If You Can't Pay Your Bills...

"There's always something to be thankful for. If you can't pay your bills, you can be thankful you're not one of your creditors"
Anonymous

"We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside the wires."
Dave Barry

Today I had my protein fortified breakfast and spent time with the Hubby and Little before sending the bread winner off to work. After a little while of playing and feeding Little it was morning nap time. Then I sat down for the most arduous task of the month: Bill Paying! It seems that each month life is getting more expensive. Now, as a family our extraneous bills are extremely low. We just have one car payment and a house payment. Then are the most painful bills, the reccuring bills that will never be paid off! The electricity, groceries, health insurance, gas, and internet/cable. Now, you may say "Amber, don't complain about the internet/cable bill that's completely optional!" No, it's actually not for us. Dallas does online classes so his homework goes through the internet and the homework for his other class that he does at Wor-Wic all the stinking homework is online too, go figure. Maybe teachers are getting lazy but you'd think a class that has a real life teacher would have real life homework. Any ways, I have been looking to find ways to shrink our monthly "controllable expenses. It's really hard! I really think I ay try to find a way to get my only prescription filled without having to use insurance. I'm young and healthy therefore I'd love to be able to drop my portion of the health isurance and just have Charlotte insured until Dallas gets into the FAA and that would save us like $150/mo! It will be even better when he gets in because then we won't really feel the insurance ding like we do now. Then there's the stupid electric bill :-/ My most hated nemesis. You never know how much that darn thing is going to be and it seems that it is ever ascending in the summer. Now, mind you, we only have a 897sq/ft home. It should be cheap to keep cool right? Wrong!!! It's around the high $150's all summer. So, yeah, that sucks. Then you have the gas bill, it's also $100 something. It's only saving grace is that in the summer we seem to get bi-monthly bills. The bill in the winter always lands right before Christmas :-[ Seriously? On a happier note though, by the grace of God we are able to pay all of our bills and doing things that we want to do. We aren't lacking in anyway. I have a major penchant for the Goodwill and Target which makes my shopping habit affordable :) Goodwill is just generally cheap and Target's clearance section keeps Charlotte dresses super cute for around $4 a piece sometimes less. The Lord Blesses us because we tithe and give to missions and to any special things that the church is collecting for. It is such a blessing that I look at a budget that on paper it looks like we should be eating cat food and never having fun, but, we are thriving as a family. We might not be putting a ton in the retirement account, but, we are putting a little. We ARE paying our bills, tithing, missions, special projects, and fun things! It will be so nice to show Charlotte when she's older that when Life knocks the wind out of you with what seems like difficult circumstances, just keep doing whats right and God takes care of the rest. When we first moved to MD we litteraly had $0 extra dollars at the end of the month. I can't even count how many times I cried because I couldn't go home to visit or shop even going grocery shopping put knots in my stomach. Thank the Lord he's blessed us with our little house that is less than half of what we were paying for rent alone. Growing up is hard to do but little by little we're getting the hang of it and God is blessing us for hanging in there :)

"Birds have bills too, and they keep on singing."
Anonyous