Our Financial Security

Hubby and I have a lot of things to consider with our finances now and in the future. Our biggest issue is my not working for about three years while I was very sick. We went from a two-income family with hardly any debt to a one-income family unexpectedly and in a very short amount of time.

With one daughter in college and one in kindergarten we knew we had a lot of challenges to face. Add to that my ever increasing medical bills and it became a very stressful time in our life. We survived it by cutting back on expenses and not taking on any more debt.

Our oldest daughter had a full scholarship so we were responsible for her living expenses. We had already started a college fund for our youngest. We asked for some time off from paying on it and that was granted, but we knew that was short lived.

Jump ahead to the present and we do have debt that accumulated from that time. Our oldest is in graduate school now and getting married next year. Our youngest’s college fund is paid in full though. We pay off our highest interest credit card bills first with larger than normal payments and try to set aside a little bit of money for savings. We try but it ends up often that we take that money to pay bills.

After taking the Bills IQ test (my score was a “B”) I learned that we are doing things pretty well, but we can do a lot to improve. We are far from declaring Bankruptcy but can pay down our debt more quickly and set up a budget to help us achieve our goals.

One thing I’m going to do right away is put a few dollars away each week into our savings account and not touch it, ever. That little bit of money will add up. The extra money I save on coupons and the change we all collect will be added to that account. Every little bit helps.