Money Monday (on a Tuesday Night LOL)

I realize that this is a late post, but please extend grace...My household gets very hectic sometimes and well, to be honest yesterday was a "day of days" in which Mommy decided it was time for some housecleaning....so the kitchen was redone and scrubbed down, the living room was completely changed - including moving the furniture around. Kids LOVE all the space and so do I. I moved my chaise lounge out from in front of the television for peace! I never watch it anyway, so I'm not missing much!

So onward with the task at hand!

I read somewhere about your personal money tree. You know, the kind that our parents you to refer to when they would say, "What, do you see a money tree in the back yard?" Actually, we all have a "money tree". It's called our paychecks. And really, how you "water" your tree will not only determine the tree's vitality, but also the fruit of that tree.

For example, if you save your money, invest wisely, then you are "watering" your tree with good water, and it will produce good fruit. However, if you water your tree with more and more debt, well needless to say your tree will eventually shrivel up and die.

We were there. We had soo much debt it was unreal. We had the kind of debt that we could not even buy groceries for our household for all the bills we had to pay. We chose to buy groceries, of course, but then we ran into the problem of not being able to pay bills. A bankruptcy and several several collections accounts later we are still struggling to recover from those poor choices. We don't have that massive amount of debt any longer, but we most certainly have to deal with the consequences of unwise choices and money MISmanagement!

The method we chose to get out of debt is the "tier method" or "pyramid method". It worked for us. Most people will tell you to pay off what is costing you the most interest, and while that advice works for alot of people, for a good majority of others it is not something feasable.

We looked at all of our bills. We took the one we owed the LEAST on, and paid it off first. Then we got the next one. We would pay our normal payment on the account, PLUS what we used to pay of the first account. That can take time, but it is much easier to handle if you are at the place where you are struggling to even put milk on the table.

Another trick you can utilize is with your federal withholdings. You CAN for A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME, claim as many exemptions as allowed by law. That will allow you to get in your max amount of money to help your get your head out of the water and put you at a place where you are not drowning. However, REMEMBER that is something that can only be done for 4-6 months (depending on your exemption claim). After that, you are going to end up paying the IRS ALOT of money so make sure you change it back.

For example, we claimed married w/6 on his pay. That freed up a lot of his income. We actually did it for the whole year. The reason we were able to do that is simply that is our current exemptions and when we file at the end of the year that is what we claim. Now don't get me wrong, I think we only got back like $3k that year, but during the year that extra money was a HUGE blessing for us.

Hopefully this will give you even more ideas when you are looking at your own financial situation. I really pray that each and every person that reads this, examines what God is speaking to them about their finances, and just commits to being a good steward with money and really gets ahead!

Blessings inward are blessings that you can pour outward!