Money and Finances: The Beginning

When I married Scott I had no idea what I was in for. We had shared idea's about money and future goals, but we still were not on the same page. I totaled up the money from all of our generous wedding gifts and told Scott that I was ready to go shopping. I wanted a couch, a Kitchen Aide, some new dishes, and some cute decor for our apartment. Imagine my surprise when he looked at me straight in the eyes and told me to  pay off my Student Loan.

Scott has taught me everything I know about Money, Finances and Savings. From the first month of our marriage he has had a goal and a vision for our family; and that is Financial Freedom.


I remember at first, I had a really hard time with this. At twenty-seven years old, I was in a habit of spending the money that I made. Scott wanted to keep track of every dime and talk about all of our purchases, even just grabbing lunch. By the second month of our marriage we had a baby on the way and it was easier for me to see that we really did need to start to prepare. But, it was really hard for me to have a vision of saving money when we barely even had an income.

One day Scott asked me to open up an OFFICIAL savings account. In order to open up a savings account we had to have a minimum of $300.00 in our account at all times. I didn't see how we could scrap up enough money to open a savings account, let-alone keep the money there. But somehow we did.

Scott taught me that "if you spend what you made...you never made anything." This made sense to me. He told me that someone could make $300,000 dollars a year, but if they spent all of it, they never made any money.

The only money you make 

is that which you save.

So, we started saving our money. It was small amounts at first. I think we made $17,000.00 dollars the first year we were married and $5000.00 of it went to pay for the birth of Dylan. So you can see that we lived very humbly.

I was amazed at how quickly our Savings Account started to grow by living frugally and by saving our money.

And now, 8 years later, I think that Scott's vision has become OUR vision. I have learned a lot along the way and I am going to share it with you. It isn't rocket science, but for those of you who might need help in this department, I'm here to help where I can. I always seem to have people asking me about how we have "Gotten Ahead", what we do to save, and how we organize our finances.

The answers are simple.


We have Paid The Lord First.
We have lived Within our means.
We have gone without some of our Wants.
We have had a plan and a vision and we have Stuck to it.
We (Scott) has Worked Really Hard.
We have been on the Same Page.

I am going to break these down over the next month and elaborate on each of these topics.

I hope it helps.