Since Ben and I have been married, we've been very frugal. We spent money on our honeymoon, when we went on our cruise, but we didn't go crazy (the cruise was $1000 for both of us) and there was a bit of a learning curve when it came to grocery shopping (the first month, I swear we spent like $300 a week on groceries). I learned how to cook and we learned how to eat healthy without spending quite so much money.
And that was good, because our first year and a half, we had no money. We were both in school and just trying to earn enough to survive and pay tuition. It was hard. There were literally months where we lived off of tithing blessings. We would think, we don't have enough money to pay rent this month and then somehow, we always would.
Then I finished school and Ben started making a little more (we went from $18,000 a year to $40,000 a year), so we had some breathing room, but we also had a baby and found Dave Ramsey. We started going through his plan really quickly. We got married in April, found Dave Ramsey a year later in July, and had our emergency fund the next January (this was January 2015, right after Ashtyn was born). Since then, we've put every spare penny towards our house, so our budget is still the same as when we were newly weds.
I'm really proud of us for being able to save so much in so little time. We have made a lot of sacrifices and it's not always fun to have such a tight budget, especially when we're making so much more than we are living off of. We recently bought a lot and were able to pay cash for it and that feeling was totally worth it. I can't even imagine how good it will feel once our house is paid off. So for now, the sacrifice is worth it, but boy, do I have a lot of things I'm looking forward to once we buy and pay off our house.
We'll get a nice fence and have the yard entirely fenced in. This will be so nice with kids.
We'll finish our basement so we can have a school/toy room, an office for Ben away from the family's daily, noisy activities, and a guest room/bathroom. I have all sorts of plans for both the school room and the guest room and I'm really excited for when we can have those all set up.
I'll be able to have a large amount in our budget to put towards books--children's books, eBooks, physical books for our collection. This is one of the things I'm honestly most excited about.
I'll be able to get some more expensive things for our kitchen. I'd really like to move to glass containers, reusable fabric bags for our fruit, and cast iron pans. I also really want some bigger items, like a stand mixer, a second ice cream machine, a second bread machine, and a magic bullet, that are more expensive.
The other thing we want to do that we are waiting on is to get nicer clothes. Even just new clothes would be nice. Jeans, shirts, skirts, shoes, garments, both Ben and I are really looking forward to when we have a budget line in our budget for new clothes.
I could literally go on forever. I'm the natural spender, between Ben and I, and I am really excited for when we have more money to spend rather than save :) We're also really excited for when we can give more. We only give above tithing and fast offering when we feel specifically prompted to, but there are a lot of situations we come across when we wish we could do more. After our house is paid off, we'll be able to, because we won't be in debt (or future debt). No payments means more freedom to do what you actually want to do with money.And that's why we're sacrificing now.
Because we want that freedom.
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