*Income*Budgets*Save* Part 1

Urban Girl with a Country Heart

*Income*Budgets*Save*

In the state of our economy is it reasonable to assume you are in debt, unemployed, underemployed, and with no savings. I know for my household it has been a struggle for the past few years to find good gainful employment, pay off debt, and save money for anything. Are you in the same boat?

I myself after being unemployed for over a year took a job a part time job that I can not work over 29 hrs. per week, with no health benefits. Now, the upside of this job is that I am working from home; I do not have to budget any money for gas; with gas at all time high prices this is a money saver; I do not have the expenses of eating out lunch every day; I do not have to worry about a business dress code most days I am in my pj’s when I work. Taking all this in to consideration I guess than I am still about $5k a year less income then I was back in 2008.

Now let’s look at my husband’s income, he jumped on the band wagon working from home after working a job for 3 years 7 days a week and spending over $125.00 in gas just for his use on the job. So, now he works 2 part time jobs from home; once again no health benefits. Now, taking in the account for the high amount of gas he used weekly with his old job and the amount he earns with his 2 new part time jobs we are ahead about $ 3K a year for his income.

So if you did not get lost in the above information (math.. I hate math) you will see that are family sense 2008 has lost about $2K a year in income, so how do we make that up? First thing we did was pay off our car that saved us $4K a year sounds like we should be ahead right? Wrong!

Remember, when I was unemployed for over a year well we did what most Americans did or are doing living off of credit cards, So now we have more monthly payments going out to credit card companies than we did for my car loan. (Shaking my head and saying Why? Why? Why?)

So, now we are even more frustrated because well let’s face it’s our human natural to want to see quick results with very little work. In our minds, I was unemployed now I am employed, he spent a lot of gas now he does not, we paid off a car payment we should have money. Well I can tell you it does not work like that. We never changed our habits when we were having financial challenges. 

Now all that is about to change, I will blog a series on how to produce income, make a solid budget, and ways to save money. I hope you follow along with me as you see my transformation from a city girl in debt to her eye balls to debt free country living homesteader.