Personal Finance Story: Stretching and Earning Income

Yeah, we didn't exactly live like paupers. We went on vacation. While that was paid with cash, we could have put that money towards our debt snowball. We still enjoyed the occasional splurge of dining out and other stuff.

In the time of not working, I grew restless. I really focused on our church and helping as much as I could, growing in my faith, and finagling the family finances. Oh, and of course my days now consisted of strategizing over the amount I mopped versus headcount and technology. Wow, how that is vastly different!

And, my friends told me to stop asking about the mopping. Something about how I would change my opinion really fast (and they were SOOOOO right about that one).

Back to that whole loss we took on the first two houses. In one financial way or another (meaning one some line of credit), we had those around still. We got pretty close to paying them off through some refinancing, but they were never completely gone.

So close yet so far away, right?!

I was still plugging away at being ultra strategic with making our dollars stretch. I found opportunities to do online surveys that allowed us a little bit of spending money. Nothing major, but it was nice to have an unexpected $20 survey check show up. At that point, I didn't care if it took me an hour to do the survey or not. I wasn't making any money with that hour and if I got paid $5 to do a survey, it was better than working at McDonald's.

I even contemplated getting a part-time evening job of some sort so our finances weren't as tight. I applied for several part-time positions actually. Yes, I just left a part-time position, but I wanted a job with no attachments. Meaning, I wanted to go to work and do my job, come home and not stress or worry about work. I'm not sure that type of position is even possible for my personality, but I tried to find one and never got a call back. And, I knew I could probably go back to my previous job in some capacity, but we really wanted to see if we could do it.

I knew we could, but what were we truly willing to sacrifice to do it? Just around the corner we were about to be faced with more emotional challenges which would bring on… you guessed it, more debt. UGH! Those circumstances were truly how my path to couponing and frugality all began. God knew what He was doing, but boy would it be an emotional roller coaster!

Personal Finance Story Related Posts

{1} Love and Marriage
{2} Jobs and Education
{3} Baby and Job Loss
{4} Graduation = Promotion and Relocation
{5} New Job, New City, New Home
{6} Transition and Loss

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