Our Journey into Living Frugally

Today I am excited, hopeful and ready to embark on a new adventure. This adventure involves my family and right now they have little understanding of the magnitude of this undertaking. With time I hope to have them on board and not kicking and screaming to abandon ship. You may wonder what I have planned. It's a journey into the Land of Frugal Living. I plan to share with you all the ups and downs of transforming a family of spoiled brats into budget conscious individuals. So here we go:

Taking Ownership of your finanical situation gives you the knowledge of where you are, the insight of where you want to be and the power to reach your goals.

I've decided that we need to take ownership of our current financial situation. We are a family of 3. Our son is over the age of 14 so no diapers, formula, daycare or kiddie college. Nope, it's all about clothes, cars, girls and money now. My husband is no more of a spend-a-holic than I am so we are even-footed on that point. I'm not sure what happened or where it got away from us but things need to be roped in. We are not in trouble....yet.

I have been pondering our situation since the start of 2007. Several things got me thinking about our finances and the one thing that really added fuel to the fire was our Escrow Shortage. For those of you not familiar with Escrow...in simple terms....we pay our home loan, insurance and property taxes all together in 1 payment every month to the bank. The bank in turn puts the insurance and property tax money into a little "account". The bank then sends out the property tax and insurance payments when due from our "account" to the proper entities. An Escrow Shortage can happen when the taxes or the insurance; in our case both; have increased. You have to pay the shortage to catch up...basically you are paying a guesstimate of what your following years' taxes and insurance is going to be but the guesstimate can be off....way off. We live in Florida and we have been hit hard with increases to property taxes and insurance rates. So we have an increase in our mortgage payment of $50.00/month.

Next on the list is Hubby's bad back. He has Degenerative Joint Disease in his lower back and has been seeing a Pain Management Physician since last summer. He has been getting Epidural Treatments. Our monthly Medical Insurance Premium is approximately $400.00/monthly. The bottom line to this is my husband's back is not going to last forever. There has been too much physical labor for too long and I have his possible disability on my mind.

Now we move on to my 16 year old son's teeth. He is wearing braces now and his mouth is a $5000.00 investment. I had no choice. What mother would let her child go the rest of his life with crooked teeth. I want the boy married off some day and I figured it was a small price to pay for some beautiful pearly whites. Needless to say that's a payment of $150.00/month. And of course he is driving now. Thank goodness he is driving on a restricted license and will be for the next year. The car insurance will go up when he gets his operator's license. We will then cross that money bridge when we get to it.

My husband and I enjoy motorcycling and we each ride our own bike. We owe on both the bikes and I have said out loud many times that we need to sell mine but hubby says that we do not have enough equity in it yet so it's best to bite the bullet and keep paying on it..at least for a while. I guess if push comes to shove we could eat the leather seat. It may taste like Rib-Eye with enough marinade.

Then we have all the other little money pits that are easy to fall into. We eat out to much, waste too much food, leave too many lights on, have the thermostat set way too high or too low, paying for vehicle detailing, watching too much pay-per-view, etc. It's time for a change around here. I don't want to work until I'm 70 years old. We need a nest egg and our son needs an education. I demanded that this family take ownership of our financial situation and I am hoping I succeeded. I know I want us to be as debt free as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. I have some plans to get us there.

My first big step to finanical freedom is getting a budget on paper. I will be working on this budget in the days to come. I will be reassessing our cash flow and working out ways of saving more money. I will be sharing my ideas and plans with you in future articles.

Until Next Time...