My wife and I got to talking last night over dinner about how much better we are doing financially over the past few months than we were before and at the same time doing worse. Life is hard right now. Living within your means when you were accustomed to living well beyond them is difficult. We scrape every single penny together so we can pay our bills each month. Granted, we did just pay off some major debt with our tax return and without that I am not sure how these past few months would have went.

Leading up to our tax return we were shorting payments to our utility companies, paying late on car insurance, making bare minimum payments to the credit cards to avoid late fees or losing the promotional interest rate, and to top it off we were using credit cards to pay for household items, gas, and quick runs to the store. It wasn’t pretty looking back, however it seemed so much easier. I know it was easier because it wasn’t frustrating, we were not living by cash only. There were never any cash withdrawals from our account, just a quick swipe of the credit card or debit card. I always mentally knew how much money we had in the account (I checked it each day) and that didn’t matter, I had the credit card that was my backup. “Oh, my tanks on empty better fill up….What is that honey? We need diapers? Sure I will stop and pick some up….I don’t feel like cooking, let’s go out!”

It is not like that anymore. I don’t carry a credit card, carry cash only when needed, utilize the envelope system and I cringe at the thought of swiping my debit card. Thankfully when one of us is weak, the other is strong. There are times when we have begged each other to go out to eat and one of us would say NO! No is not something we have said to one another in a long time, our kids hear it every day and now so do we. It is good for the plasectomy and keeps us on track.