened between then and 2015? Why did we add a ton more to our load?

I already told you about grad school. We also made a couple more stupid choices along the way. So here we are again, we are blessed to have 5 kids and sadly, twice as much debt and we're following the same plan that we started on all those years ago.

What's different this time around? Why do we think it's going to work?

Well this time the kids are involved. When we started our oldest wasn't even in kindergarten and now we have 4 in elementary school. Greg and I talk about being in debt and the things that we're doing to get out of it. We've told them about the way that being in debt robs your freedom. Last week I drew a thermometer on construction paper. It's our debt tracker and it has numbers on each side. On the right is the total amount we have to pay back and on the left is the running total of what is done. It's pretty exciting to come into the kitchen and see them gathered around the paper seeing how much we have paid back.

One of the things that has made us so motivated is knowing that we have 5 kids headed on missions and to college in the not distant future. Somehow all of that has to be paid for and we don't want to be unable to help our children because we are still cleaning up our mistakes. That's a huge incentive.

I've shared with you how Greg and I are both committed to this plan but it bears repeating. We are on the same page. Totally. Sadly that hasn't always been true. After our fourth child was born in 2009 I just kinda went off the deep end. I lost touch with everything that mattered for a couple of years. That included our finances. Greg would try to encourage me to get back on track so that we could get rid of our debt but I wouldn't respond. We were making great money back then so technically this debt could be gone by now but because I was just barely surviving I couldn't do it. We lost those few years but now we're back. Everyone is mentally and physically healthy and we can devote our resources to this massive goal.

Am I certain that this time around is going to be different? Well, no. I occasionally worry but I'm not focused on the fear of failure. Instead we keep working and praying and talking about what we are doing. We're planning a celebration trip for when this debt is gone. The kids have decided where they want to go (Nashville, Disney World and a cruise, oh my) and Greg has printed out pictures of a cruise ship and a Disney World map for us to drool over. Every morning after family prayer we practice our debt free scream (WE'RE DEBT FREE!!!) and we just keep following our plan. I don't know what's coming next but I do know that we paid off one of our little debts just yesterday and man, that feels good.

He says, She says

Sometimes there's a difference of opinion around the Miles' house. Occasionally one of us will convince the other that they're right. Once in a while we will both be wrong. And then there are other times. That's what we tactfully call, "agreeing to disagree".

So would you like to hear about one of those times?

When I wrote my series on surviving unemployment, I used the word "unemployment" over and over again because, hey, we didn't have a job with health insurance and a retirement plan. Yes, there were 2 part time jobs that made a huge difference but as far as I was concerned Greg was out of work.

Then the other day Greg wrote about the Baby Steps and he talked about "underemployment". See those part time jobs meant that we were getting money and our mortgage was being paid. They weren't ideal jobs and they were just temporary plugs to hold back the dam while we found full time employment.

So who's right? Me? Him? Does it matter?

Nah, not really. I still consider us to have gone through a defining time of unemployment. Greg believes that we were changed by our time in underemployment. 

What's most important is that whatever word you use, it was a challenging experience in our family but it didn't tear us apart. It made us better people and it made our relationship deeper and stronger.

Even if we still disagree on things. Like the correct flavor of a milkshake.

It's mint Oreo in case you're wondering.

I should get an A

A new semester started yesterday. I always love the beginning of each set of classes (fresh start and all that) but this one is super exciting because I am done with generals and now I get to move on to classes for my major. I feel like a real live grown up with a life plan... or something like that.

Anyhow one of my classes is Personal Finance and I just had to laugh when I saw the syllabus. The course objectives are as follows (direct copy and paste):

1. The student will demonstrate management of their personal finances including budgeting, bank services, insurance, home ownership, investments, and retirement planning. Each student’s management style will embody elements of uniqueness of problem solving strategies and goal selection.

2. The student will demonstrate an understanding of the importance of personal financial planning in their personal and family lives. Students will show evidence that their financial decisions will impact both their family and society.

3. The student will demonstrate awareness of the financial services markets and recognize the connections relative to access to financial services, credit score, interest rates, income and individual financial opportunity.

4. Students will be aware of critical personal financial literature including classic and contemporary thought.

Budgeting, I've got that. 

Problem solving strategies, have you seen my life?! 

Personal financial planning in family lives, hah, in my sleep. 

Interest rates, you want to talk interest, let's talk about student loan interest. 

Critical personal financial literature? You should see my nightstand.

I'll give you a full report at the end of the semester but based on the course objectives I'd better get an A in this class because people, I am LIVING this class!