Start of a New Year

Here are all of the reason's that this week's summary isn't as terrible as it looks:

• Life Insurance! C'mon, seriously? We pay the premium once a year and it happened to fall this week.
  
• Two weekends. And who doesn't eat out and spend a bit more than they should on the weekend?
  
• Eye doctor appointment! (see point above re: life insurance).
  
• External hard drive - a long term necessity but short term OUCH!
  

In all seriousness, though, we did go a little nutty towards the end of our week off and paid the price by overdrafting the checking account (we have protection, but it's just more debt).

On the upside: I made a menu of dinner options for us for the week, which we stuck to three out of five nights. We have also done a good job of limiting our grocery store runs - no more daily trips. I made another menu before sending Giehl out into the grocery fray this week, so here's hoping we make it to four or even five nights of menu-stickingness.

We're prayerfully considering our child care situation. We love our nanny, but it's difficult to justify the high expense given my little salary.

Looking ahead: we plan to travel to DC this weekend and will need prayers and grace to not overspend there. I've also taken on some contract work with a local non-profit which should help to generate some additional income in the coming months, but will bring its share of stress, as well. I've done a great job of exercising in the last nine days (six days on, one off, repeat) and will need to stick with that to retain any semblance of sanity in the months to come.

I just keep reminding myself that we have to start with baby steps before we can climb mountains.

Some Improvement: December 2010

Well, I've tried fourteen times to make this image bigger, to no avail.

Not sure that a blog centered around the idea of accountability carries quite the same weight if your audience has to use a magnifying glass to read the data...please forgive me, I'll try to figure this out for next week, when the weekly updates really will start.

December was better. Not perfect, nowhere near, but better. We still spent more than we brought in, which is a problem, but much less than before.

And while we still spent far too much on food, we shaved more than $500 off of November's expenses, thanks in part to our action plan, which was:

1. Curb Starbucks spending
2. Eat out once a week (not quite there, but better)
3. Grocery shop once a week, with a list (almost)

We took a vacation in November, so those expenses were also gone, but we used more childcare and did some year-end giving that wasn't planned for.

In church this morning, our senior pastor told the story of a young couple who cashed out a chunk of their retirement when they were in their thirties to buy and renovate a house so that homeless families could have a place to stay while they got back on their feet. What an amazing blessing that must have been...both for the families and that young couple. My only prayer is that when God calls Giehl and I to make a leap of faith like that, that we'll be open and quiet enough to hear.

How It Started: November 2010

This was November and it scared the pants off of us. The first thing you'll notice is that we spent literally thousands more than we brought in. Not exactly a sustainable lifestyle (oh, and in this month, I included credit card cash advances as income, which I won't be doing again).

But what really scared us is that we spent as much on food as we did on our house payment. I'll say it again - in one month, we spent as much on food as we did on our entire mortgage. I (Sarah) was particularly sickened by this for two reasons. First, I've struggled for many years with food addiction and overeating. It's easy to see now that spending on food and overeating go hand-in-hand. But I felt most damned looking at these numbers and knowing that one person dies every second and one child dies every five seconds as a result of hunger. In the time it took me to analyze my monthly spending, 700 children died from inadequate nutrition.

Unholy hell.

So, we resoved to change. We know we can't fix a lifetime of habits overnight, but we can eat out less. We can give more. And we know that with God's grace, our checkbooks can be a reflection of God's mercy and love.

About First Things

My husband and I aren't exactly "keeping up with the Jones'" types, but we have realized that simply refraining from buying lots of newer and bigger things doesn't necessarily mean that we're being faithful with our finances.

So, at the end of one month I pulled and categorized all of our spending for the previous 30 days. It was eye-opening and shaming. Sure, we gave a good 10% of our income, but we also spent far more than we brought in and the amount I spent at Starbucks alone could have fed ten families in Kenya for a month.

We need accountability. But even our closest friends weren't down with opening up our checkbooks to each other every week. Hence, a blog was born.

Each week, we'll post our weekly totals - how much we bring in and how much goes out (and, more importantly, where it goes!).

Our hope is twofold: that we'll be more faithful with the financial gifts we've been given and that we might encourage others to do the same.