Times; Their a changin!

Wow, it's been a really long time since I've written.  Yowza.  Ok, so A LOT has changed.  To be honest, I think I'm just gonna lay the new bio down.

Ok, so I'm Serenity, wife of Aaron, mother of Braeden (4 in January) and Reese (2 in January) and a hard working, blood, sweat, and tears kinda deal, housewife.  Wow, Desperate Housewives has totally changed my view of that word.  Ok, call me a homemaker.  I'm 25 and have been married for 5 years! 

Now that that's out of the way, most of you know that Aaron and I moved out of our house and into my mom's house.  We felt we were drowning in debt and it wasn't enough for us to just break even, we wanted to pay it off.  So after making some changes, and still not making the progress we wanted to, we moved into my mom's house.  She and my step-dad live in Oklahoma while he works, but are holding on to this place so when he retires again, they can just move on home.  It helps them because we pay all utilities, so that saves them money since they kept everything on at the house so they could stay here when they came home.  It's also good for them to have someone out here keeping an eye on things and keeping everything kept up. 

We put our house up for rent and make a little extra off of that other than our house payment.  Unfortunately, around the same time we moved, Aaron's overtime became little to none, and we still have trouble paying extra on stuff.  For a while, I kind of had a "woe is me" attitude about it thinking we'd never get out of debt.  Then I decided to make it happen.  I picked our smallest debt, a $500 store credit card, and decided to attack.  I mean I was going at this thing like a psycho with a machete.  I set a 3 month goal in which I would get this paid off and canceled and took up odd jobs to knock it out.  Anytime we had extra money, it went to this card.  I was a bit worried that I wouldn't make my 3 month goal, but I did!  By November I had paid off and canceled our first credit card.  The Dave Ramsey debt snowball was rolling!  Next I set a goal to pay off a $210 family loan (shhhh, don't tell Dave) by New Years.  I was able to give $210 in cash to our debtor!  Another one bites the dust!  Now I am currently working on paying off our $1000 credit card.  It's been a struggle, especially now with the holidays, but we're getting there.  I'm gonna say I want to have that one paid off by April.  I have about $760 left on it.

The debt snowball may be rolling, but that doesn't mean that sometimes it doesn't get stuck on a bump.  I have gotten a lot more frugal with money, but I still do face temptations.  Temptation to get fast food, go out to eat, buy this or that.  It's a constant struggle and I don't even want to know how much debt I'd have paid off if I didn't succumb to the temptations. 

I decided to go shopping on black Friday with a friend.  I know, we're crazy.  I went with a plan of what I wanted to buy, and had already checked the store papers to find by best deals.  I'll admit, some of the things I didn't NEED exactly.  But at the end of the day I'd gotten Reesey some clothes, and me a comforter set for our room.  I didn't have much money to use, and I really wanted to cash in on those sales, so I brought my credit card.  Yes, the one I was trying to pay off.  I had $180 available and was determined to use every last cent.  I get to the register, and guess what?  It declined.  It had been so long since I'd used it, that without realizing it, it had expired in May!  Wow.  That was my first shop of the day, so I used my debit card and decided that would probably be about all the shopping I was gonna get done.  I did get some clothes from JC Penny, but that was a gift for Reesey from my mom. 

Things have really changed, my focus aside from God and my family, is now being smart with money.  Learning to be frugal and the ideal homemaker, minus the apron.  I just can't seem to get myself to wear an apron.  I am learning how to make my own foods, household cleaners, etc, etc.  So expect a lot more posts from me revolving around typical homemaker topics.