The Best Money Decisions We've Made

I am still NO money expert, but I sure WANT to be. So as I learn things I want to try and share them with you ;) When Ben started flight school and I realized that his instructors were brand new pilots themselves I thought it was CRAZY, but what better way to learn more deeply than to teach, right?!

So here are my top 5 Best Things We've Done for our Finances

1. Pay TITHING FIRST and a generous FAST offering. Last weekend a speaker said "You can't give the Lord a slice of bread without Him giving you a loaf in return." I truly believe this from occasions over and over and over again. Sacrifice truly brings blessings!

2. Have an EMERGENCY FUND. As we were first figuring money out, we really struggled with whether to pay down debt or save money. It was Suze Orman that taught me that we needed an emergency fund FIRST, so we didn't have to go into MORE debt when an emergency came up. (We found $1000 covered most emergencies or at least softened the blow.)

3. Make SAVINGS AUTOMATIC; treat it like a bill and don't wait to save whatever is "left over" at the end of the month. We have a separate savings account that is linked to our checking and have the bank AUTOMATICALLY transfer a certain amount each month. Even $25 a month starts to add up!  You can always pull it out if you need it, but it's a good habit to get into. (We also put $5 a month into a savings account for each of the kids.)

4. Pay your bills a MONTH AHEAD. I was told this by my Sales Manager at Bassett Furniture years ago. This is especially helpful when your income varies month-to-month, but even if you are on a flat rate, it brings worlds of peace. Build up your savings until you can pay for a whole month's expenses or do like us, and use your tax return to get ahead. No more stress about bill timing, no more overdraft, no more credit cards to save you, just PEACE!

5. YOU NEED A BUDGET software! You need to tell your money where to go before it's all gone. Having a plan and a good way to follow through with it is essential. This software is AWESOME and does everything I wanted and needed. It really makes budgeting FUN and SUCCESSFUL. It implements a great philosophy, encourages savings and is FLEXIBLE! It cloud syncs to your PHONE and your HUSBAND'S phone, so you can BOTH be on the same financial page. Here's a link to a 3rd party video overview and HERE'S a LINK to their FREE trial and a discount if you LOVE it like I do!

We don't have much and we still have a long way to go financially, but these 5 things have brought us so much peace, allowed us to survive the bumps of life, and occasionally, help others along the way. What have you done good for your finances today?

My Favorite Things - Budgeting

I came into our marriage MONEY STUPID! My first experience with a budget was when my mother-in-law sat down Ben and I and wrote out a basic list of the money we make and the bills we would have. What?! Money just doesn't appear? It doesn't just cover everything you need when you want? Really, I just hadn't THOUGHT about it. She was the beginning of my thinking. Since then I have thought a LOT about it and tried a LOT of different things to make our money work for us and it has been HORRIBLE!

Luckily, there are much smarter people out there, and with a lot of help and good influences I think I've finally found it... you know, the way to look at a budget and feel empowered, not stressed. So in hopes that any of you out there might be MONEY STUPID like I was, maybe my experience can help.

My money journey:
So I told you about my first budget already, it was kept like a checkbook, just paper lists. For the next SEVERAL years, I used Quicken, which was great, because I could show my husband EXACTLY "where all the money went." But it stunk as a budget program, and I always seemed to come up short.

Then my sister-in-law told me about some finance books she'd read in High School. They actually MADE all the students take a personal finance class... genius! So I read those books... the first was The Richest Man in Babylon. It was great on a conceptual basis and I'd definitely recommend it. The next one was what really changed my mindset and that was Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. So many principles rang so true and the stories were very motivational. He outlined the steps to getting started and highlighted amazing stories of people with INCREDIBLE debt who got out of it at unnatural speeds.

The Ramsey method is that you start by telling your money where to go... also called a zero-based budgeting system. He says to use CASH in ENVELOPES. You take the money, put it in the right budget envelope until you have 0 left. When the money is gone, you're done spending. You then build a $1000 EMERGENCY FUND so you can stop going into debt with every bump in the road. I LOVED this method, but found cash in envelopes a hassle, not very efficient, confusing, and HARD to TRACK.

So, I still used his concepts but I found different ways of implementing them. I found this video VERY HELPFUL, and if you are NEW to BUDGETING, this is a GREAT place to START:

These things worked, but not perfectly, and I was still frustrated. Which led me to YNAB! OH MY GOODNESS... it SERIOUSLY is the VERY BEST BUDGETING TOOL I have every found! The concept was similar to Ramsey, but the software is amazing!

Here are the YNAB Rules:
1) Give Every Dollar a Job (aka zero-based budgeting)
2) Save for a Rainy Day
3) Roll w/ the Punches - By far THE BEST RULE EVER
4) Live on Last Month's Income - This one right here is PEACE OF MIND

I've been using it for 9 months now and LOVE it! It has a month FREE TRIAL, after that, yes, you pay for it, but you pay ONCE... no subscription, no yearly fee. And I swear, you'll probably save the amount of the software in the FIRST month you pay for it! Oh ya, and it sync's to your Iphone, so you can see what money you have, when you are out on the go.

I know I'm a dork that I get so excited about this, but the feeling I get when I do my finances now is worth getting excited about! I'd be happy to help you out if you decide you want to try it.... happy budgeting :) If you wanna give it a try, you can use this link and get a $6 discount:
YNAB Discount Link