Spending Fast

I feel like I keep bringing up the subject of mula. While I don't mean to keep bringing it up in all posts I thought it was still worth mentioning in its own post.

Nate and I had very little money to save in order to come to AZ. We were both working part time in order for him to finish school and his tests. As of May he was studying about 40+ hours a week and typically only working one day a week. We knew that we would be moving shortly so we stuck with cold cereal and gift cards until the move.

While we knew the move would be pricey we were not expecting paperwork to take as long as it did. We thought we would move and then Nate could immediately start working. It took over 2 weeks for him to get all of his licensing completed. They lost papers in the mail a couple of times and if we had to do it all over again we would wait to forward mail. We didn't know that they hold your mail for 10 days when you forward it. :(

We were determined to make our money stretch so we cut up our credit cards and budgeted often. We only used our credit cards for gas in order to get a few reward points and keep our credit score high. After reading Dave Ramsey we decided we could do with out a credit score. However our number one reason for cutting them up was because it was going to be the first time we would be tempted to use them when we did not have the money.

It was high anxiety for a few weeks figuring out how to get into a rental house when we barely had any money to our name. We had to budget for me to go to AZ to find a rental, food, moving expenses, and the first month rent. Honestly I have to mention that without the Lord it would have not been possible because every need was taken care and somehow we kept on having money left over.

How we did it:
*We happened to pick a rental where if you signed a 13 month lease than the first month rent was half off.
*Nate's amazing stepmother let me barrow her car to travel to AZ and look at house rentals.
*Nate's amazing stepmother helped us move so we could pull our own stuff in a trailer rather than pay for a moving truck.
*We ate the most random meals in order to not go shopping at all. We went weeks without walking into a grocery store.
*We only did free activities.
*We budgeted a couple times a week and knew if we didn't stick to the budget we would go into debt.

Okay so the reason I tell you this is to explain just how amazing it was to go without spending. Now that I have the opportunity to spend money I DON'T WANT TO. I can walk into any store and only buy what I went there for... and most of the time talk myself out of that. I feel like I have this new power where I can say no to any product that is thrown my way. I WANT NOTHING (I did want a vacuum for a long time but only because the previous owners had pets and there was pet hair everywhere.. so I feel like that one was justified)!

I am convinced that because we had to go over a month buying only absolute NEEDS helped me realize just how little we can live on and still be happy. We don't need all the products that we think we do. We can drive a bondo buggy and deal with one cell phone because we already have been doing it. We can want nothing and save for things that we can spend a long time thinking about before getting. Basically I think the spending fast helped me reset my spending habits. We never had the money for them to be out of control but it just helped to refocus my wants and keep my eye on our biggest goal... Nate's Student Loans.

This was much longer than I intended so bravo if you read it all. I promise to put some pictures on the next post!