Money Wise: Living Like No One Else

Note: I originally wrote this and other posts about our finances on a personal blog but have decided to share them here. The original publishing date is shown below.  

4/1/14

My parents never have had a lot of money, so growing up I learned that I couldn't always have everything I wanted. In fact, I never had everything I wanted. But I always had everything I needed. My mom stayed home to raise my brothers and I and did a great job stretching every penny. She was crafty and made our Halloween costumes, birthday decorations, and yummy meals. My dad worked hard to provide for us each day at work, and then came home and worked some more to make our house and yard a home. I have never looked back and wished I had more toys or more clothes or that we travelled to more places. We were a happy family with what we had, even if it wasn't as much as the Joneses.

Now that I have a little family of my own, I have grown to appreciate my upbringing even more. I realize how valuable it was for me to live in a family who worked hard to make do with what we had, and never placed to much emphasis on money (or the fact that we didn't have much). I'm not saying my parents were perfect with money. Now that I'm older and can talk about money with them, I have learned that they didn't always make the best financial choices either. They racked up some credit cards and spent more on things here and there than they should have. But, they still taught my brothers and I to be careful and wise with the money that we earned.

Now, with over $100,000 in debt, my dream is to just have a home for my family like I had growing up. I don't need to be a millionaire. The future is unknown to us and there is no way to know now how much money we have in the future. That is not really important to me, and never has been. I just want enough to have the things we need. It can be hard sometimes to differentiate between want and need. I love to shop. I love to get new clothes and things for our house. I love to sew and buy patterns and fabric. I like to travel and see new places. But those things all cost money, and truthfully, as much as I want those things, I don't need them.

Some may wonder what the big deal is. Why not just live like everyone else? "Make your monthly payments on your loans, get a credit card and charge a trip to Disney on it, finance new furniture, and don't worry about buying new clothes, you deserve them!" Isn't that what we all hear all the time? Well the fact is, I just don't want to spend my life making payments. I don't want to worry about falling behind on a credit card and getting called by debt collectors. I want to own the things that I have in my house. And I don't want to feel guilty every time I put on that shirt that I really didn't have the money for. I don't want to live like everyone else. Its just not worth it. Our goal is to pay off our loans in 5 years, that may sound crazy, but I know that we can do it. Like Dave Ramsey always says, we will have to "live like no one else, so that later we can live like no one else." And we will.