Dear mom who is so tired of living on a tight budget:
I know that you want to give up.
You’re worn down from watching every penny you spend.
You’re exhausted from carefully calculating how you’re going to stretch your grocery dollars to feed all those mouths that seem to never stop eating.
You wish you didn’t have to wait for ever until that item you need goes on sale for the lowest price so you can make it work to purchase it on your beans and rice budget.
You are tired of re-wearing the same thing over and over again. Tired of praying every time you get in the car, hoping it will start. Tired of having to turn down yet another get-together with friends because there’s no way you can afford to pay for dinner out at a restaurant.
You just want to check out of your money-strapped life and go have a latte and a massage. Or maybe money is so tight right now that you would just love to have a few extra dollars to spend on something you want at a garage sale, instead of having to reserve every nickel and dime for only the basic necessities.
Can I encourage you? The difficult choices and hard sacrifices you are making will be worth it… and they could make a major impact on generations to come.
As the interviewer continued to ask questions, she became more and more excited about the things I was sharing. At the end of our conversation, she said, “It seems like you’ve done so many things right as parents. Do you ever make mistakes with money or have you failed as parents when it comes to teaching your kids about money?”
I was able to share candidly with her that, yes, we’ve failed in many ways (see yesterday’s post for an example!), but because of our parents’ and grandparents’ examples, we’ve made a lot fewer money mistakes as a couple.
The sacrifices they made to live on a budget and get out of debt paved a trail for us so that it wasn’t as difficult. In addition, their sacrifices inspired and motivated us to want to stand on their shoulders and do even better than they did. We, in turn, hope to inspire our own children and grandchildren to go even farther than we have or will.
In those moments when you want to throw in the towel, when you are discouraged about your budget, when you are tired of all the short-term sacrifices, when you just want to pull out that credit card to buy something you don’t have room in your budget for, remember this: your children are watching. The example you set before them will impact them in powerful ways — either good or bad.
So don’t throw in the towel. Don’t give up on your budget, even though it’s tough.
Your children and grandchildren will thank you one day for your wise money management… and that will make it all worth it.
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Jesse and I spent time really discussing what my focuses should be for 2014 and we nailed down four areas that are my priorities for this year:
Marriage: to continue to invest time and energy to strengthen and nurture our marriage and make it one of the greatest priorities
Mothering: to continue to invest in our children with the goal of teaching them character, life skills, and raising them to be responsible adults
Myself: to make my health a priority and to invest in my personal growth as a Christian, business owner, writer, speaker, and leader
MoneySavingMom.com: to invest time into blogging — not just overseeing the business and my team, but making writing content pieces one of my top blogging priorities
Having these specific areas determined at the beginning of the year is really helping me to prioritize and giving me much clearer direction on when, where, and what to say no to this year.
Here’s an update on how I’m doing (or not doing, as is the case with many of these!) on my goals this year:
Marriage Goals
1. Read 6 marriage books. (I've almost finished 5 marriage books so far.) 2. Write 50 love notes to Jesse. (I've written 40 love notes so far.)
Kaitlynn with the French Toast that she made almost entirely by herself!
Mothering Goals
3. Read 40 books aloud to the kids. (We've finished 9 books so far — yes I’m probably going to fall woefully short on this goal this year.) 4. Finish memorizing Romans 1 together. 5. Go through a cooking course with the kids. (I have been teaching the kids quite a few different cooking skills the past month. We haven’t done any official course, but they’ve learned a lot more cooking skills this year.)
Personal Goals
6. Read through the Bible. (I paused this goal to instead dive into the She Reads Truth Hospitality study that I got at Allume. I am LOVING it — and it’s been a great change after years of just reading straight through the Bible. I’ll probably blog more on this soon just because I love it so much!) 7. Memorize Romans 2. (I’m working on this.) 8. Run a 5K race and go through P90X again. 9. Read 150 books/ebooks. (I've read 73 books so far this year.)
If you've posted an update on how you're doing on your goals for 2014, I'd love for you to share your link in the comments. Or, if you don't have a blog, feel free to just leave a comment with an update on how you're doing on your goals. Let's encourage one another to live lives of intention and purpose!
