Pay Yourself First Challenge

Community: Examples in our Life
Here are some more examples of how being a part of a community has not only saved us money, but allowed us to help out friends in need as well.

We moved in with another family. They live upstairs, we live downstairs. We split the utility bills, share meals several times a week, and let our kids wrestle around. This has saved our families so much money and is a ton of fun, especially for the kids (and for the husbands who always have someone to play video games with!)

We baby sit for our friends and they baby sit for us. I can’t remember the last time we paid someone to watch our daughter so we could go out on a date. We watch the kids one night and the other couple watches them the next. Everyone gets a date, the kids get to play together, and we’re all happy!

During the challenge, Miguel and I have been surprised over and over by all the people who tell us they have been voting for us. So many dear friends and family members have rallied around us and this is nothing new in our life. We have some of the most wonderful relationships anyone could ever ask for. Our family and friends are truly an incredible group of people.

One of the most important lessons we have ever learned is that people are made to live in community. Now, by community I don’t mean a group of facebook friends, I mean the people you share life with….the people you know and care about deeply and who know and care deeply about you.

Throughout the Pay Yourself First challenge, we have been continually reflecting on this idea of community and how much our savings journey has been affected by our friends and family. When we moved to Omaha from the Dominican we had three suitcases; within a week we had a fully furnished basement apartment. The funny thing is… we didn’t spend a dime. Friends and family gave what they could and many storage units were emptied out. What a blessing!

In my next blog, I am going to share some more of the ways of how being a part of a tight community has enhanced our life and spared our wallet.

But for now, I want to say thank you a million times to our wonderful group of friends and family. We love you all so much and are where we are today because of you.

In survival situations there are three elements you must have to come out alive. Shelter, food, and water. My husband Michael is a bit of an adventurer and has his fair share of stories. A couple of them are tales of survival where he had to brave the elements. But most of our life is not a survival plot. Clothing, however, is something we deem necessary. You need to be clothed for the great outdoors as well as urban jungles, and trips to the grocery store. Let’s face it folks, you just can’t function in society running around naked all the time. Hence the wardrobe category in our budget.

Buying clothes can be more about fashion and image than about protecting you from the elements. Jack Johnson sings in one of his songs “these clothes can keep us warm just like those”. You certainly don’t have to spend a lot on a wardrobe. In spending too much, there comes a point where it’s not about quality but about the label. On the other hand, we have learned the hard way that buying cheap clothes often leads to quick blow outs and continual spending on new items that don’t last. In our 4 years of marriage, we have settled on a store where quality, price, and style meshes perfectly with our taste. Welcome to the world of REI.

By the way, we don’t gain anything by talking these guys up, we just love ‘em that much. REI stands for Recreational Equipment Inc., and it is our favorite company…hands down. About 90% of our wardrobe money gets spent there, and for good reason. This is why we love REI...

Looking over our past 6 months of savings, we have done a pretty good job of sticking to our budget. Although we have developed a healthy habit of disciplined spending, we are not immune to the muse of impulse buying. And because we don’t allow ourselves a very large guilt-free allowance, a shiny pretty something over $20 can throw a wrench into our smooth systems. In the past, we were hard core about unnecessary purchases. The answer was always no. This had the tendency to create tension in the marriage, and often led to unnecessary guilt. Neither of those are good, so over the course of the challenge we adapted a different approach to impulse buying. Here are a few of the tactics we’ve implemented when either one of us get’s the urge to splurge.

This is not our last blog, just the last time we are going to show this chart again. (Beware, lots of numbers down there!).

We wanted to help you see just how we saved …... $8,555.45! Wow, I still find it hard to believe. As a reminder, we have been saving to pay for my nursing school in order to return to the Dominican Republic. We live there long term and will be providing free health care to the underprivileged nationals. To read about our goals, look at this post on the the Nitty Gritty Details. When we came into the PYF challenge we were $5,308 short of paying for tuition. Here’s where we stand 6 months later: