This post is from a fellow frugal-minded sister, Kate. She blogs over at Modern Alternative Mama. Kate and I have similar thoughts about living free from the bondage of debt, so I asked her to share a bit today about how she was able to make it living on a tight budget. Thanks, Kate!
Six years ago, my husband and I were newlyweds. He was just out of college, working an entry level job (at the company where he still works) and I was still in college. In addition to Ben’s entry level job, he also worked three days a week – two evenings and all day Saturday – as a salesman at his college job, a local computer store. I worked one day a week as a private music teacher.
We had to work all of those hours. We just didn’t make much money, and we had a lot of expenses (like a 4-bedroom house that we really did not need at that time). For the first several months, we simply used credit cards to get by, and let our debt get out of control. But in May, 2007, we sat down and decided it was time to do some Dave Ramsey reading together, and get serious about our budget.
Those first few months, before Ben got a promotion and a decent raise were incredibly frustrating. Our house payment was over 50% of our take home pay. Our debt payments comprised another significant percentage. We cut our expenses to the bone – no eating out, no more cable, no new clothes, nothing – and we still literally did not make enough money on paper to pay our basic expenses – housing, transportation, and food. I cried a lot when we wrote our budget and we fought.
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