Hi everyone!
Welcome back! It's been a minute since I got on here with all the crazy from the holidays so it feels good to be typing again.
Something that's been on my mind a LOT lately..not even lately.. more like the last couple of years.. is my spending habits. So probably like most women, I really enjoy buying cute/nice things. I love makeup, jewelry, clothes, pretty pens, purses, things for my house, clothes for my daughter.. sometimes I even enjoy buying boring things like a new ink cartridge for my printer or a mop for the house because it feels THAT good to buy something.. ANYTHING.
This habit goes way back. I've always loved getting new happy things and when I was a teenager I wasn't really able to go shopping a lot or buy a bunch of cute things to decorate my room so I just couldn't WAIT to be an adult and buy whatever I wanted when I wanted.
After I had my daughter I got my first real "adult" job with a bank. Thankfully while I was there I did gather a few things about how to somewhat take care of your money. I at least learned that you should pay your loan payments on time and not overdraw your account. There's a start. But I was always under the impression that debt was okay. I couldn't WAIT until I got my credit up enough to be able to have a real credit card. "I can go to the store and buy all kinds of things and then just make small payments later on to pay it off?! SIGN. ME. UP." Buy now pay later sounded like the American dream, lol.
Fast forward a few years and once Steven and I got engaged we started premarital counseling with a close family friend and pastor of ours. One thing she offered to help with was budgeting and I thought that was a great idea because she seemed to have a lot of knowledge to give and Steven and I really hadn't talked much or thought much about how we would budget once we got married. She introduced us to Dave Ramsey's principles and the cash envelope method. She explained everything to us and how it could help and told us how much debt her and her husband had paid off because of those methods and I was BLOWN AWAY! I was immediately addicted to the idea of doing exactly that! When I was single I had racked up one or two small balance credit cards trying to stay afloat and then Steven and I had a couple that we got while we were dating/engaged to pay for different things we didn't have the money for at the time. So thanks to our mentor, we were able to pay off the smallest cards in our first year of marriage and build up our 1,000 dollar emergency fund and gain a general understanding of what to do with our money. Time is a funny thing though, and we got lazy with our methods after about a year. There were some months I would forget to go get my cash out of the bank so I'd just live off my debit card and end up blowing all my money on stupid things when I didn't have groceries or gas yet, etc. I learned that I needed the cash envelope system back in my life.
So I've been using the cash envelope system for about three years now and even though I haven't followed all the baby steps and rules to a T, it has helped me realize so many things about my spending.
I realized quite a while ago that when I was stressed, mad, upset, or bored I would almost instinctively immediately head to TJ Maxx, Walmart, Hobby Lobby, or somewhere to blow a quick 10-30 dollars on something to cheer myself up. It's never hardly expensive, but once I realized the pattern, my gut told me there was an underlying issue I was covering up by buying pretty things. But then there's the other side of your brain that says "But I don't want to stop doing that... it feels so good to buy something new..." So I wrestled back and forth with that for months. I would buy something and then have immediate buyers remorse because I knew I could have used my money somewhere else for our family. The guilt got so bad that I would even feel anxiety if I spent money on something tiny ($5 or less) or for a planned expense. I hated this feeling but I realized it was because I knew most of the time no matter how small or large the purchase, I was doing it for the wrong reasons and not making paying off debt or saving my first priority.
I didn't really have any super specific New Years resolutions for 2019 but once I sat down and tried to think about some goals I should reach for, the first thing that came to mind was that this year I want to be the most responsible I've ever been with my finances. I had dipped my toe in, but not really fully committed to a full time budget. So because of that, I got on Pinterest and YouTube and discovered The Budget Mom! After watching one or two of her videos I immediately knew her methods were perfect for me! She utilizes the cash envelope system but also budgets every time she gets paid, not just once a month. I HIGHLY recommend looking her up and looking into her Budget by Paycheck Workbook and even some of her free resources on her blog! It is completely changing my habits and holding me 100% accountable to making every dollar have a purpose!
So if you're anything like me and use spending as a way to cheer yourself up or you just want to do more with your money, I'll be sharing a lot about my budgeting journey here so hopefully it will help some of you like it did me! I can't include everything I want to talk about in this one post or it would be 1000 pages long.. so stay tuned!!
Kellie
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