Budgets

Hello again.

I am longing for a day when I feel one hundred percent healthy!  I feel a cold creeping barreling into my life, and I was just starting to feel human again after last week.  Jered and I came down with something nasty, and after some speculation, we're guessing food poisoning was the culprit.  Not fun.  Not pretty.  And it took more time than I would have preferred to bounce back.

On, what I half believed would be my death bed, I was able to finish my first book in the Uglies series and begin my second John Green book: An Abundance of Katherines.  Once I was able to move again, I did manage to put some of my weights to work over the weekend, and the burn felt awesome and long overdue.  The walls of this Flinkman home are also finally beginning to wear their jewelry.  Finally.

What's that song that says, "I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind?"  Well, other than recovering invalid, it basically sums up my life over the last week or so.  No worries, I'm not becoming Scrooge McDuck or anything like that, although I do think it would be pretty awesome to have a pool of gold.

Basically, money has been popping up all over the place.  Ha- maybe I should rephrase: the topic of money has been popping up all over the place.  If only that first statement were correct...

This is where a big difference between Jered's personality and mine can be spotted.  I stress; he has faith that it will all work out.  Thankfully, we haven't needed to stress since we moved- an enjoyable change from much of last year.  We have both been blessed with work on top of a lower cost of living.

When it comes to money, so many different views are out there.  Work hard and gain wealth, don't focus on money at all, save, give, evil, good, la-dee-da-dee-da.  It gets a wee bit overwhelming if you let it.  (I let it.)

A couple weeks ago, our pastor mentioned that people strive for wealth, and at the same time think of it as evil when other people have it.  He pointed out that God wants us to have enjoyment in our life, but we shouldn't desire/have so much money that we have no need to trust Him to provide.

For some reason, his wording made so much sense to me and put me at ease.  On top of that, Jered and I finally put together our budget.  Last year we put it off since my work schedule fluctuated all the time, and since we've moved, we still hadn't put it on paper and into action.

It's a good place to start anyway, and I'm pleased to say that it didn't take long for us to work on it at all, and it went much more smoothly than the examples on the Dave Ramsey tapes.  It was virtually painless.

I don't think I've shared this with you yet, but I've also been feeling convicted over the budgeting of my time. I read a status awhile ago that listed a bunch of important people and said that we each have the same amount of hours in a day as they do.  The statement was followed with the question of how do we use that time?  I was also struck by the difference of being busy and productive.

If all goes as planned, which probably has a seventy percent chance of actually happening, I will become a better steward of my time and money in the next few weeks or so.  We shall see!

Talk to you later.

Aim