How We Make It Work!

Ok....so this is a random post but something I wanted to talk about! You all know that I am all about being open and honest! Ever since, I have been a stay-at-home mommy I have felt many people have wondered how we get by! and trust me, Matthew and I try to figure out how other people make it! SO....I am going to explain how we do it! ;) I am not going to lie there are times that it is tough being a stay-at-home mom and living off one income! It gets very frustrating because we are on a budget and we do limit our spending!
When we first decided I was going to stay home it was very hard! It something we went back and forth on! I finally prayed about it and decided it was best! One of the main reasons it does work well for us is because my husband is tight! hahahha...he calls it conservative! I am so thankful he is this way or we would be in trouble!
Matthew does have a good job and he makes decent money! Just so I am not throwing out all of our personal business I will tell you he makes less than $60,000...We will just keep the actual figure to ourself! ;) but we only have one car payment because Matt's truck is paid off! and then we have car insurance, health insurance, 2 credit cards that are almost paid off and the only reason we have those is because it was an emergency!, we have no tv....so our tv bill a month is 8.99 because we have NetFlix.....our cell phone bill is $70 (we got rid of all the junk and just have basic phones!) ...we budget our groceries (We are truly blessed in this aspect because once a week we eat supper at Cheryl's house and we eat at Bettys once a week so that takes care of two days...so I only have to buy groceries for the other days and for Matt's lunch he take a loaf of .70 bread and lunch meat! Jagger and I eat whatever...so its cheap...we hardly ever eat out!) then we budget Matts gas a week which is about 75 dollars a week! and another very important thing for us is our tithe!!! When we first got married we never tithed! When we did it would be 5 dollars here and there or on holidays maybe 25 dollars and I promise you...we were so broke..there were times we might have 50 dollars in our account! It was not fun...and we fought more than ever! One day I was watching Joyce Meyers and she was talking about tithing 10% and how if you give God 10% he will stretch the rest of your money! so...I told Matthew that we should pray about it and start tithing 10% of our money......he agreed and it has been a year and we have more money than we have since we have been married ...every time he gets paid we write a check to the church for 10% or more..we treat it almost like a bill! but its amazing we have paid off doctor bills that we thought we never would! God is so good!
Back to being tight....I think Matthew probably has money he got for Christmas 2 years ago in a savings account....I get very upset when people think that our family supports us or we get help from the family! Lets just clear that up...we do not!!! Matthew works very hard and he supports us! Now....we are very blessed that Jagger has great grandparents that buy him clothes and toys!! (my mom and dad, matthews parents, my grandparents, and matthews grandparents!) Jagger is so lucky to have so many grandparents! ;) but Matthew and I are very strick on if we do not have the money we do not buy it! We do not feel that it our families job to buy our groceries, buy our clothes, pay our cell phones bill or anything else.....that is why Matthew has a job! We are adults and that is why its called a budget! If you don't have the money for it...you don't buy it or have it!! I am telling you it is not fun at times and we have honestly it has made us grow up and realize there is more to life than material things!!!  We are not going without....we have what we need and that is all that matters! Everything that is in our house is from when we got married or what each of us had before we got married! We have the same furniture, same tvs, we both have and wear the clothes we had before we got married! ;)
I truly give God all the honor and glory for the situation that we are in! I just want everyone to know that living off one income is tough but its do-able..you just have to figure out what is right for your family!!
Hope everyone has a blessed Tuesday!!!