This sub, man, you the real MVP.
I've never been great with money. I was the kind of person that if there was money in my bank account I was spending it until there was nothing left at which point I'd get paid again and "OH BOY! MORE MONEY TO SPEND!" I was able to reel it in once I met my now-wife 7 years ago and stopped just mindlessly swiping my credit card but I carried a hefty balance for a few years.
Fortunately for me, my wife had much better discipline than I had had and by the time we met she had paid off her student loans and had a big savings account. She lived at home after she graduated college and during the first years of her career and somewhat sadly, didn't have many friends still around that she was going out with to spend money with (she has a solid group of friends now though).
Anyway we were able to use a lot of her savings for the big things we encountered, appliances for our first home, our wedding, our honeymoon. It's not as if she spent that money lightly, of course. Everything was discussed and accounted for and we always left enough for the what-if's and the emergencies. She was also gifted a CD by her grandfather many years ago of $5,000. That has been and will continue to be our true emergency fund but we like to have enough in our savings too. By 'our' savings I mean the money that she has mostly kept aside, I've contributed by adding in tax returns or little sums here and there but she has a regular automatic deposit set up for every two weeks that is responsible for most of the funding.
While that's an awesome thing to have in a partner, it also didn't motivate me to figure out my own financial situation. She became a crutch for me. So I spent like I always did. Sure I make more now than I ever did but I'm also spending for two when we go shopping or out to eat.
So I decided it was time to change. We have a daughter now, we live in our "starter home" and I know my wife is dying to upgrade to something nicer and with at least one more bedroom than we currently have. I started following this blog last year, used the methods to pay off my credit card debt and as of last October, once it was all paid off, set up a savings account for myself. I started modestly, $25 a week, just to get a feel for it, I didn't was to stretch myself too far, I guess you could say I was taking baby steps. I'd also put in any money I had left in my account come payday. After a couple weeks of that I bumped it up to $50 a week, every Friday. That way if I got in trouble I could just pause the next one and be fine. Did that for a couple weeks and as of the last week of December bumped it up to $100/week automatically deposited into my savings account.
Now here I sit, for the first time in my life with a savings account that has $1,000 in it and I am 100% responsible for putting there. Me. Of all people. This is nuts.
By the way the money that I was using to pay down my credit has gone to increasing my payments to my student loans and my car loan so I've been saving while still spending the same amount on bills even though I'm no longer putting money towards paying off my credit cards. I've made cuts in other places to accommodate my savings.
Anyway, the work continues. I still have student loans to pay off, carrying a car payment for a dumb move I made buying my second to last car years ago and got way underwater on, and of course a down payment for a new house. But this small victory and the progress I have made over the last year has only reinforced my resolve to be my best financial self.
Unrelated and I know it's contentious in this sub but we also did a no-spend January. It was enlightening. We saved collectively $1,700. Which we put part into her savings and the rest into my student loans. People say that no-spends are bad because of habit building or whatever, but it was certainly eye-opening for us. We've since thought twice about going out to eat and we've cut our grocery budget in half while not going hungry. She wants to try it again in March to see what else we can learn.
Thanks, PF!
Submitted February 19, 2018 at 09:23AM by Pencegc http://ift.tt/2Gs9f5A
