Economize

While winter may mean "bulking up" for some, it means "lean times" for our family. My husband works seasonally, so we have less income during the winter.

Over the course of the last several years, we've had great intentions during the summertime when we had a steady incoming coming in. Every summer we would plan to set funds aside to carry us through the winter, and every fall we would realize that our time had run out, and it was too late to save. This last summer and fall have been no exception.

What has changed, though, is our response to the situation. In addition to not saving, where we've gone wrong in the past is that despite our change in financial situation, we did not adjust our lifestyles - not much, anyway. When there was no money in the account, we were broke. It sucked, and we hated it. When we got paid, however, rather than directing the funds where they should go, we splurged because things had been so tight that it felt as though "we deserved it".

This winter, we're trying to learn from the mistakes of the past. While we haven't yet established an official budget that we'll be sticking to, we're both on the same page that we need to, and we're both working together to live within our means in the meantime.

Budgeting's not just about managing the expenses of right now - it's about priorities for both short- and long-term goals and working towards them.

An example of this came up when we were cleaning our room last night (which was our Valentine's Day gift to eachother). I have more books in my room than I have space for right now. This is the case even though I've purged and narrowed things down to only my favorite authors. They end up looking disorganized and messy because they get stacked everywhere. I love my books, but I need my uncluttered space even more. Ultimately, I'd like to get some great bookshelves, but I recognize that this is not our biggest priority right now. So I packed them up and they'll be stored upstairs until we've saved the money for bookshelves. I didn't allow the lack of money right now to prevent me from meeting my short-term goal of tidying the room - instead, I'm going to ensure that it is worked into our savings plan.

This may sound like a simple concept, but for us, it's a big change in our thinking. In the past, one of two things would have happened: either I would have left the books as is, remaining cluttered in the room, with the thought that "we don't have money for bookshelves right now, so they'll remain there until we do" or we would have run out and bought a bookshelf when I got paid to tidy things up in the way that we ultimately want.

I'm proud of the fact that we're doing things differently. We're learning to make smart choices and economize to meet our family's immediate and future needs. And we're doing it together :)