We have been on our debt diet for almost 5 months now.  I really can’t believe we’ve made it this far.  It’s been a very difficult road and I’m a little embarrassed even to admit how difficult.  I thought it would be hard at first but then would get easier as we got used to it…but no.  It is really a daily struggle not to spend money.  Everyday I wake up in the morning I have to fight the urge to go shopping or take Eva to lunch, or something else that would require money.  Money is a lot like food.  You can be addicted to spending it, and you can fight that addiction but you can never cut it out of your life completely because you need it to live.  Unless your like this guy then that’s a whole different story.

These past 5 months I’ve learned a lot of things about myself and about money in general but I’ve really been thinking a lot lately about the 3 different reasons for spending money.

1. Needs – things like food, shelter, electricity, fuel.  There are really very few things that we actually need.

2. Wants – clothes, furniture, pedicures, getting my hair done.  Every time I want to buy something I ask myself “Is this a want or a need?”  It is always a want.  After the weekly trip to the grocery store, I have everything I need.  The hardest things not to buy are clothes for me, clothes for Eva, toys and books for Eva, and books for me.  However I REALLY struggle with the whole want vs. need thing when it comes to things like new furniture for Eva’s room.  I HATE the furniture in her room which we bought from craigslist when she was a baby to save money so that we could buy her something nice when she got older.  Well now she is older and I am so ready to get her the something nice.  We went to Ikea the other day to scope out some things, that was a BIG MISTAKE.  We found a daybed there with two overhead cabinets that would go PERFECT in her playroom.  Now it is taking everything in me not to just hop in the car and go get it, and it’s not even for her bedroom!  I have gotten my hair done once since we started this and I had to sell our fire pit to do it.  It’s been 8 weeks since then and just starting to get to the point where it needs to be done again.  I’ll probably wait another month or two and then see what else I can sell around the house.

3. Convenience – This sort of fits in with both of the two previous categories.  There are many things of convenience that we could argue are a need but really would just make our life easier.  Such as going to the car wash, or eating out.  It is a huge challenge everyday to wake up and try to figure out what I’m going to do with Eva that day to keep her entertained.  Since she doesn’t have anyone to play with (besides me) I always feel like I need to take her somewhere fun at least a few times a week.  Also, I’m the kind of person that needs to get out of the house or I’ll go crazy.  It would make my life so much easier if I could just take her out to lunch a couple of times a week or to the children’s museum or someplace like that.  But those things all cost money.  We are both dreadfully sick of the free places we’ve been going all summer like the library and the community pool.

Why am I putting myself through such torture you might ask?  The progress we’ve made does make it all worth it.  So far we’ve paid $12,344 towards our credit cards ($6,000 of that was from our tax return) and we still owe $9,600.  I write down those numbers not for you but for me.  So I can see how ridiculously in credit card debt we let ourselves become.  Imagine what we could be doing with this money right now if we weren’t paying off our stupid cards with it!?  To help us get it paid off a little sooner Chris took out $1000 from a 401k he had at a previous job.  That will make it so we will have one more card paid off by November, then we can just focus on Christmas, and start up again on the last two cards totaling $4,600 after the holidays.  When I think about all of the sacrifices we are having to make just to pay off all these cards it makes me sick.

Can you believe how optimistic I was when this first started?

http://www.modernmommyblog.com/index.php/2009/03/25/my-debt-diet/

I don’t know where I was getting my math from in our 1 month post.??

http://www.modernmommyblog.com/index.php/2009/04/27/we-made-it-1-month/

tags: Budget, credit cards, Debt Diet, Money, savings