Ever been short on money?

I've got to run and get some errands done this AM. Just wanted to let you know that I have been there- we worked our way out of some major debt, due to a death in the family. I will share what we did later on and hope it will be helpful!

Until later,

Joy

 

Susan, I've dealt with that. My husband was unemployed / underemployed for 26 months. I worked three jobs and we bought nothing that wasn't essential. No snacks! We both lost weight. It was exhausting, difficult for my husband ('cause men don't handle unemployment well), but we got through it without ever having a late payment, and even paid off a car early. And it brought us closer together, as all hardship has done.

Look carefully at your spending and slice out any that isn't NEEDED. (It was awful to be given a beautiful lamp and not be able to justify spending $4 for the special light bulbs it required.) Get rid of cable TV, long distance, greeting cards, etc. Be cautious with grocery money. But you also need to treat yourself once in a while! I tried calling creditors and asking for reduced payments (had always heard that they'd be happy to work with you rather than see you skip payments, etc.) but that was a bust. They were NO help!

I wish I could offer something solid, but I don't have much. do I? God will provide, and you'll come out stronger. Meanwhile, I'll keep you in my prayers.

 

I totally understand. We lived in Indy six months when my husband was laid off. We just bought anew car. I had to work overtime several times, lucky for me they were offering double time plus bonus for anything over my FTE which was 36 hrs. I would work about 60 hrs a week. Until finally after 3 months he was able to get a better job then he had! It was hard because I had a little one and a 5 year old that was use to hving mommy around, fortuanately, daddy was there to take up the slack.
I remeber robbing pig backs, cashing in investments, hunting for change,which we had a lot around the house. God blessed and saw us through. It is hard when going through it, but keep your head up even when you do not want to.

 

We can relate. My husband is a pastor and working on a PhD, AND we just had a second child. Our biggest expense is health insurance, but boy is it a BIG one! Somehow, God always meets our needs. We dont have cable, cell phones, beepers, etc, and we dont use credit cards. (Actually, we no longer have one.) We have one good car and a halfway reliable one. Our big luxury is the internet, but my husband is required to have it for school . I make our baby wet wipes, we have a small garden, and we try to buy stuff at Sam's since it is cheaper in the long run.
However, we do sometimes take an evening out and go to a favorite restaurant, just so we dont FEEL so poor!! Oh, and when we started looking closely at the things we bought on our debit/check card, we saw we had really spent more than we meant to.
I do hope that one day we wont have $ worries, but its not so bad. ITs a faith/trust building time, and God won't let you go without.
Be praying for ya!
TaterTot

 

When my husband and I met, he was many thousands of dollars in debt, due the cancer that took his first wife. He also made below the poverty line, which made it quite difficult to get anywhere with the debt.

The first thing we did, was to write it all down, starting with the smallest bill on up to the largest, keeping notes of which bills acrued the most interest as well as the date each was due.

Then we looked at our budget and cut out anything that was extra, which included things like cable, the rented garage, internet, karate lessons... I also worked very diligently at saving money on the food bill and other things that were necessity.

For a short time, when the babies started coming, we qualified for WIC, and we took advantage of that, as well as getting immunizations done by the county nurse for free, instead of their physician.

We began paying off the smallest bills one at a time, and then added the money that we were using for the retired bills to the larger bills, so our payments got larger each time.

We went down to one used car, so no monthly payment there.

There were also some bills that the hospital was willing to settle with us for a smaller pay-off. This is perfectly legal, and most hospitals would rather take a few hundred dollars less than put it in collection, which actually costs them more in the long run.

We also found a less expensive rent, which saved us over a hundred dollars a month! We didn't own our own home at the time.

The Lord blessed my husband with a better job after a few years, and we took his profit share money from the first job, and finished paying off the rest of the debt. Some of that was settlements with collection companies as well.

* Now, before you use retirement money like we did, you need to look at the whole picture, including where you will be retirement-wise in the future. This is not wise for every one. We were young enough, that 15 thousand or so could be easily made up with the new job's retirement fund, early on. It paid for us to take the small cut in order for us to get ahead, but this is not wise for every situation!!!

It is only through the mercy of the Lord and His goodness, that we were able to get out of some extreme debt within 5 years, after which, we were able to buy our home. Perhaps, some of these ideas will help you! And believe me, I understand!!!

P.S. Don't hire someone to analize your debt for you. This costs a lot of money, and you can do it yourself by writing it all down from smallest to largest. This is what they do for you anyway!

 

Oh, and ditch all credit cards!!!! They will hang you with interest!

Also, if you are going to be late with a payment, call and let them know that you get paid on Friday, and the check will be in the mail then! They are more likely to wave penalties if you let them know you have a good excuse or that it is coming. You can also let them know if you can only afford 10$ this month. Making arrangements ahead of time keeps you on better terms with your collectors. We even asked for permission a couple of times to skip a month in order to pay off someone else, in order to pay them off the next month. Usually they are happy to oblige, especially if they know it will be paid in full the next month.

Just a few more tricks of the trade from one with experience!

 

Ditto everything Joy said, except for the karate lessons (I don't think I could live without that... ).

Joseph Botwinick

PS: I hope you know I am kidding about the karate lessons. Speaking of which, it is about time for me to go. See ya later.

 

Isn't it funny how so many of us know that place called poverty? I learned to call it 'bottom line living.' I figures the essentials: shelter, food, warmth, basic clothes. With those covered everything else was gravy. There are two times in my life when I have been incredibly poor. In the very early seventies I lived on a dollar a day for food -- a McDonald's hamburger and milk was less than a dollar and the odd bits from that dollar a day that were left over went to buy salad fixings once a week. The McDonald's meal was a treat I gave myself on my way home from college classes!

And then, in the early nineties, after my husband of 20 years had left us (me and six children) and refused to pay child support for a year until the judge ordered it, we learned bottom line living together as a team. I cried and they worked keeping up the house and we all spent as little money as possible is the actual truth about THAT year! But because I gave up all alimony and most child support to keep the house, which was mortgage-free, we stayed poor for a long time after that. Clothes were hand-me-downs, we grew our own veggies and had chickens. Everything was cash out and several years later when pieces were literally falling off our Toyota van (age and miles), my brother and his wife GAVE us a year old Ford Windstar. Whoa!!!

I'm still here in the same house. The kids are mostly all grown up and out on their own now. We did it.

My husband (I was remarried a year and a half ago after over nine years single) endured even more radical poverty. His parents were Salvation Army officers in Australia. I don't know about now, but there was no retirement plan then. And there was certainly not enough pay to save up anything. Barry recalls a time when he had $3 and needed to buy $5 worth of food for his mother and sister and himself. In his heart he felt the Lord ordering him to go downtown and get that food. He couldn't figure how it would be done, but as he was walking across the street to get to the store, he was looking at the colored autumn leaves all over the ground. And there, among them, was a $2 note.

God will use this time to teach trust, endurance, and good money management. Trust Him. He won't let you go!

Here are David's words from Psalm 37:25

I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging for bread.

 

I think God has really blessed me and my husband after reading your stories. Only 2X in our marriage was our checkbook in the red. One time we came home from visiting our parents and a check for $300 was in the mail. When I entered my debit slips in the checkbook it worked out to -$298. God gave us 2 extra dollars! Another time friends handed us a check for $500 to this day we don't understand why (except the leading of the Lord) because they had no idea we needed just about that much to pay our monthly bills.

Anyways, I have been married 6 years and we have always been on a budget. When I reached home after my honeymoon my husband showed me the budget book he used from Larry Burkett, "Managing your Money" and we have used it ever since. It helps us prioritize and avoid spending money we don't have. When we got our mortgage we had a much better idea about what we could afford then the bank and borrowed a lot less then we qualified for.

I hope things work out for you. Keep it before the Lord and from experience and the way God has blessed us I say, don't neglect the Lord. I think he blesses in this area when we have faith and give him our first fruits.

 

OKay I should have never wrote that. My washing machine just died !!!! And the 1 year warenty expired exactly one month ago!! I paid $375 for this piece of junk Anyways, God will provide and I guess here is our time to learn since lately we have been putting all our extra $$ into finishing another bedroom for our girls.

 

Better yet, the question posed should be--have I ever had enough money?

I guess I have always lived on the edge of --"will I have enough" or "where will the money come from".

But you know what, my Father is rich. He knows my needs, and the money will be there when I need it. My need is already met, in full.

That may sound trivial, but it isn't. Not in the least. God is My provider. Not being married, my caretaker is Jesus, and because I know that he has promised to meet my needs, I act out of my league when I worry about them.