Why I Chose to Blog

I have decided to join the blog scene for three reasons:

1. To keep me focused on my financial goals.

2. To make a few extra dollars to decrease debt and stress.

3. To learn from others out there that have gone through what I am about to go through again.

At a young age I learned to prepare for the future. My parents were not rich by no means but they did teach me many ways to stretch a dollar (but at the time I just thought they were being mean, making me wear cloths bought at yard sales and working in the garden all summer).

During my first marriage I really learned how to stretch a dollar since my ex-husband would spend a lot more than the two of us made. I tried many different techniques to keep him from spending money. After about a year or two he had no choice but to use only cash because all of our credit cards were canceled by the credit card companies and we were not able to get any loans because we had such bad credit.

After about 3 years of working 3 jobs to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, I started reading books to help get out of debt. I started talking to people who were much more money savvy than I was. I learned everything I could to help get our finances under control. Of course everything I did, my ex-husband found a way around it and continued to spend as much as he could.

After the divorce I found “The Tightwad Gazette”, the bible of all frugal bibles. I bought the 3 books in one. I learned so much and was really able to save enough money to buy my first home and to pay down a huge amount of debt.

After 6 years of being on my own and finding new ways to save money, I remarried. I sold my home in the country and moved in with my husband in the big city (not really, it just seemed big after living in the country most of my life). Things changed dramatically. Almost overnight most of my frugal habits had disappeared. In five years of our marriage we have continued to pay our debts, but we are not getting anywhere fast. With no real financial goals for the future and working on extending our family, I felt that we needed to get serious about our finances.

In the last few months I have discovered more ways than before on how to save money using coupons and store reward points. My sister became so good at using coupons and store rewards that stores pay her money to take goods out of their store.

This blog has already helped me open my eyes to how bad our finances are and how far we have to go. Recently I did look back at my records to see how things have changed in the last 4 years. I am amazed at how much debt we have actually paid off and how much we could have had if we hadn’t spent so much money. But we are now on the right track and making better choices.