Total Money Makeover

I've always known that God wants to use this time of me not working for us to get our finances in check. I've been avoiding God talking to me about this issue, mostly because of the simple fact that I haven't wanted to do it. There are always too many things that I need to buy. I think that my kids would rather have stress free parents than be the best dressed kids on the block.

When it comes to our finances, we have never really done a budget. We have just always spent how much we wanted on what we wanted. I've just always made sure that our money is not depleted. I have gotten a lot better in the past couple years about not spending money erratically (I'm a sucker for cute kids' clothes), but I know making a real budget and sticking to it is the only true way for us to be good stewards over our money.

We are somewhat doing Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. We don't have any debt besides our student loans and house, so that part I'm not as worried about. The main thing is that I want us to start a strict budget and stick to it so that we can learn to save money and not have to take on anymore debt. The first part of Dave's plan is to save up a thousand dollar emergency fund, so that is our first goal. I'm making our financial goals realistic. I'm not giving a time limit, but every week we do have to put some money towards this fund. 

I'll go into more detail next time of how we are doing our budget and I'll share a little more about the Total Money Makeover, in case anyone is not fimiliar with it.