My relationship with money has always been tumultuous. Its been a love hate relationship for as long as I can remember. The power I felt always laid in the green back and and the guilt was on me. Being primarily raised by grandparents who endured "The Depression" I always thought
we had very little money, then they died when I was twenty two and I found out differently.
They left me and mom a nice sum and it took me from having to work to being able to stay home with my kids. The amount I received was doled out over four years and was equal to what my work income had been: with God there are no coincidences. We had to live very frugally to make it work because now we had extra expenses with a new baby and two more to come over the next three and a half years. That frugality enabled us to put sweat equity into our home. This came in handy when my my husband decided to go back to school. With his parents help and the equity in our home Blake quit his job and went back to school. We took out $30,000 from our home equity and his parents graciously gave us serious monetary help for the next two years.
We were so determined to make it work that I dared not be excessive in my spending. Our clothes were resell, consignment, and clearance items. The food we ate was supplemented my the federal WIC program, which I was so ashamed of. Many meals were made out of those groceries of milk, cereal,eggs, peanut butter and beans. Being primarily vegetarian eight years of my young life came in pretty handy when cooking from these items. I am proud to say that because of all of this frugality and graciousness from family and the government we never paid a bill late and now our life is so much better, while not rich we are secure that we can put food on the table.
Fast forward seven years, my husband went on to complete a further degree. I was certified as a yoga teacher (I finished up three associate degrees when the kids were younger). Blake has moved up quickly at work and now is head of his Dept. at the college. Our salary increased by about 4 times what it was before college. We adopted child number four and live comfortably while not excessivly. Through it all we have made some mistakes and have learned a great deal about the energy we put behind our money.
Recently after viewing the movie " The Secret" I came to realize I still had a mindset of poverty. I was living like we still had to eat beans. Now I did not agree with everything in this movie but I got that if I focused on doing without, money would still have power over me. Due to my belief in being resourceful and conserving the worlds resources I could not just start buying overly packaged food and buy a big gas guzzler to drive. What I did was set up an automatic payment plan for our debt paying about double the minimum balance. I decided to put our money into things that add value to our lives like organic food, hiring someone to help me clean twice a month, and using our resources to live a life in line with our values. It became clear to me that I thought people who had money didn't care for the earth and were wasteful. Now I realize that with what we have we can help make this planet better for everyone. Now I eat beans because I want to and drive my nine year old van because it meets my needs perfectly.
Getting people out of poverty and educating them is a way out. Suppressing the poor and having a mindset of poverty will never let one live a full life.
We are an example of a family that needed a leg up. Without help from our family and the government we would never be able to be were we are now. As a caring society it is important that we use our money and our voting power to support education, healthcare, tolerance, and support for our poor.
Tips:
1. Learning to live without is a great lesson. With every purchase you make consider if you need it and how it might effect someone else's life. For instance buying produce only from the U.S. where we have laws in place to support fair wages. Avoid over packaging. Just because you have money does not mean that you need the new Widget, put your money where it makes a difference in someone else's life.
2. Give: Happiness comes from giving. It may be your time, a hug, a compliment, or money. It's easy to give money when you have it, it's harder to give your time. God always seems to multiply what you give. Try it with faith and see what happens. We all have gifts to give. Think of what you have to offer in service to humanity.
3. If you are in debt then set up an automatic payment plan that you can live with. For us using online banking makes this easy we have it automatically transferred on pay day. This is enormously empowering.
4. Live within your means. For example your house payment should be no more than 33% of your gross income. If you can find a home that is 25% of your net on a 15 year mortgage. You will be amazed at how fast you pay this off. Remember the bank may want to give you more money than you need. We got in this predicament (because our credit was so good) and it was so hard to get out. They gave us a loan based on 50% of our gross at 30 years, we could not sustain it and by Gods grace were able to get out. We are happy now with our 15 year note and owe much less now. Our debt to income on the mortgage is about 22% of our net. We built on (modestly) to accomodate the child we adopted and with our new loan our debt to income will be 33% of our net.
5. We have a huge grocery bill because we have four kids and three animals, I want them to eat healthy so I buy lots of produce and less cheap processed foods. Spend your money on things with feelings, and things of service to increase your happiness.
Namaste'
Courtney
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