I love a budget. Michael and I have been married for 20 years and for all but two of them I have done the finances. It was very difficult to do when most of those 20 years we did not have fixed incomes and knew nothing about how to manage money. Throw in the fact that I frequently transpose numbers and voila we were a disaster waiting to happen. We made so many mistakes it almost cost our marriage, but God wasn’t finished and we agreed to let Him try to make something of the major mess we made. This decision came about a year and a half ago. Honestly I was ready to walk, I had enough and was exhausted from hitting the same wall over and over.

We have fallen into debt three times in our marriage. The first time was around the third year and when Michael received the first phone call from the credit card co he was furious and I locked myself in the bathroom, not a pretty sight. That debt was a mole hill and we were able to get ourselves out of it quickly.

Five years later we moved to NC with a baggage of what I call cloaked debt. We had recently purchased a new car with a nice size loan that came with it. We rationalized by telling ourselves we had to have a reliable car because we had our precious children riding in it. Of course we were sure adding custom rims and tires were an investment so the value of the car would not decrease as quickly. Young and stupid I say! Add the expenses of a major move and we racked up about three to four times the first debt we had. The reality of this sizable debt came about a year after we moved and bought our second house. It is ridiculous how much we rationalized. Unfortunately it took a major accident and totaling my car that helped wipe out some of the debt. Soon after we rescued ourselves from the rest of the debt.

Ok, so one would think we learned. A missing factor through all this was a budget. We learned how to get ourselves out of debt but learning how to stay out of debt was absent from the path we continued to choose over and over. Better yet, we were not learning how to be successful with money, thinking and even saying we would always be in debt.

The third and final debt came to a head in 2007. I found myself in a place of total devestation. This debt was monsterous. It was a snow capped mountain and no way were we going to be able to get out of it. This one was the tool that about destroyed our marriage. I mentioned my disadvantages but Michael had some of his own. He, like me, was never taught even how to balance a checkbook. He also had this ability to over emphasize his anger when things were less than perfect. I had my moments too. We were like two sticks of dynamite. Worse though, was his choice to basically not want to know about the finances unless he absolutely had to. He would say it stressed him out and rather not deal with it. His stress would stress me and so I went with it. That is until I was faced with the mountain of debt that was so overwhelming I wanted to throw the towel in.

I remember the day I showed him the figures. Talk about having a heart attack? Everything in me was done. I didn’t have anything left. Neither did he after seeing the figures. Everything drained from him in a matter of seconds. We were done, our marriage was over. There were other problems and that financial strain was like a boulder that broke the camel’s back.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve 2008. I am amazed at what has happened. We chose to work things out, it has not been an easy rode and we’ve had to make some difficult decisions. One of those decisions I made was no matter what, I was going to do whatever I needed to, whatever I was suppose to do, regardless. I’ve spent most of my time in the last 18 months working on a doable budget for our family. Someone might ask why did it take so long. I didn’t want to just get by, I wanted a budget that would cause us to not just pay the bills and live week to week. I wanted to be over the top successful with finances. We are definitly on our way. I have completely budgeted all of 2009. We still have some debt we need to knock off and it is about 6 times greater than the second debt not including the house pymt. Eighteen months ago it was about 14 times greater, so we are making progress and will be among those that are not only debt free but are financially free!

Learning how to budget is one of the most valuable lessons anyone can learn. So time for a plug. The book I’ve recommended before and continue to do so is I Was Broke Now I’m Not by Joseph Sangl. If you have trouble in this area this is the book for you.

Oh by the way, we are having a simple Christmas but because of a budget I have been able to buy gifts.