Sunday, March 10, 2013

A comment made in haste

One of my coworkers made a comment that bothered me quite a bit.
She stated that I wasn't worried about the furlough because I was rich.
This is not true, my husband and I support a family of five (with a mortgage of 1500/month) on 40,000 dollars a year. We are not rich by any means.
But we do not have extensive credit card debt. We do not have creditors calling us. We are not in fear of how we will pay our bills.
Why? Because before we were married we both were managing our own bills successfully  making our budgets monthly, and keeping good credit scores.
We live by four simple rules.
1. Don't spend money on things that are not tangible. Online fake money? Strippers? Imaginary online 'lives'? Those are money pits.
2. Don't spend money on things that can get you into trouble; in turn costing more money.
3. Be mindful of 'social spending.' Society always reminds us of the danger of social drinking. But the cost of going out to the bars is equally as hard on your life. A hundred dollars at the bar is 26 gallons of milk. That's a LOT of milk
4. Plan your week/month/year budgets. We like to break down our budget into as short of a time period as possible. Having a monthly grocery budget seems great, but a weekly budget is easier to stick to and if the budget gets maxed early the wait time for more money is not nearly as long.

Following these rules we still have money for at least one family vacation a year. We still go out to eat and even have new vehicles.

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