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Have you ever gone through something that completely sucked, but later felt like it made you stronger in the end? These last several months have been just that for me. We started out January pretty strong, then because of financial reasons Craig had to put school on hold and focus on getting full time employment. At the time, I didn’t think that it would be that difficult maybe a month or so and we would be back on our feet.

 

Well, as time went on I realized that it was going to be a really long time before we had two incomes again. I thought great just as we had hashed out a budget that would allow us to save what we earned now we are in a situation where we couldn’t save and we had to have help from family members. It was a huge blow to my ego. I will say that I needed that “slap in the face” to get me to realize that I cannot depend on myself to get me through hard times; I have to depend on God.

 

As the months went on we revised our budget to take care of only those things that were absolutely essential and only asked for help on essential needs not wants. Yes, of course we did spend money on a few “fun” things, but overall we really tried to make one income work until Craig was able to find something. This may seem small, but a really hard thing that I had to do was say no to a lot of social activities because I knew that we would end up spending money. I felt like I was missing out, but I need that being able to pay bills and put food on the table was more important. Luckily, I was able to tell my friends this so they knew that we needed to save and that we weren’t trying to blow them off.

 

Eventually, Craig did find a job! He starts next week. I am so happy that I am bursting at the seams (maybe that’s pregnancy?). We are forming a budget now that will help us get back on track and eventually start to save again. My fear is that since we’ve been frugal for these last seven months as soon as we get more money in we’ll waste it on silly stuff. My prayer and hope for our future is that we do the right thing with our income.