Eight years ago, fatboy (that's me) and my spouse, had that moment where it became imperative that we get our personal finances under control before it was too late. So this is what we set out to do and we made it one of our top priorities. To anyone watching from a distance, a friend or co-worker, it looked like we were broke and actually our wake up call was in fact our acknowledgement that we were broke and needed to correct that situation.
So here we are today, 2023, a year of being completely debt free, no mortgage and an emergency fund in cash that 8 years ago would have seemed impossible to have. We have pared down our expenses and spending having eliminated north of $2,000.00 per month in money simply evaporating from our bank accounts.
So for us, even in the biden crap economy, and that is what it is...total crap, we are not suffering from the effects of inflation all that much. Every week as we push our cart down the isles to the checkout at Aldi, our cart is usually half full, meats are a package of chicken breasts and 2.5 pounds of 85% ground beef, sometimes frozen fish but hardly ever processed foods of any kind. But I see people with their cart full and sometimes towing as second cart with $400 plus at the checkout, a bill made up of convenience items and junk food.
Yes, I hate that prices have gone up but especially because this is so unnecessary, but the whole thing comes down to living below our means not above or just at the break-even point. I tell myself that I might want a t-bone steak but I don't need one and usually we pass on such a thing. But that is not what I see most people doing, they just stuff whatever then desire into that cart then go complain about how broke they are.
People sometimes at my workplace ask me how much we spend per week on food or whatever they are struggling with at that particular time, I'm known as Mr. frugal. the guy at my company that keeps it to a minimum. Not that I go around telling anyone what I do or what they should do, rather they just know. I'm convinced that so many do not want to do what needs to be done in order to be happy and less stressed over money. But I don't want to be too hard on them, we were of that mindset up until 8 years ago.
So yeah, our weekly trip to the food mart isn't for us some sort of Chinese water torture or exercise in checkbook balancing gymnastics and we don't give a crap about credit card reward points or low mortgage rates because none of that is in our lives anymore. But none of that is any thanks to President Stupid and his policies either.
With all the passion of an evangelists, I say start today. Get on a written zero-dollar budget, track your spending, pay off debt, save for the future, set specific goals and most important, believe you can do this, because you, in fact, actually can.
