Must Have More Yarn!

The highlight of my day was learning that SOAR 2010 is going to be held in Delavan, Wisconsin which is only four hours away!  As soon as I told my beloved husband, the first words out of his mouth were “you are going”.  I love this man so much!

After I recovered from my excitement at going to SOAR next year and thought about the cost involved, I decided it was time we had a long overdue “sit down and plan our future” discussion.  As employees of the state university system we do not pay into Social Security.  We pay into the State Universities Retirement System.  We have slightly different plans under SURS.  My husband’s plan guarantees him a set income upon retirement.  My plan has lost over one-third of its value over the last six months.  If and when I retire, I want to have a moderately comfortable life.  So does my husband.  We are also very shaken by the grim economic news at the national, state, local and personal level.  This, along with lay-offs announced at work today, was a wake up call that we need to reevaluate our spending and saving habits.

We reviewed our spending and our savings and we both cringed at our student loan debt and medical bills from my surgery last October (not covered by insurance due to using an out of network provider and not getting prior authorization; we will not make that mistake again).  We just shook our heads and looked at each other.  A few hours later we had a new budget that will leave us debt-free in 20 months.  At 48 months, we will have saved enough to make a huge down payment on a home of our own.

The downside of our budget discussions required concessions from both of us.  It was with great reluctance that I canceled my various fiber and sock club subscriptions.  Some were ones I subscribed to myself, others were gift subscriptions from my husband.  The total savings in a year is almost enough to cover the cost of attending SOAR next year.  My husband gave up several things dear to him too.  We are both at saturation points.  I have more fiber and yarn than I am capable of using right now.  He can only paint so many miniatures in a year and he has several years of painting to do before he is caught up.  The things we gave up are dear to each of us. We both recognize that by giving up these things, we are opening new avenues of appreciation for what we already have, exploration and personal growth.

Our budgeting was driven by economics and uncertainty for our future.  We saw disturbing trends in our spending patterns.  We were shocked to see how much money we spend on soda, junk food and eating out.  We are far too accustomed to buying what we want, when we want.  We each confessed about how much “stuff” we were accumulating and how overwhelmed we felt by our “stuff” but were afraid to say something as a lot of our “stuff” were gifts to each other.  We talked about the things we would like to do in the future.  We talked about buying a home of our own and what we each wanted in a home.  We’ve never had these talks before.

Our new budget is very tight but not unbearable.  It will be a difficult change at first.  We are both excited at the prospect of seeing our debt disappear over the next 20 months.  Even more exciting will be watching our house fund grow and then buying a house of our very own!  Change is not always easy, but there are times when it must be done.  This was our time.