Money Mondays: Dinner On Work

As you know, Kyle and I are not eating fast food during the Lenten Season. However, that does not include sit down dining restaurants. We decided to celebrate an achievement at Kyle's work this weekend as a family! 

But what about Nancy?? How can you save money and eat out at your favorite Casual, yet higher price pointed dining establishment?

Gift Cards.

Gift cards have always been a gift we request as a way to treat ourselves without dipping into our own pocket. If someone asks what we want for Christmas or a Birthday, a gift card to our favorite restaurants is the quicker way too our hearts stomaches! I received a gift card from my work for sales goals achievements within our company. We get to choose where they come from! I chose one of our favorite restaurants, Charleston's. They have the best chicken tenders I've ever eaten. 

That's right! Kyle and I celebrated his work achievement with the reward from my work achievement! How's that for doing great at our jobs and hardly having to spend a dime to celebrate?!

Lent

Within the last year or so, Kyle and I have been working on growing together spiritually. For many years we didn't know which path to choose. We were both confused and lost. Around the same time, God came to us in different ways to let us know that we need Him in our lives. We started communicating that we felt His calling. A calling to change and a calling to pray. 

So that's what we did. We told each other that we had been praying separately: in the car, in the shower, privately before bed. That's when I suggested we pray together. Out loud. We were shy about it and never really came out with the words. Until the last few months. One night I really needed a prayer. I needed to hear my husband give my worries to God. So he did. He prayed over us. Since then, he has tried to pray over us every night before bed. 

Lent is now upon us. Kyle asked me Sunday if we should participate and what we should give up. I thought about it and suggested fast food. He cringed slightly with the belief that we couldn't do it or that it would be too hard. I quickly reminded him that would be exactly the reason to try it. 40 days and 40 nights without one of our biggest weaknesses! 

Fast food has a lot of control over us. We are lazy. When we don't want to cook or look in the fridge, Mc Donald's calls  our names and we quickly answer! It also does a lot of damage to our dear friend Nancy. I'm appalled when I look at how much money is spent on our eating out budget! Around $250 is dedicated to eating out! Some of that actually goes to a sit down restaurant or two, but more often than not it goes to a "Wanna get Chick-Fil-A?" Wednesday dinner. 

So that's where we landed. We have many reasons to choose this path:

1. We are choosing to not be lazy with our choices. 

2. We are choosing to be nicer to Nancy and not blow our money on something that isn't good for us!

3. We are doing this together to be the support system we both need for our terrible habit.

4. We are trying to grow our spiritual lives together by showing God we can give up something for Him that holds great power over us!

They say it takes about 30 days to form a habit. With 10 extra days, hopefully we can really establish a better routine!

Money Mondays

This is the first installment of Money Mondays. Kyle and I went through Financial Peace University nearly two years ago. We started out great. We got through baby step #1 ($1000 emergency fund) quite quickly. We were proud! We celebrated! Then we celebrated again! 

We worked so hard those first couple of months at being financially responsible, but when we let ourselves celebrate too much after accomplishing Baby Step #1, we started to remember how great that instant gratification felt. Soon after, we stopped working on our financial peace. We lost site of those financial goals because it felt too good to spend that money on things we wanted instead of saving it or throwing it at our debt! 

Now here we are at almost square one again. Trying to get back on that proverbial financial horse. We'll call that financial horse "Nancy." Nancy tends to be a horse that kicks a lot. She is unpredictable and wild, but when she has been properly broken in can get us to our destination: Financial Freedom! 

I'm digging that little metaphor up there! I'm actually quite proud that I just made that up on a snow day in my living room cuddled up in blankets and PJs! Perhaps those factors and the iced coffee I had this morning are just what I needed to let my creative juices flow! Or perhaps I should stop imagining a horse with dollar sign-shaped spots all over it a la Richie Rich!

We pretty much are passed Baby Step #1 at this point. We have the savings. Now we are ready to tackle our debt, which we have ironically accumulated more of since completely FPU. We will still break Nancy in by using the baby steps Dave Ramsey has provided because I still think his methods are a great way to get started. It's up to us to make sure Nancy doesn't celebrate too much after achieving her little goals! 

Starting. Again.

I always feel the need to document my life. Documenting the little special things that I may not remember years from now. Document those feelings that I can look back on with nostalgia. I always start out with great intent. Intent to write something that means a lot to me and maybe a little something to someone else. Intent that I can do this for more than a few posts. 

The problem is is that I get lazy and tired. I get thrown off the horse and instead of getting right back on, I get distracted with something else. I have had blogs before. I read those old posts and constantly ask myself why I didn't keep going! They are great posts. They are great little reminders of wonderful moments in my life. Moments that would have otherwise been forgotten. 

With that, I am trying again. I will not be mean to myself if I miss a day. No guilt-trips for myself. I will document what and when I feel like. However, I will try to have small schedule to keep things organized. I will keep to main themes which are currently relevant to my life.

Monday will be about finances as Kyle and I try to manage budgeting and some sort of frugality.

Wednesday will be about our home and other projects.

Friday's post will consist of family and miscellaneous topics.