I am happy to say that not only am I now a housewife, but also a stay at home mom officially! Liam was born just 3 months ago and I was blessed with a 12-week long maternity leave 🙂 I went back to work at the beginning of June to finish out my contract and my last day was the 24th. God is so good.
Since I’m brand new at being a housewife and stay at home mom, I thought I would focus my shared thoughts on what I’m learning – how to serve God and my husband better, how to improve my mothering; as well as how to save money on a small budget, start & finish home improvements, and manage our small living space well. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the word, but I’m hoping to be eventually.
For the first time in our 2 year old marriage, we have the Internet in our home 🙂 We originally had 2 cell phones, but then when we moved into our house last month, we ditched our phones (and the over $100 bill that accompanied them) to get a land line bundled with the internet and a shared cell phone from MetroPCS, cutting our monthly phone expenses by $30. MetroPCS offers a plan that’s $40 after taxes and it includes unlimited texting, online use, and nationwide calling among other features. We got a new phone and after we receive the rebate check, we will have paid nothing for it; a pretty sweet deal. It’s all about cutting costs all over the place.
Speaking of costs, one of my favorite conveniences the Internet offers is that I’m much more able to stay on top of our money. I’m able to balance the account and track every penny we spend (though at the moment I’m having trouble tracking down $6.00 in my books!) and categorize it into our emergency fund, savings, spending, etc. It’s pretty freeing having more knowledge about how much we have and where it’s going, rather than maintaining ignorance and spending blindly. It becomes a game, a primitive puzzle of keeping everything in it’s place. I know people stricken with anxiety over finances because they don’t know how to manage it or they purposely blind themselves to how much they do or don’t have. And so the opposite is true – because I manage our funds and I have more knowledge of them, Andrew and I are much happier!
