He *IS* a wise man! Too bad it took him so long to let go of the finances. sigh Paying minimums, we won't have any leftover for food/gas. This will need to be held up in constant prayer. I've seen the Lord do miraculous things when we submit our finances before Him and ask for His help.

I have the spreadsheet done up til next July so far. I'm a stubborn thing and the Lord will have to let me know if I must get a job before these are paid in full. My thinking is that dh got us into this mess and dh needs to pay for his "sins". He's got us back in debt to the tune of $6000+. sigh

It's a good thing I enjoy the challenge. He is very able to make some extra money on the side which would move things along MUCH faster.

It's so easy to get into debt when the cost of everything going up!
I will be praying, Sis.

I'm going to REALLY REALLY need to figure out how to eat cheaper.

I'm always going through our list of expenses, but it's all bills, nothing we can really get rid of or lower. Our only debt really is dh's truck. I guess that's a good thing, but it's hard when you're looking at what to eliminate and there is nothing to eliminate. Dh doesn't even have life insurance, so we couldn't eliminate that, lol. Thankfully, there is the little bit of money I get monthly, but that is mostly all for the kids schooling, so we don't use that for bills unless we really have to. Dh would not give up the internet or his smart phone because he needs it for work.

Groceries are expensive. I'm hoping we will not have to increase our grocery budget when the baby starts eating solids. We already don't buy very much snack stuff. The snacks we do buy are for the kids, I don't really snack throughout the day, just eat at meal time usually.

One thing that makes me mad is that we were lied to about the property taxes on our house when we bought it, so we are paying almost $100 more each month then we were planning. I don't know how they get away with lying to people like that, but we will know better next time, I guess. It's still cheap compared to most people's monthly payments, but it sure doesn't feel like it to us, lol. One thing I just love is paying school taxes for two counties and our kids don't attend school in either of them!!!

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Mom to Christian (13), Saphira (10), Xavier (5), and Adrian (2).

School taxes are criminal. In our district, each public school child gets 14K! And, *I* have to pay for it, when my kid doesn't go there.

It was the same thing when we were kids. We were among the poorest kids in the neighborhood, but our Mom sent us to a Christian school so we could have freedom of religion (and, a better education) - but we *still* had to pay for the neighbor kids' schooling.

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http://stuffedveggies.blogspot.com/

Sis, know that I'm joining you in praying for miraculous ways to repay this debt.

Word of testimony: My dh's business line of credit was used up on a job, only to have the man cancel the remaining portion of his contract AFTER all the supplies were purchased. In order to return the supplies, we were responsible for a 30% restocking fee, which cranked it up even higher. Then to add to that, customer's were late paying us, which cranked the interest rate up to the maximum rate of 29.99% on $25K. Being frustrated for a couple months that we had NOTHING left for anything, I began praying and asking God to supernaturally provide, started tithing at our usual rate, rather than shortchanging God, and within a week or two, the credit card co. we had the business line with, offered us a settlement rate of 25% what we owed, if we could pay it back in 60 days. I was discouraged when I read this the first few days, then while sharing this offer with my dh, he informed me one of our customers wanted us to do some extra landscaping work that would allow us to make that exact amount over the next 60 days, so we agreed to the deal.

The funny thing about it is our dd announced she wanted to get married within the month, and we literally didn't have ANY extra money to make the credit line deal possible, as we were eating off of surplus from my couponing and trading locally grown meat for herbs, etc. (Our credit card deal was set up 2 weeks prior to dd announcing her intent to marry.) God worked that out, too, very creatively. A friend of ours who has done a lot of catering, party planning and decorating, came to our rescue and we had a VERY nice wedding for our daughter for $500. All the expenses were covered by our customer adding extra work to the landscape, allowing our profit to be increased.

I thought perhaps this story of God's blessing might encourage you.
Know that I will be praying for you and your dh to work together on the finances. That's such a hard thing if one person doesn't have a clue about how bad things really are and continues to spend. BTDT, and am very relieved my dh and I are on the same page now in that regard. I share every bill with him now and he has to help me decide what we have to juggle as we get our regular bills paid on a fraction of what our income was even 1-2yrs ago.

Thanks CLW. Love those stories! I've heard so many and have my own! I was sure hoping never to be in this position again. Sometimes I don't like the admonition to submit. iP

School taxes around here are the highest in the county. Ridiculous, they always want more. Our yearly taxes that goes to escrow on our house are over 3,000 a year. And Lisa you will notice that they change each year. You should get a statement
from the county each year telling you what everything is and nothing stays the same, so allow for that matter.

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He's not doing too well. He hardly checks on me or what I'm eating and I've been cheating a bit. But, I'm over that for now. I have a two month challenge for myself. Again.