As newlyweds, we are definitely on a budget. Derrick works full time and right now I am subbing which makes it hard to know exactly how much of my income to budget. Here is what has worked for us so far:
1. Decided who will take care of paying your bills and taking care of other financial tasks.
1. Decided who will take care of paying your bills and taking care of other financial tasks.
2. TITHE! We personally have found that if we trust God to take care of us, he will. I've heard several people say that they are scared to tithe because they just don't have the money to do so in their budget. I challenge you start faithfully tithing 10% of what you make and trust God to take care of everything else..He promises he will! --(Malachi 3:10)
3. Credit cards--don't use them if you can't control your spending or know you can pay it off right away! Although it can help your credit score, it also can be very dangerous for people who use it just because they have it and rack up crazy bills with high interests rates. Right now we only use ours in emergencies!
4. We live on Derrick's income and only use mine to pay off my loans and put money back into our savings. It can be hard sometimes to not want to spend mine on other things, but it will be worth it in the long! (I want to be a stay at home mom when we do have kids!)
5. Know your stores! I made a post before about how much money we saved going to Aldi instead of Wal-Mart! Check it out HERE.
6. Make homemade meals instead of going out to eat. We use to go out to eat all of the time! However, it's so expensive! We rarely go out anymore and try new homemade recipes instead. Check this out :)
7. Stay at home date nights! We have gotten to be experts at this! Again, a fun thing to do is try new recipes together! We then watch TV shows or rent a cheap movie. (If you have an account at family video and don't use it for a long time, they will call with a free rental and a month of half price rentals!) We also like to play board games, go on walks or roast marshmallows in our fire pit.
8. We personally have not gone through the Dave Ramsey classes, but have heard they are awesome!! We did make a budget on Mint.com! It's a great site that allows you to put in all of your accounts, credit cards, loans, etc and plan out a budget!
What are some things that work for you or mistakes that you may have made as newlyweds concerning your finances?
Hey I read this and I agree with all of it for the most part especially the ALDI that is what we do. The thing that I kind of disagree with is Credit Card usage. We use our credit card for EVERYTHING but we budget what we purchase so that the things we buy or when we pay our bills go toward our credit so when it comes time to buying a car or a house we can have a lower interest rate for having good credit. Alot of people just waste their money on credit card then get stuck with 20 percent interest. It is intense, so I think if you are smart about using your credit card definitely use it because in this economy your credit matters.
ReplyDeleteThis is SO true. Credit cards pay for all of our plane tickets anymore (which says quite a bit). And I'm not saying we charge the plane tickets. We charge everything else and our rewards earn our tickets and some gift cards that I have used for gifts a time or two.
ReplyDeleteI mean Mrs Woodworth's comment is true. Stupid iPad...
DeleteI agree a budget is amazing! But ER use our credit card for everything and budget still. We used to use mint and now we use a software called you need a budget eight we love! We can have it with us on our phones and into any computer!
ReplyDelete