Financial Goals: October Update

It's been a few months since I've posted an update on our financial goals. I just haven't known what to share. So much of our current financial situation seems counter intuitive to the financial goals we set for ourselves this year. My last financial update was in mid-August. My husband had just accepted a job out of state after his second job loss in a year. So what has happened since then? Well, we went a month with no income at all, from early August to early September. It then took awhile for the direct deposit to start so we ended up having to make a dent in our emergency fund to pay for things. Thankfully, the last few have made it directly into our account.

I have tried to be resourceful in funding things we need without impacting our budget. I sold books & magazines at Half-Price books and sold my girls outgrown clothes at a consignment sale to pay for the clothes they needed this school year. Most of the new clothes were purchased at a consignment sale & thrift store with the rest coming from great deals I found in stores. Thankfully my youngest didn't need many clothes since she had quite a few hand me downs. I reduced our grocery budget but that has been offset by the fact that my husband has to buy his own food so grocery spending is about the same.

My husband finished his training last week. Along with that came the end of the company paying for his living expenses. So we're now paying rent for him and the mortgage on our house. We knew this was a probability if our house didn't sell quickly which it has not. My daughters and I will be moving to join my husband in December whether our house has sold or not. Our feeling is that if we have to pay for two places, we'd rather be all together paying for two places.

Amazingly, and this just shows how God provides, I was able to put a little bit of money back into our emergency fund in October.

Here's a look at the goals we set for ourselves in January.

1) Pay off my husband's car.
Completed in January. Yay!

2)Make monthly "car payments" into a car savings account each month.

3)Build our emergency fund up to six months of living expenses.

4) Continue our normal contributions to retirement savings.

5) Paying extra on our mortgage.

6)Save $1000 to cover all expenses for next Christmas.

7)Finally, by the end of the year, we plan to evaluate our savings plan and find a way to begin saving for college expenses.

So, we're just not going to be able to accomplish most of those this year. However we did accomplish paying off my husbands car, increasing our emergency fund and saving almost 3/4 of what we needed for Christmas. Those things combined with the fact that we went into this time without any debt outside of our mortgage has meant that these last few months have been much more manageable. We haven't had to worry about a car payment. We had more in the emergency fund to work with. And I can still buy Christmas presents for family this year.

We know that until our house sells finances are going to be a tight. However, we still believe that we are following God down the path He's leading us and He will continue to provide for us. We are trying to be responsible with the resources He gives us and we realize that our financial goals aren't necessarily His.