Making a Budget

Ben and I both are pretty much on the same page when it comes to money. There are certain things we feel are worth spending money on--such as healthier foods or books--and we both understand the importance of savings. We have set many financial goals for ourselves--never having a car payment (by not buying a brand new car) and saving a 20-40% down payment before we buy a house. We aren't the best with our money, but we aren't bad either. Besides student loans, we have no debt (and even student loans we have done everything we could to keep those very low). 

The one thing we haven't done that you, really, have to if you want to be good with your money is write out a budget. 

We just sort of are careful with our money but still do pretty much whatever we want. Right now, we are living on Ben's part time, $13 an hour job and both going to school full time. A few months after we got married, we had my part time income (about $800 a month) added as well. We had about $4000 in savings when we got married, which was promptly wiped out by tuition when school started. When I was doing our taxes, it amazed me to see how little we had made since we'd gotten married. It amazed me because we've been fine. We had to get a student loan for me second semester, but other than that, we haven't had to ask for money from anyone. It has always just worked out so that we had the money we needed for everything. We definitely were living off of tithing blessings. 

Now that I'm almost done with school, saving money has become more important to me because it means that we can move. Which means, as soon as we have the money, we can buy a house. That is so exciting to us. We both want a house so badly. 

I have been reading a lot online about budgeting and saving money. I have started doing things such as meal planning and making a price list to cut down our grocery list. This morning, I decided to write out our income and expenses to see where we were at. 

We have about $1300 in expenses. That's with $150 limit for groceries and other necessities (shampoo, toothpaste, etc.) and $60 for gas. The other expenses are set and there isn't much we can do about them. 

Our income is about $1360. I make $160 from teaching dance monthly, Ben (this month!) started getting paid from his Youtube channel, which is about $100, and then Ben makes $1100 from his job with Kynetx.

I was showing Ben and he said, "How do we survive?" It was hilarious. I honestly don't know how we've made ends meet. We aren't huge spenders, but we do spend money on things that we don't really need. We eat out sometimes and buy books. 

I do want to save money though. Every blog you read will tell you that it isn't how much you make, it's how much you spend. That is true, but to not spend when you make very little means a lot of sacrifices. 

We have done a good job in the last year cutting back on expenses. We use our iPods for texting and have (call only) phones that are part of his parents' family plan, which brings our bill to about $20 a month. Our car insurance bill is as low as can possibly be--we have only one, not very nice or new car. Our rent is very reasonable for such a nice apartment--it's actually reasonable for any apartment. We save money other ways with our apartment as well: our landlords let us use their internet; we live literally next door to UVU, so Ben just walks to school; we are super close to the freeway; the only utilities we pay are electricity (about $25 a month) and gas (about $5). Plus we love our ward and the people we rent from. We will probably stay with this apartment until we move to a house. 

I've gone over and over our expenses. They aren't very large but it would be nice to be able to lower them. I honestly cannot find a way we could cut back on them. We could get rid of our phones, but we don't think it's worth it. We want to get rid of our Gold's Gym membership, but Ben is locked in for another year and they say there is no way to end it early (*grumble grumble grumble*).  

We do have about $3000 saved from our tax return, but that money is baby money (hooray!) saved for our birthing center payments. We also have Ben's school tuition for summer (mine is mostly paid for by scholarship and financial aid, thankfully). 

Basically, Ben and I have decided that we just need to make more money. Haha. Ben is working on a game project right now and we want to start a kickstarter (which is basically a place you can put unfinished projects up to let people preorder) for it in July. We're asking for $20,000 and are hoping to get more than that from the game. If that is successful, then it will be a huge step in our savings for our house. With Ben's schooling, we also have decided to take it slowly. It will work better for his personality while he's working to only do one or two classes at a time until he finishes. Since I'll be finished with school, our former $8,000+ annual college tuition will be dropped to less than $3,000. SO NICE. 

Anyways, I am not really sure why I wrote this post. It was mostly for me to think through all of this. I needed to remind myself that Ben and i have been cutting it close with our budget since we've been married and it's always worked out, not to mention look forward to when we can have more of a savings cushion this summer. I do think that we are going to have a lot of money, simply because Ben and I are both dreamers; we have so many ideas and Ben knows how to make those ideas work. I know that the budgeting habits I am learning right now while we have such a small income will serve me well throughout my whole life and let us use our money wisely, no matter how much we have. 

Buying a baby ... Why didn't we think of that??

When I told my cousins that I was having a baby, my little cousin Adylinne said, "I want to see the baby," not being old enough to understand how pregnancy and birth work yet. At our family Easter egg hunt tonight, Adylinne came up to me to ask if I had my baby yet. "Nope," I said. "It's only this big." I held up my fingers in a circle about the size of a lemon. I told her that it still had to grow and wouldn't be here until almost Halloween, to which she replied "Wow, that's a long time!" Later, she came up with a brilliant solution to my long wait. "Charly (pronounced Carly), if your baby takes too long to get here," she told me, "you can just buy one." "Oh really? From where?" I asked. "From the baby store." She told me this in a matter-of-fact voice, as if it should have been obvious. "Then what would we do with the baby we already have?" She held up two fingers. "I'd have two babies?? That's a lot." "No it's not," she told me, totally serious. "Two is not very many." "It is when it comes to infants." I don't think I quite convinced Adylinne.

An update on my pregnancy

Well. I am officially past the morning sickness stage. It's really nice. I haven't been sick for a long time. This week I got back to eating healthier (we got rid of our bagels and pizza rolls) and actually making food again (much to Ben's relief).

I have been having some struggle with heartburn, but I've found a really good way to prevent it. I've heard and read a lot about lemon juice helping heartburn, but it's a lot easier to prevent than to cure. I have started trying to drink a glass of lemon water every morning and now the only time I have gotten heartburn has been on days when I didn't drink lemon in the morning.

I also have been struggling with headaches and migraines. I am not really sure what to do about that yet. I got a 74 ounce water bottle from Wal Mart (Melissa, Ben's sister, has one and I'm just following her example) and have been trying to drink one of those every day. It's helped some, but I still get a migraine about once a week.

Other than that, I'm just really excited to be able to get up and do things again. I have gotten really tired and bored of sitting around trying to entertain myself. It's nice to feel busy again. The one thing that really frustrates me is how easily I get tired out. I feel worn out just from making dinner or taking a trip to Wal Mart. The worst is dance. I have to take it a little easy at dance because I'm not supposed to let my temperature raise too high and I get worn out easily. If I do too much at dance, I feel it for the next day or two. That was a lesson I had to learn.

Last week, we heard our baby's heart beat. That was really fun. Now Ben always puts his ear down there to try to hear (but of course he can't without the special tool, he's just so silly).

The rest of life is going well. I have finals this next week and then the semester is over. I'm excited to be starting new classes, especially now that I'm not feeling sick; it will be a lot easier to go to campus for class.

Letters to Ash

I am so excited for my current project--Letters to Ash.

It started off as an idea for a sort of mommy blog. I really love blogging and am so excited to be a mom; I would love to start my own mommy blog, but I want it to have my own personal twist to it; I don't want it to be just another blog in the masses. Ben and I were brainstorming ways that I could do that and came up with Letters to Ash.

We want to name our first daughter Ashton (we want to spell it differently, but we haven't come up with the perfect spelling yet) and nickname her Ash. I heard this name for a girl when I was in high school and fell in love with it. Luckily, Ben loves girl names that can also be boy names and really likes the idea.

We thought for my blog, I could write my thoughts to my future daughter. That would set it apart and make it more my style, as well as make it more personal. I loved the idea and set up the blog, writing post after post without publishing them. I wanted my blog to look great before I let it go public. We had all these ideas for pictures and I loved writing the posts.

One day, while writing more posts, I had the idea that it might be a good book idea. The more I thought about it, the more I excited about the idea I got. But, I thought, I would need to come up with a different name for the book because of my blog.

A few weeks later, Ben and I were out somewhere, talking about projects while we walked. I told him my idea for making it a book and he lit up. He agreed that it was a good book idea and that Letters to Ash was the perfect name for it. With Ben's enthusiasm backing my own, I decided to forgo the blog idea and turn this into a book.

I haven't worked on it a ton the past few weeks, but this last weekend, I was able to put a lot more work into it and it has got me excited all over again.

The book starts the day I found out I was pregnant. It has been kind of my pregnancy journal, in a way, with me putting my thoughts down in the form of a letter. This is nice because I'll always have these things recorded and it makes it easier for me to write from my own personal experience. At some point in the book (I haven't got there yet) I'm going to have to stop this because I want the ending to have a climatic ending (such as the main character losing her baby somehow probably) but I haven't figured that all out yet.

This is such a fun project for me, especially with me being so excited about babies right now.

My life now revolves around pregnancy.

So I basically haven't done a post in, oh, forever. Sorry about that. The reason is mostly that my life since my last post has revolved around my being pregnant and since we hadn't gone public with that little tidbit until this past week, I didn't really feel like I had very much to write. The other reason is that I've been feeling morning sickness HARD and haven't felt like doing anything at all.

But today I woke up and for the first time in almost three months I felt ... not sick at all. Energized. Like I wanted to get up and do STUFF. It was a great feeling.

And so here I am, writing a blog post. It feels great.

I don't have a ton to tell. Besides the whole finding out I was pregnant thing, not tons has happened to me.

I am almost finished with the semester. Thank goodness. It's been really hard to go to class when I was feeling sick. Which was every day. But somehow, thankfully, I am pulling pretty good grades this semester.

I am so excited to be pregnant, but it honestly has been really hard so far. I have felt sick for so long that I am just tired of feeling like that.

I am hungry all the time, but it's hard to find food that doesn't make me feel sick. I will find a food that I really like and I'll like it for three to seven days and then one day, when I go to eat it, it is so gross to me. Sometimes I can't stop thinking about food or see something that looks SO good. Then I try to eat it and I can't finish it.

My last appointment that I went into, I wasn't getting enough calories. That's what Ben and I have focused on since then--getting food into me. Health and price (as much as Ben and I can afford) have gone out the window. As long as I can eat it, we go with it. I get a little embarrassed with my diet. Right now, I love turkey sandwiches with provolone cheese, captain crunch cereal, gogurts, fresh broccoli, and apples. Every week it feels like I have an entirely new diet. Since I've been pregnant, I've also been craving Twinkies, but Ben won't ever let me get one.

I've also had some problem with heartburn (which could be due to the amount of processed food/sugar I eat some days) and sometimes cramps that feel suspiciously like period cramps (which, by the way, I feel is entirely unfair).

Today has gotten me hoping that I am on my way out of this phase of pregnancy. That would be so nice. I was worried, the longer I was sick, that I would feel that way my entire pregnancy. I did not want to struggle to finish school while throwing up every day. It would make sense that now is when I stop feeling sick because I am coming out of my third trimester. I've read that by fourteen weeks, most women no longer feel sick at all.

I am very, very excited to be a mother though, even if I do end up being sick my entire pregnancy. I have already started collecting baby clothes, both in real life on and on Pinterest. Here are some of my favorites.

Thanks for listening to my rants. It's nice to finally be able to complain a little to people besides Benjamin. I do hope you know, despite how hard it's been for me, that I love being pregnant and I cannot wait until our little baby gets here.