That Great Feeling When A Vacation Doesn't Follow You Home

One of the reasons I brought some debt into our marriage was because of some of the extravagant plans I had made for our honeymoon. I was eager to impress my new bride and so I scheduled some hotel reservations that cost a little bit more than I should've spent.

I was also spending some money I had earned through some photography jobs before I had actually earned it. As luck would have it, one of those photography jobs fell through, and as a result I got stuck with a larger credit card bill than I was hoping for. I ended up bringing more debt into our marriage.

Plus, it wasn't all that pleasant when I was on our honeymoon to pull out the credit card and wrack up more debt, knowing that even though I was making life fun for the moment, it was going to be hell later on.

"Vacations would be completely different if they didn't follow you home," is something Dave Ramsey said this week during Financial Peace University.

I remember hearing this the first time we took the course last year. Dave advocated for saving your money and paying for a vacation out of your own pocket, not taking out a loan or using a credit card.

This prompted Dani and I to establish a vacation budget. We began setting aside a little bit of money every month until we had a pretty good chunk of change. Then, this past summer, we loaded up the car and went camping at Old Orchard Beach in Maine. It was a relatively cheap vacation—I don't even think we used half of our vacation money—but it was such a different experience than our honeymoon because this time the vacation didn't follow us home.

I think Dave's right about going back to old-school ways of doing things. All these cool new "book now, pay later" vacation schemes are just ripping people off. You don't need a loan or a larger credit limit to have a good vacation. You need some patience and a little self-discipline. It worked for our grandparents. I'm sure it can work for us too.

Keep pinchin' :-)

Three Steps We Took Toward A Unified Financial Vision

Dani's a nerd. I'm a free spirit. I don't say that to be mean, those are just the categories that we fall into in Financial Peace University. One isn't worse than the other, they're just different.

And they don't work together very well.

One of the things that frustrated Dani and I early on in our marriage is that both of us were relating with money differently—me as a spender/free spirit and she as a saver/nerd—and neither of us were making any headway with our financial goals. Rather, she wasn't making any headway with her financial goals because I didn't have financial goals at all.

After we went through FPU, however, and learned about the differences between savers and spenders—nerds and free spirits—a light clicked on. We realized why we were irritating each other so much. When I was able to set aside my selfish spending habits and see why saving was important to her, and once she was able to see how much enjoyment I got out of spending some of my hard-earned money, we reached an understanding. And then things started to change.

It was rough at first because we both had to make sacrifices. I had to recognize that I had a lot of unhealthy spending habits that were holding us back from paying off debt. She had to realize that some of her financial goals weren't realistic with a partner, and that she couldn't forge ahead with her own financial plan, that we had to work together. There was some pushing, some pulling, some compromise, and after about six months we began to get pretty proficient at budgeting.

If I had to boil it down, I'd say there were three main things that helped make us successful when it came to creating a unified vision for our finances.

1. We spent a lot of time in prayer. We asked God to unite us in our financial plan. We prayed for wisdom in knowing where to spend our money.


2. We communicated. We came up with a plan for buying things and kept weekly accountability with each other. We shared, and still share, a bank account, so there were no money secrets. And we decided that any expenses over $100 would need to be discussed before acted on.


3. We followed Dave's plan. Financial Peace University gave us a common language when it came to talking about money, and it also gave us a good starting point. Dave's baby steps were a solid "first step." Once we were telling our money where to go, we started seeing results.

Keep pinchin' :-)

Free Dates For A Year - Drive-In Movie At Home

For those of you just tuning in, one of the things I've been blogging about is the "Year of Free Dates" that I gave my husband for his birthday back in October. Since then we've been enjoying some great times together every month. It's been a blast to see how creative we can be, how silly we can be, and just how much fun we can have when we put our heads together to come up with something entertaining.

Our very first Free Date Night turned out to be super fun, and I thought I'd share it in case anyone else likes the idea. The idea is to have a "theme night"—outer space, Alice in Wonderland, celebrities—and center all of your activities for the night around that theme.

Jake chose the 1950s, so I made diner-style cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate milkshakes, which we ate with 50's rock tunes playing in the background.

After dinner it was time for a movie!

Someone had given us a DVD copy of that wonderful 50's classic, "An Affair to Remember," with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. We decided to watch it "drive-in style." Jake set up a projector and movie screen in our backyard, along with some comfortable seating where we watched the movie accompanied by an appropriate amount of necking. Cause, come on, who ever went to the drive-in just to watch a movie?

Free Family Fun Date - Winter Olympics

The other day a Mom, who is going through Financial Peace University with us, made a comment about how hard it is to cut back on spending when it influences your kids so much. When it comes to things like going to the movies, theme parks, sporting events, restaurants, it can be quite hard to convince your children that it's worthwhile to let go of these things—even if just for a period of time.

Not having kids of our own I don't know what it's like to be in this position, but as I was doing the dishes today I was thinking about the "Free Date Nights" I've been doing for my husband and wondered, "Why not come up with a bunch of 'Free Family Dates?'" So, I'm going to try to post at least one idea for a family fun night every month for all those parents out there who need some affordable entertainment alternatives to enjoy with their kids.

Since we're in the middle of winter at the moment, I thought it would be fun to kick things off with some Winter Olympics. This family fun date can be just for your family, or you can invite a few other families to join you, or even host it at your church. The idea is to create easy games to compete in, with possible prizes or medals, with the ultimate aim of simply having tons of fun.

Game Ideas:

• Sled Race - Time each member of the family coming down the same sledding hill.


• Obstacle Course - Create some sort of course that would involve jumping over things, crawling under things, and winding your way through things. Again, time each participant to see who can do it the fastest. This could also be done as a relay pairing older children with younger ones to even out skill levels.


• Long Jump - Mark a spot in the snow for each participant to jump from to see how far they can leap. Measure each jump to see who is the longest.


• Speed Skating - If you have access to an outdoor free rink or a body of water you can have skating races, all members could skate at the same time so you wouldn't have to time it.


• Target Practice - Line up cans or bottles and give each member the same amount of snowballs to knock them down. You can change the distance based on the age or ability of each member.


• Snow Sculpture Competition - So long as the snow is conducive to sculpture making, divide your family up however you see fit and see who can make the most impressive snow sculpture. Set a time limit to keep things exciting. Have grandparents or neighbors be the judges. Or you could simply give each sculpture an award based on the funniest, most original, scariest, etc. 

Those are just some ideas to get the creative juices flower. You can always take to Google to find activities that are more suited to your family.

If you decide to have a Winter Olympics with other families some additional ideas could be:

• Cardboard Sled Race - Have each family build their own cardboard sled using only duct-tape and cardboard. They could either construct their sled at the event or do it at home as a family project. Time them down the same hill and see whose design is the fastest.


• Family Flag - Have each participating family bring a "family flag," which they can create to represent their family at the games.


• Have an Awards Ceremony - Acknowledge each athlete or the winners of each game, and present them with a medal, which can be as simple as string with a round piece of construction paper with 1st, 2nd, 3rd place on it, or as elaborate as you want it to be.

To end your games consider serving hot cocoa and cookies or have a bonfire and make s'mores. If you decide to host a Family Winter Olympics tell us all about the fun you had doing them!

Keep pinchin' :-)

My First Attempt at Freezer Meals

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned wanting to try out freezer meals. I decided to try out the 12 Freezer Crock Pot Recipes at lovingmynest.com, which I liked because they didn't have "Cream of" anything in them, and they looked like healthier meals. I decided to make just one batch because I wanted to make sure we were going to like these meals before I made multiples. Plus, with just Jake and I in the house, I'm guessing we will probably get around 24 to 30 meals out of them, which is a lot more than a normal family. Below is a picture of some of my ingredients.

It took me about three hours to get all of the ingredients out, chop/cut everything up, label the bags and then put them together, plus clean up.

I figured I spent about $70 to get all the ingredients on this list, which was available on lovingmynest's blog with the recipes. I did omit a few ingredients that Jake and I don't care for—such as onions and peppers—however I did use some onion powder for flavor. In the Pork and Veggies meal I omitted the mushrooms, then to beef it up I added some celery, corn and green beans.

Below is a picture of some of the freezer meals all bagged and ready to be frozen.

Overall the process of creating these freezer meals was fairly easy, and because I was using someone else's plan I already had my shopping list and recipes figured out, which I'm sure saved a ton of time. 

What I really love about these freezer meals is that because I made them from scratch I know what's in them, I know they're healthy, and they taste pretty good too! The hubby and I had the beef stew last night and both of us were raving about it. I'm now looking forward to trying them all!

Have you tried doing freezer meals? If so, do you have a favorite recipe you would share with us in the comments below?

Keep pinchin' :-)

New Year's Resolutions - One Month In

I can't believe the first month of the year has already gone by. Is it just me, or does time go by faster and faster the older you get? I've continued to plug away at my goal of working on "Faithfulness" throughout this year, and while I don't always do as well as I would like, I guess even being aware of my goal can be helpful.


Faithfulness in our finances. I have been able to pick up a few babysitting jobs and Jake has some extra work lined up. We are continuing to attack our mortgage like crazy people, and I think for the most part we are staying on budget.

Faithfulness in living a healthy lifestyle. The exercise goal has been hard recently. I seem to go a couple days doing really well, and then "forget" about it for the rest of the week. I got in a few good workouts, including a day of boarding at Bretton Woods—courtesy of an awesome friend—and I ran/walked three miles last week. My goal this next week is to walk to work and back as often as I can, since my job situation has finally moved closer to my home—just a few minutes away by car! As far as healthy eating goes: I worked on making healthy freezer meals last week so that way when I don't have time or energy to cook anything we aren't having to eat some processed junk.

Faithfulness in my spiritual life. I've missed a few days of doing my personal quiet time because the devotional I was using was only a 30 day trial. I think I might get the full subscription though because it's been good for me. I've continued to read Beth Moore's "Believing Day by Day," and I am hopeful that Jake and I can get back to doing our couples' devotional on a regular basis now that my work schedule is a little less crazy.

Faithfulness in being good stewards of the homestead God has blessed us with. We have been discussing whether or not we want to begin renovating the upstairs of our house, which we currently don't live in. The timing is good, but it costs money, so we're still in the praying and considering phase.

Faithfulness in being the wife my husband needs me to be. For February I decided to do a couple of special things for the hubby. The first is to write a reason I love him on a heart leading up to Valentine's Day. It's been fun to think about different things I love about him. The other thing I've been doing is writing a cute little love note that goes with an item—e.g. like "I have CRUSH on you" with orange Crush soda, or "You're the APPLE of my eye" in his lunch bag alongside an apple. He seems to be enjoying these little notes and it's fun to write them.

Any progress on your resolutions or word for the year? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Keep Pinchin' :-)

It's A Man's Responsibility

There's a Bible verse that gives men a charge to provide financially for their families. Oddly enough, even though I grew up in a Christian lifestyle, I never once heard that verse that I can recall. In fact, it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I came across this verse, and when I did it hit me like a ton of bricks.

"But if any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." —I Timothy 5:8

How could I have missed this? Are parents just not teaching this? Are pastors not preaching about it? Or is my generation so wrapped-up in its petty self-absorption that verses like this just go in one ear and out the other? I mean, "worse than an unbeliever"? That's what God calls men who don't provide for their families, and that's a pretty grievous statement.

I've come to believe that it is incumbent upon me as the man to lead in the area of our finances. I can't just step back and leave it up to my wife, but nor do I want to lock her out of the process either. I, and all men, need to step up, take the reins, and lead the way.

The Bible says that men are to model Jesus Christ to their wives, that they are to "love her as Christ loved the church" (Ephesians 5:25). Christ has promised to provide everything that we (the church) need, and so, as men modeling the behavior of Christ, it is our duty to do our best to meet the needs of our wives.

Marriage is a financial venture and the husband has a responsibility to finance/support/provide for his family. As a husband, I need to realize that when it comes to money my earnings are not my own. They belong to my wife and my (someday) children.

Keep pinchin' :-)