Frugalicious Friday- No. 2!

This here's my buddy bud, Tina from The Vining Family. She's my comrade in all things: fun, sad, happy, glad, sassy, gassy, classy, fashion, dreckitude, pottytraining, lil' kid drama, and so on and so forth! We can window shop like it's hot all day long and you would not believe the stuff we've seen at a thrift store... I need to round this up as there is really no end... So here's her family's story of financial freedom!

Hey y’all! My name is Tina, and I’m delighted that Gillian has asked me to share postings from time to time on Frugalicious Fridays. My husband and I have been married for nearly 13 years, and 5 years ago, God gave us a most precious miracle, our daughter. Before I get to share some of my frugalicious tidbits on this blog, I thought I’d share my and my husband’s financial struggles and freedoms. Here we go:
When Cory and I married, we both brought debt into the marriage with us… the usual car payment, truck payment, and credit cards. Never did it occur to us that debt was a bad thing. Buy something, and you can pay for it later. Instant gratification! If there was a store out there I frequented, I had their store card. Even a couple of catalog cards. We’d been blinded by the shiny stack of credit cards that peered at us in our wallets—something that society had taught us was sort of a status symbol. Twisted, I know. Then, the inevitable happened. It all caught up with us. We worked second jobs to pay down some of our debt. We were in a somewhat better place, but weren’t out of the woods. Enter, Dave Ramsey and The Total Money Makeover. Changed. Our. Lives. See, we’d spent years paying the “stupid tax” of our own decisions and consequently we would end up paying for those decisions for years and years if we didn’t change our way of living.
Proverbs 22:7 “…the borrower is slave to the lender.”

This post is complete honesty. It hasn’t been the prettiest of roses. (Even Bret Michaels taught us about those thorns.) We worked our tails off to pay down our debt. It was a slow process, and there were times when we got a major “F” in budgeting. But we were determined to the take the “F” out of our “failure” and instead put it back in “freedom”! With God’s guidance and provision we’d been awakened to the feeling of no longer wanting to be a slave to the lender. And here we are today-- NO CREDIT CARDS! With the exception of my reliable vehicle (I do travel a lot with my kiddo) and our house, if we don’t have the cash to pay for it, then we don’t buy it. We don’t live beyond our means. Weird??? Maybe according to worldy standards. Budget? Some would say, “what’s that?” Making our money work for us? “HUH???” Praise be to God for these life lessons!!! It’s cool to “live like no one else”!

Now, does this make me an expert on being frugal? No. But I sure do like to save money any.where.I.can. Will everything I share be a light bulb moment for everyone? No, some things you may already know and be like “duh”. Can this occasional posting provide motivation for others to find frugal living to be fun? I hope so. Do I like asking and answering my own questions? Apparently, yes.
Soooo, thanks to Gillian for asking me to contribute to her fabulous blog! Happy frugalicious living everyone!

Next week we're throwing some tips in your face. Tips that you can use (or look down upon) shamelessly!