Financial Health

The next section in Chazown has been weighing on my mind since I read it. It’s the section about financial health. While we don’t have any debt other than our mortgage (we don’t have a car payment or school loans, and we don’t even own a credit card), we certainly are not in the most financially healthy place. Earlier in the book, there was a survey to assess where we are financially, and I unfortunately had to agree with many of the statements made. I feel financially hindered from doing some things God wants me to do. I’m often worried about finances. If I didn’t have an income for one month, I couldn’t pay my bills. I’m not tithing 10 percent of my income to God.

I do not want to be in bondage to money. That’s exactly why we have avoided debt as much as possible. My parents recently loaned us money to buy a new mattress and we have been paying them back, and honestly, I hate having even that small debt. I want us to become more financially healthy, which is so hard to do when we are mostly living from paycheck to paycheck. This has been a very hard year for us financially and as we reach the end of the year it seems that we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to make some specific financial plans and goals—some immediate goals, some for 2009, and some that are more long-term. I won’t list them all here, but I do want to put some of them out there.

- By the end of this month we will be done paying my parents back. Hooray!
- We are going to make tithing a priority again. I hate to admit this, but for the sake of transparency—a few months ago when things got really tough financially, we stopped giving. Not because we wanted to stop, but because the money was truly that tight. Things are finally easing up a bit, and we absolutely want to start giving again!
- We are going to set aside money for an emergency fund, since we really don’t have one (and I can think of a few times this year that it would have been very helpful to have an emergency fund!). I would like to start putting money into it in December or January.
- And we are in the process of reworking our budget and cutting some costs. We can’t cut much, but we have found a way to cut some things. As our financial situation has improved a bit, we’ve also gotten back into the habit of eating out more than we should, so that’s going to be cut again.

There are more goals, of course, but these are some of the biggest current goals. I am really excited to get started; we want to be smart with our finances, and I think these are definitely steps in that direction!