Your True Friends Will Stick Around

Hi!

I have really missed writing this past week and miss you all! But it is crazy how busy life gets huh? 

Friday, Grant was given his official raise and with the raise was a small promotion. I am so proud of my hubby! It was much deserved and it will definitely help us on our debt free adventure! So, of course, we wanted to celebrate.

Grant had received a rebate from a purchase awhile back that we completely forgot was coming. It came to him in a visa card. What we should have done is used that to pay for groceries or a target trip or something like that, but together, we decided to celebrate his success. So, we took that visa card and made a trip to our local Total Wine and More. Such an amazing place. I love wine and margaritas and my husband loves beer! He is in fact quite a beer snob! He loves those $10 or more bottles of beer. So we are browsing through the store trying to figure out what to get. We realize that even though we have this gift card we still are on a budget, as we cannot put any of the money we have into this trip. He stops in the bulk beer section. He debates for awhile. Then decides that he can get more beer if he buys less expensive beer. He chooses a big pack of Budweiser. Keep in mind that this beer would fall pretty low on the list of his favorites. So he got a 36 pack of this and then had a coupon for $2 off any 6 pack of $6.99 or less. So he also got 2 six packs of “somewhat decent” beer according to him. We had already put in my margarita stuff and now we had a budget for the wine. Luckily at Total Wine and More there are a lot of good cabernets(my favorite) for pretty inexpensive. So, we walked away with a lot, and still shopped thrifty and didn’t splurge too much, in fact we had $5 left to use towards our groceries that night. Obviously this wasn’t exactly what we should have done. But I am so glad we celebrated his success the way we did. Plus now we are stalked up!

After that experience, it was off to the grocery store. We had to shop for Friday to Friday. We did what has now become habit. We weighed, we compared brands, we worked hard to keep under our $100 budget. By the time we had made the rounds and were at our last stop, we kept remembering things we forgot. That is where it got tricky. We were really pushing $100 by now. We did what we did last time and had a few items at the back of the belt in case we went over. And luckily, we were just a little under $100. Sprouts, our local farmers market store, confuses me with their taxing. I always account for tax on the store run, but sometimes there will only be a couple dollars of total tax. I don’t see item by item tax as it scans. Does anyone know what their policy is? Is almost everything pre-taxed?

Late that night we had some old friends in from out of town. We were so excited to have them stay with us. To be honest though, I was nervous because we didnt have any spending money for anything to do with them. But we told them all about the plan we were on and it was so nice to share the details of what we are doing with other people! We loved it! And luckily, they are awesome people and did not care about going out and doing anything expensive.

The next day, from staying under budget with our groceries, Grant was able to go and get lunch with them, on a budget of course. But later, we ended up having an amazing night. When Grant and I went shopping the day before, we planned for a BBQ Saturday night. We were able to get enough meat, buns and toppings, plus corn and potatoes for our BBQ plus all our other groceries for the week, staying under budget. We had a group of great friends come over (7 people total). We all had drinks from our rebate visa trip at Total Wine and everyone brought their own drinks and it was a blast! It was nice to know that we can still have great times like that weekend, without having to break the bank. :)

 

So, yesterday, I was thinking about everything and I realized, I haven't swiped my debit card since the 1st of August. With the envelope system every dollar is accounted for, so I never need it. It is so crazy how different a lifestyle this is already. In my college years, I used a similar, but less accounted for system. I would cash my paychecks and whatever money was in that envelope is what i had to spend until i got paid again. A good friend used to call it my Granny wallet. :) Now of course there are multiple envelops going to multiple things and literally every dollar is accounted for. But it really works!!

A good friend told me after I talked to her about what we were doing and going through and it gave me a sense of relief and happiness. She said, "Your true friends will stick around". I guess that has been a weight on my mind since it started. I didnt even say much about losing friends and she just knew it was on my mind and it made me happy and she is right. Because of this plan, we can't go on trips or go to happy hours, or even go out to dinner with friends. Like I said every dollar is accounted for and extra things like that are not in our budget. But this weekend made me realize our true friends will be the ones that are okay with not doing anything fancy, just hanging out and having good times and conversations. Ones that will appreciate the homemade gifts from me instead of expensive purchases. Ones that I can call when I am struggling through the rough times of this process. And the more I think about it, the more I want that. I am at a different stage in my life than I have ever been, or ever imagined. This chapter of our life is not temporary. The way we think and act with money will forever be changed. The Dave Ramsey habits will live on in the years to come and be passed down to our children. As Dave says, "You will change your family tree". And now more than ever, I really do believe that our true friends will walk beside us through this lifestyle change.

So far on our journey, I feel love and support from our friends and family. I have gotten amazing text messages and phone calls with such great words of encouragement and ideas. And we appreciate every single one of you that have done that for us. Thank you for being there for us with open arms. It is the family and friends like that, that make me realize we can do this. 

This coming weekend, we are going to go over all our finances and see how much money we have so far for August to put toward our debt! I can't wait until the end of the month rolls along so I can evaluate our first month's success. I actually am excited!!!

 

Thanks for stopping by!! Have a great rest of the week! Ill write soon! :)

XOXO