Challenge 2: Finance
Wow, two tough challenges in a row!!! How does #OolaYL know exactly what my struggles are in life?!?!?!
According to #OolaYL, in the same manner that eating fewer calories than you burn is a simple approach to managing your weight, spending less money than you make is a simple approach to managing your finances.
Apparently being in debt is a very un-Oola way to live your life!!!
Of course! I totally get that. It’s a concept that I easily understand….and yet….somehow my husband and I just keep getting farther and farther behind on our credit card bills!!! Sigh.
I blame it on our kids. They grew up to be the most amazing people ever, then moved far, far away. I miss them desperately.
Travel is expensive and we really can’t afford more than one trip a year. Which leads to the first problem: they don’t live in the same part of the country so we have to make more than one trip. Then there’s the second and even BIGGER problem: I want to visit them as often as possible!!! So those multiple trips last year…..yeah, they went on credit cards.
When we took that first credit card funded trip, I thought I’d be able to pay the cards off before I started missing them again. Wrong. I started missing them so much I couldn’t stand it about the time I got to the end of their driveway!!!
Then we had to have new tires; we had a $970 plumbing bill; a tree died that cost $1,400 to be cut down before it fell on the house, and then thanks to a branch that fell on the house before we had it cut down, our roof started leaking to the drip-drip-drip of $3,000. So we got farther and farther behind on those credit card bills.
I’m afraid that we’re like the majority of Americans, in that we don’t have a problem spending money, but when it comes to saving, we have a much harder time!!!
Today’s #OolaYLChallenge is to sacrifice something small today for something bigger in the future.
OolaYL suggests sacrificing a small purchase and putting that money toward paying off debt, giving, or saving. I’ll be using these small “sacrifice funds” to pay down our debt.
One of OolaYL’s suggestions was to forgo expensive snacks at the theater. That’s an easy one to implement. My husband and I have both been frustrated the last few times we spent $40+ for tickets, popcorn and soda, then ended up thinking the movie wasn’t worth our time. It will be easy to just visit the local video store and pop our own corn!
Another OolaYL suggestion was to forgo the $5 spent at your favorite coffee shop. That one won’t be too hard, because I only do that a couple times a week anyway, so it won’t feel like a huge sacrifice.
Their last suggestion will be much, much harder. They said to give up that take-out meal you grab when you don’t feel like cooking. I never feel like cooking. I hate cooking. I even have a sign in my kitchen that says, “Home Cooking is any meal that was cooked within 30 miles of home!!!”
But this #OolaYLChallenge reminds me that the sooner I can take control of our finances, the closer we will be to getting the #OolaLife we dream of and deserve!!! So I will cook.
I’m going to take each one of those “sacrifice funds” (however small they may be) and put it toward something bigger. My #OolaLife goal is to pay off our credit cards. Then I can start putting money in a savings account so the next time we travel to see our kids we can pay for it in cash! That way I can enjoy my time visiting our kids without the underlying worry about how I’m going to pay for the trip!!!
