day 28 of 365

Today was a great day! I went to work with a great attitude. Last night after listening to Robin McGraw on the way home talk about the empowerment of women, I was psyched to begin a new day. I really enjoyed her book on cd whatever it was called. We can enable ourselves to create our own destiny. We can chose what legacy we will take from our parents and what we will filter out. We can be proud of who we are and where we came from.
As a woman I know that men and women are different. I have read many books on this subject and sometimes I need to be reminded that men are men and women are women and we are different creatures for a reason. We should not expect or even hope our mate would think, talk, act or understand the way that we do. We should value their differences and celebrate them. How boring would it be if we were so alike, or they always knew what we were thinking or said and did the right thing constantly... they may as well be us. We can respect one another and compromise, but we should never give up our true feelings, ideas or beliefs for them, we should recognize and respect their wants and needs and they should respect ours.
I think that I decided this morning that I am not going to let things pull me down..
What is the chumbawamba song, "I get knocked down, and I get up again, your never gonna bring me down.... "
I took an awesome class called Financial Fitness at work today, it was 3.5 hours and very worth my time. I think that I will start putting some of the ideas I have learned into practice and see if it makes any difference in my life.
Challenge #1- keep every receipt for every purchase for 1 month and categorize purchases to acknowledge where your money is spent and how many incidentals that you are not accounting for. Starbucks fans? Red Bull or other energy drinks? Dining Out? Eating Out lunch? Entertainment? Vending Machines? Convenience store snacks? If any of you purchase any of these things, I challenge you to figure out how much per month and then how much per year and see what bill you could have paid off if you cut your impulse buys out totally or even in half.
I know that I use to spend over $900 a year to get my nails done. I haven't done this in over a year and I am sure it has helped us pay for something else we need more than want. Do I miss having nails, sure... is it a necessity.. NO....
It is okay to like the finer things but it is better to live within your means and save for a rainy day fund. It is so easy to go over the top with all the things we want verses what we need. If you get a raise and make more money and can afford these things great, but always live within your means. If you pay goes up, your expenses tend to as well.
I have always been a good manager of money, I feel that I know how to live within my means, even when I was making over 2/3 more than I am currently making, I tried to invest or save and never squander my money away. As I have learned over the years, if your expenses go up when your pay increases and then your pay goes away or is significantly lowered, even if you were living within your means at the time, it is hard to reduce expenses for things you cannot easily cut out (like cars you already have or other bills that are fixed) and it is harder to live without the things you got used to having or doing on a regular basis.
My challenge for myself- even though I have already cut out a lot of what we used to purchase is to find another way to save a little money every month to put away for my rainy day fund. I am going to save my receipts for a month. If we are spending $200 a month dining out we will scale back to $150 and put that $50 away. In a month I will write a reflection of where I determined the savings could be had and post my first step to savings success.
Take the first step in faith, you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. - Martin Luther King Jr.