Blatantly ripping off the style in which Jen Hatmaker starts
Month 6, here is my financial story in a nutshell:
Once upon a time there was a girl who thrived on
thriftiness. Then she got married and
never was on the same page with her husband about finances. Later they divorced. And she was a single mom who survived on
thriftiness. One day she met a man who
was on the same page with her regarding finances, and they got married and had
two incomes. And he took over the books (Thank
the Lord!), and she never worried and obsessed about the budget for two
years. Which wasn’t a problem because
they both overall had a conservative mindset toward buying things.
Until one day she saw how much they spent on food in a
month. And she just about choked.
Ahem.
So my plan for spending week is to make a budget for the
after-bills money. I said I was going to
do it three weeks ago. And the week
after. And in the car on the way to my
cousin’s out-of-state wedding.
And I didn’t.
It’s not that I don’t know how to make a budget. Believe me, I could make several variations
of a budget based on whichever financial guru’s method you want. And it’s not that I don’t know how to scrimp
and save to stretch a dollar to make the food budget work.
But I don’t want to go back to that dark place of agonizing
over every penny spent and freaking out over spending a few bucks (or cents)
without going through mental acrobatics in order to justify the expenditure.
On the flip side, I do not want to be the girl who “eats”
her money. (That’s expensive poop.) Or the girl who is so selfish in her
spending priorities that she neglects those in need.
Throw into the mix that this month I get my last teacher’s
paycheck and we are no longer a two-income family—so now we’ve decreased income
and increased time. I don’t consider
myself an extravagant spender, but I could still do some serious damage without
boundaries.
Which is another way of saying I need to make a budget.
But unlike the budgets I’ve made before, I want this one to
have the end in mind of taking care of my family well and caring for others
well—setting reasonable limits to our self-spending for the sake of living out
what Christ called us to do. And when
you approach it from that perspective, a budget brings life, not death.
I started writing this last night, and let me tell you that
every inch of me was kicking and screaming like a spoiled child resistant to
actual work and change.
And then in Bible study my friend talks about God reaping
out of what is His to begin with anyway.
And the word God gives me is overflow.
And I think that God is trying to tell me to be at peace that He provides more than enough. God is asking me to use the overflow for His glory, not my
own selfish end. Which is still admittedly
uncomfortable and different from a culture which says, “store it all up for
yourself, you worked for it, you deserve it”—neglecting to give glory and
respect to the God who gave us the ability to even earn it in the first place.
Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God. Ecclesiastes 5:19
I'm going to go write that budget.
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