When I married my husband a year and a half ago, I didn't realize how drastically it would change my life. Not necessarily in a negative way, but I didn't know there were so many things that I would need to learn and constantly work on.
The first six months of our marriage were
hard. We had a great relationship, but we were learning to work together as a team. As we are both extremely hardheaded and assertive, this took a lot of work to get used to, but eventually we were able to work out the kinks to get to where we are now.
You see, it was a month before my 20th birthday when I got married. While my husband was 23 and had lived away from home for many years, I hadn't even had the chance to move out of my parent's house. I was going to college full-time at a local university and there was really no need. Also, I was never really given much responsibility at home. My mom took care of most of the housework and while I helped out often, I certainly wasn't in the habit of cleaning, nor did I know how to run a household. Luckily, I had taken a few cooking classes in junior high and high school to know my way around a kitchen.
So, the first six months or so were
difficult. I don't know if my husband felt the same way, but I was extremely overwhelmed. I found that I had to quickly pull myself together to keep our relationship moving smoothly.
It took practice.
I had always loved to cook and was excited to have the chance to experiment in my very own kitchen! Luckily, our kitchen was stocked from wedding presents so we didn't have that to worry about any kitchen items. One problem: I had only ever gone grocery shopping by myself maybe a handful of times prior to my marriage. I soon found that I was spending around $400 per month on groceries alone, just for the two of us!
BUT this didn't seem like much of problem, as our income was large enough and we didn't have a budget set up. We were naive, to say the least. So we continued on doing what we were doing until eventually we upgraded from out 525 square feet basement apartment to our two bedroom 875 square feet apartment. The price difference here was enough to send us through a loop. Our rent went up by $100, along with the cost of our electricity bill. But we managed.
Then, after the semester was over, we decided together that it was time to quit my job as a nanny and just focus on school. This cut our income by around $400. At the time, my husband took care of our finances and I never really knew how much money we had. We spent money rather freely considering we didn't even keep track of it, although we always did pay our bills on time. We didn't buy new cars or anything that crazy, but we certainly weren't financially aware.
Quickly I realize how stressed my husband was becoming by our finances. We weren't broke. We weren't in debt (besides my college loans which we have not had to start paying for, yet!). But we were living paycheck to paycheck. We had food, we had clothes, and we had our home, but it was tight.
So finally, after around a
year of marriage we decided to sit down together and form a family budget (reluctantly). We found that we made
plenty of money to get by while still having enough leftover at the end of the month for a little bit of savings (which we had zero at the time).
WHEW!
This was rough. We now had to start physically thinking where our money was going! Sure, we really wanted to go to nice restaurants all the time, but we had to kick ourselves in the butt to not give in!
While my husband is very good with money... I on the other hand... tend to get a little careless from time to time and I feel like I need to treat myself sometimes.
Okay, a lot of times. This was a habit that I had to learn to break, and continue to have a difficult time with. I like to splurge.
After this August, we can use my husband's VA loan from the Army to buy our first home. While we are going to use this loan, there are a lot of expenses that come with home ownership. Saving money in any way we can will get us that much closer to owning our first home together!
And here I am now... laying in bed making this blog as I have contemplated for months how I can collaborate all of my ideas, while being able to share what I have learned with others.
I'm still learning. Maybe we can learn together?
So stay a while and we can see what we can come up with together as we all get through this crazy life, balancing home, school, and relationship responsibilities.
I
promise to post something new at least weekly, if not more. Although there maybe be a week here and there that I don't post, due to crazy life, like vacations or...dun dun dun...
finals. I wouldn't expect a post around mid April.
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