Money doesnt grow on trees and bills suck

This is number 4 in my little series.

I don’t know what it was, but before we got married, we thought we were financially stable and that we had so much money that we could afford whatever came our way and still have leftovers. Boy, did we receive a rude awakening.

Now, I am of the stance that if you are with someone, possibly engaged, and are holding off from getting married simply because you don’t have much money, then you are taking things into your own hands and are missing out on learning just how much God can come through for you (whoa that was a long sentence!).

I am not saying to do foolish things and jump into marriage with only a $1 to your name (though it would be quite an adventure). You need think about things obviously.

When we got married I managed Bras ‘n Things in Belmont. Russell was studying and working at KFC part-time. We didn’t have much but we didn’t want to put off getting married because we didn’t have well paying jobs. We thought we could get by (which we did) with what we had. I mentioned before that we had a bit of a rude awakening which is true. Instead of being able to go out with friends to movies and dinner and all the social things that cost money, we now had to put that money towards…bills. I had always paid my own bills at home. I didn’t pay electricity or water, but I paid my board and whatever else I wanted I had to pay for myself. I was a least a little used to the whole ‘bill thing’. Russell on the other hand, was not. He did not pay board or his phone bill (he may have closer to our wedding, but for the most of it, he didn’t) He was not used to the whole ‘bill thing’.

When it came time to pay for bills and rent and car rego’s we did not handle it very well. We were too used to the lifestyle of doing what we wanted when we wanted, no matter the cost. We did not budget and we lived week to week, paycheck to paycheck.

We got to the point at one stage where we had $6 to make it through a whole week! This was due to poor budgeting and planning.

Do you want to know the good thing though? God pulled us through! God didn’t once leave us hanging or in need. We laugh now at the silly things we did. One night we didn’t have much food in the house and I decided to whip together dinner out of some bare essentials, using my brain and creativity to come up with a meal. I boiled water with a few stock cubes chucked in some spaghetti pasta and chopped up one big carrot. That was it. We didn’t go hungry, but it wasn’t very pleasant.

Thankfully we have learnt how to budget (better than before anyway) and I have been blessed with a well paying job. God has certainly looked after us and I wouldn’t have started our marriage off any other way. I cant stand it when people say we need to own our own home before we have babies and own certain things before we can do certain things. I’m not saying its bad to own a home but it shouldn’t/doesn’t have to come before kids or marriage or whatever! I would much rather rely on God to provide our every need than rely on our own ‘powers’ to look after ourselves.

Oh, and bills still suck.