Household Crazies

Hello, dear blog readers! So in the last two days, I have two updates.

#1: We can visually see the belly moving now. Definitely a baby in there!

#2: We decided to do what we can to attack the debt monster that plagues the average American household. We've been a slave to it for too long. Recently we discovered a financial counseling course, and since I'm always looking for a bargain, I got it on sale at Holiday Prices. The result for this week: we took the plunge today and cut up ALL of our credit cards. Talk about scary! (Yes, I said "all.") How we as a society have gotten away from saving up money to buy things rather than instant credit is beyond me. Actually, no, it isn't. It's a lot easier to have instant gratification and worry about the consequences later than it is to save cold hard cash.

I have to say: I don't know that I would have done this program had it not been for our situation last year. My sister took the course about a year ago, and with C's premature birth on Cobra insurance (resulting in several thousand dollars out of pocket for us), if we hadn't gotten tips from her, we would be in a whole lot more debt than we are now. We just paid off the last of his hospital bills last month, and I can't tell you how rewarding that is. Inch by inch we're digging our way out from under the boulder of financial bondage and slavery.

The other difference I've noticed is that the grocery bill seems feasible on almost half of what we were spending before. Who knew that while it's embarrassing to have to give groceries back to the clerk if you don't have enough cash, it's also EMPOWERING because you're sticking to an amount and your budget rather than putting yourself overbudget on plastic?

Anyway, dear blog readers, Happy Monday to you all! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this holiday season!