Sometimes I wonder why things are just so hard for us. Kyle works two jobs, and has worked two jobs for just over 3 years now. He is almost never home and that leaves all house work, yard work, and parenting to ME. We have too much stuff (which can also be looked at as a blessing), and we have ALWAYS had too much stuff. Money is tight, and it has always been tight, it’s just seems a bit tighter now because we are trying to spend LESS than we make, whereas a really long time ago I think we just paid bills and did our shopping blindly without looking at our whole financial picture. So when I’m in the moment things don’t really seem much different now than how they were years ago. BUT when I take a step back and really THINK about how things were, I can see that there really is a difference….
House work, and yard work are easier for me when I have a routine. It may sound really stupid to have a ‘vacuuming day’ and a ‘sweep the kitchen’ day each week. But really those are things that if I didn’t have a set day each week to do them, they really would not get done, because that is how things used to be. Back when we just had Ethan, and maybe Tyra too I didn’t have any kind of a routine, except that I did laundry every Thursday. And that routine was only because we didn’t have our own washer and dryer and had to go to the laundromat to do our laundry. Then when Dad bought us a washer and dryer I just kept up the Thursday, Laundry day routine. I have since changed that, because our family has grown quite a bit since those days and to do ALL of our laundry on one day of the week was really quite impossible. Believe me I tried…. Even with setting the timer to remind to to switch the loads over, I couldn’t get all the laundry washed, dried, folded and put away on Thursday. So I have changed that to doing one load (sometimes two) every day.
We still have too much stuff. I remember when Kyle and I were first married, and we were living in the 3 bedroom house in Fullerton where I spent my childhood years. We were renting from my parents, since the house was vacant, and Dad preferred having us living there at a discounted rate to having it empty. But thinking about that little house, Kyle and I had stuff everywhere. Our bedroom was more often than not, cluttered. There was the computer room which was considered “Kyle’s Stuff” and that room was always messy. There was the other bedroom that just had all kinds of I don’t even know what stuff in it. We had a table in the living room that was covered in stuff….you get the picture I’m sure. Now of course our stuff has grown, to include kids stuff, yard stuff, Nana’s stuff (yes I’m sure we still have boxes of Nana stuff in the basement) and really I don’t even know what. We really have purged a lot. We can ALMOST park one car in the garage, but the bikes and yard stuff take up a lot of space in there. Kyle and I would stay up really late on Thursday nights, to sort through boxes of stuff, just to throw junk away and fill our trash cans for the Friday morning trash pickup. Now trash pickup is on Monday, so we need to change up that routine a bit. But even with purging tons of stuff, we still have too much. Someday the clutter will be gone, just not today.
When I think of how we are doing financially compared to how things used to be, I see the most improvement. Money has always been tight. When we lived in California we pretty much tapped out our savings (well it was actually Kyle’s savings before we got married, then he married me and it became ‘OUR’ savings 😛 ) trying to survive. We lived in the house in Fullerton for about 9 months. Then Dad decided he wanted to sell it and we shared an apartment with Liesl because there was NO WAY we could afford $1125/month for rent on what Kyle was making. So living in Southern California our savings was depleted rather fast, and our credit card debt increased just as rapidly.
NOW we can afford all of our bills. It’s tight, but only because we try to spend less than what is earned. We have money in the bank again (and having money in the bank sure came in handy back when we had hospital bills to pay after Chloe’s birth and week long hospital stay).
We used to have to use the credit card to pay our car insurance, because it would come due every 6 months and we wouldn’t have the extra $600 or so to pay for it. Now we put money into a separate account every paycheck so that when car insurance or registration are due, or when the cars need maintenance or repairs, we HAVE money for it.
When we got pregnant with Ethan (and also with Tyra) we didn’t have medical insurance of any kind. We ended up qualifying for and using Medicaid for both of those pregnancies. And also with Jeremy and Dinah’s pregnancies we qualified for and used Medicaid as a secondary insurance, so they covered everything that our insurance didn’t cover. NOW we have awesome medical insurance. It’s really a not popular plan, but it’s a plan to encourage taking care of yourself. Preventative checkups are covered 100%. That includes physicals and the like for myself and Kyle, and well child checkups for the kids, even the vaccines are covered 100%. Then even when we go in for a sick visit, the insurance covers 90% and the other 10% comes out of a fund that we are allotted at the beginning of each year. Only after that fund is depleted do we end up paying anything out of pocket. Which did happen last year after Chloe was born. But considering the bill that we got from the hospital for both myself and Chloe PRE-insurance came to something like $21,000 (about what our minivan loan was for) and after insurance we only had to pay out of pocket less than $4,000….WE’VE GOT PRETTY DANG GOOD INSURANCE!
Years ago we used to have our mortgage AND a small second mortgage on the house. We also had credit card debt, Kyle’s card and mine. And when we got pregnant with Jeremy we added the minivan loan. In the 3 years that Kyle has worked two jobs we have used the second jobs income to PAY OFF the second mortgage, Kyle’s credit card, my credit card and the minivan. We are now trying to pay off the Hyundai loan and if all goes as planned it should be paid off by mid-November of THIS year. So by the time we’ve lived in this house for 6 years, the Hyundai loan will be paid off.
When we moved into this house 5 1/2 years ago, the backyard was just dirt (well mud in the winter). And last year we used the income from the second job to get sod for the backyard, and we finally fenced it in. We also got our swing set. And so now the kids have a backyard to run around in so they aren’t confined to inside the house all day, every day.
It’s so good to see that financially we used to have nothing really, and now we’ve got money in the bank. Money for emergencies, money for car related expenses, money for health related expenses. We even have an account to stash money for traveling, which gets used every time we go to visit our family in California. And we have an account for stashing money for home improvements. It’s so exciting to me, to take a step back and see that even though things don’t really look much different now than how they used to be when I’m living in the moment, we really have come a long way. Things really are getting better. We have money in the bank, the debt is almost gone, and we finally have a nice backyard for the kids to run around in so they aren’t cooped up inside the house all the time (like they were when we first moved here). And someday I’ll see just as much progress in the decluttering part of my journey as I do in our financial journey. Someday…..
