30 Days Down Memory Lane Day #23: Hubby’s Return From Iraq And A Year Of Financial Stress

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Here are the other posts in this challenge I’m participating in:

After a VERY long and agonizing couple of weeks waiting for hubby to return home, the day finally arrived! Some friends of ours agreed to watch Ariela for us so we could have some alone time and catch up (ehem, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination ).

The first couple of weeks were bliss, but then reality started to set in: what were we going to do about finances? We made a rather rash decision to get hubby back into school full-time since it was something he wanted real bad and we felt it would help him to get a good job after he graduated. He did finally get a job, but it was way too much stress for him to actually maintain it and school at the same time.

So he quit his job and we braced ourselves for a very difficult rest of the year. Thank goodness we had some friends who saw exactly how difficult things were going to be for us, so they set up a time to meet with us in order to teach us a few things about budgeting. They sat us down and explained to us what I like to call the “emergency budgeting” technique.

They also told us that it would be wise to use the envelope system which involves using envelopes to separate your spending categories and putting cash into those categories. We were to use that cash only each month. It was VERY difficult to stick to, but month after month I could see the benefits of using it because it kept me from spending any extra money (which is super easy to do with a card).

That year was the hardest year financially we ever endured. We were only getting a small amount of money per month from my job at our church’s nursery (maybe $150/mo.), food stamps, and a little over a thousand dollars a month from hubby’s GI Bill.

I have no idea how we did it, but somehow we managed to not only live within the slim budget we had, but we were also able to dig ourselves out of $3000 worth of credit card debt. It took a ton of discipline, but it was SO worth it!!! It also taught us that we don’t need many of the things we originally thought we needed. It also taught us how to be thankful with what we already have.

I remember having a revelation from God several months into our financial ordeal: this computer you have more than the poor can say they have. That’s when I started thinking: I have more than most people who are the poorest of the world and here I am feeling sorry for myself?!?!?! Suddenly the computer I had seemed like gold to me! I started to imagine what my life would be like without it. I realized that since I did most of my work online I would be hating life right now if I didn’t have even a computer!!!

I decided right then and there that I was going to start being grateful for what I already had and to never feel sorry for myself!

After that year came to a close and hubby finished his schooling he broke the news to me that he really missed the military and wanted to make a career out of it. To be perfectly honest, I really wasn’t surprised with this, and because of all we’d been through in those last 2 years I didn’t mind in the least.

Stay tuned tomorrow to find out about hubby’s transition back into the military and how he miraculously was able to hold on to his rank and get the job he’d been dreaming of (with a little surprise in between !

30 Days Down Memory Lane Day #23: Hubby’s Return From Iraq And A Year Of Financial Stress

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