oh money, where art thou?

I don't usually touch on the subject of finances on my blog.

Simply for the reason that I'm HORRIBLE at it.  I can't give great advice, encouragement, etc in this area, considering we're drowning in debt with no sign of a life raft...

I got on here today to blog about the misery that is money, and before I write I always check on my buddy blog links to catch up on the world.  What do you know, one of my favorite bloggers posted about this exact same thing.  I could pretty much take her post word for word and paste it here because she's so much better with words than I am. :)

I already warned her that I was linking to her blog, so here it is: Kathy is an amazing blogger and her honesty mixed with her gift of writing makes for some posts that speak right to the heart of many.  I'm thinking I may just override her blog and secretly claim it as mine. ;)  We're oddly very similar, and she writes so much better. ;)

The 'guilt' of money blogging came from a date night with my hubby last night.  We rarely go on dates.  like, rarely.  We always go out on our anniversary, and that's it.  Every other year or so we may get a second date in there... maybe.

Yesterday was possibly a special day for my hubby.  Yes, possibly.  It was his last day of school (which makes it a DEFINITELY special day), but even more than that, it might be his last day at this school forever.

Last night was a celebration of all he's done at this school the past 7 years.  and it's been a rough 7 years.  mentally, physically, and financially, this job has seemed to be a curse more than a blessing for him.  We know God has His reasons and we're thankful for a job for him.

We've felt God leading him away from this job for a few years now, but we haven't had the courage to step out and pursue His leading.

Let's face it...  getting ANY job in this economy is difficult, but for his specifications, it's even harder.  Sometimes an entire school district only has ONE p.e. teacher, unlike the 4 or 5 grade/subject level teachers for EACH school in the district.  Walking away from a job is not easy.

However, we're 99% sure he is done at this school.  (That 1% comes from our lack of desire for change).

We aren't sure what the next step is.

We are sure that we are still in tons of debt (though we've chipped some of it away the past 2 years.. okay, a bit), we are behind on bills again, we had FINALLY made it to step 2 of Dave Ramsey's baby steps (first is to have all bills current, second is to put $1,000 in savings) but have now almost depleted that savings in order to catch back up... and it isn't enough to catch us back up...

Going out last night, even though it was a 'frugal' date (I did what I could to save money on the movie tickets, as well as used gift cards for dinner), I spent the entire night floating back and forth between Jack Sparrow and the feeling guilty about the money we spent going out.

Really?  We were blessed with free babysitting, free dinner, and a few dollars for a movie my hubby loves, and I felt GUILTY.  I finally got my hubby alone for a few hours, for the first time in almost 6 months and I spent most of that time worrying and feeling guilty...  That's just not fair.

YES, we made bad choices in the past, which led to tons and tons of debt.  Neither of us were blessed with parents who taught us anything about money.  We were clueless, young, and dumb, and that led to much,  much debt, with no clue how to get out of it.

It got to a point where we met with one of our pastors 2 years ago for help.  We went in feeling lost and guilty, expecting a harsh tongue lashing from a pastor who is financially smart, but instead, we found compassion, help, encouragement, and hope.  We met with him for a few months, got many things underway, then the last year we've been doing it on our own.

WHICH hasn't been going as well.

No surprise, there.

Accountability is always an amazing motivator. ;)

It doesn't help that the past two years has brought in a salary reduction at my hubby's job.  So much so, the money from the second job, which used to at least keep our bills current, can't even do that.

He got his preliminary contract from the school this week, stating there would be no raise unless they met a certain number of students, and right now they were not at that number.  Even if they meet that number, and do give a raise, it's a very minimal raise that would be negated as the cost of insurance will be going up again in the fall.

We're thinking it's the last push in God's leading to leave the school.  We don't know where He wants us, we don't know anything else.  We have no idea what will be happening in the fall, and whether or not we'll have a main income at all.

But we know He is in control and He is taking care of us.

We celebrated that last night.

We celebrated us.

We celebrated life together.

It was well worth the few dollars and the guilt....