It has been a really rough week for me, no doubt. The kids have been drifting in an out of sickness that is finally beginning to take its toll on me. No fair. Moms cannot get sick, it just isn’t allowed. I have also had plenty of time this week to reflect on some of my personal demons including my love for shopping… not for myself, but for my kids. We are in debt. In reality, alot if not most people are, and it is not impossible for us to escape from either.

Today, I began to reflect on some of the issues I have with buying things for my kids. My earliest shopping memories were in grade school. Every June, we would go to Walmart and lay-a-way school clothes for the fall. It was an exciting time in our house it was time to open those boxes in August. We never had money. My grandmother did the best she could to raise two children, and it was just never enough for us as children. She ran herself into the ground with debt and eventually filed for bankruptcy when I was 13. Looking back, I realize that my current shopping habits stem from not only the lack of knowledge about money management, but that fact that I had very little growing up. I always told myself i would give my kids everything, and it has finally kicked me in the butt.

Looking back, I can’ tell you 2 things currently in our apartment that I have from that credit cards I previously carried. It is frightening to know what we could have versus what we do have just because of the monthly payments. It almost feels like a never ending hole. In reality, we are digging our way out.. but with teaspoons. In 18 months, we will have our car loan paid off as well as half of our credit cards. Part of me feels excited while the other half feels like that is far to long for my kids to be stuck in this apartment.

I know some of you may think we should sell our car, so I am going to address that. We considered it. Yes, we are a 2 car family.. simply because we have children and separate lives during the day hours. We currently have a 1996 Jeep Wrangles in which we are not making any kind of payments on. My car is a 2004 Chrysler Sebring.. I love my baby.. really. We purchased that car in 2006 and only 2 months of having it, it was stolen. At the time, we were only making about half of what we are now, so we had a terrible deductible. Needless to say, we got the car back and it required more repairs, detailing, and towing fees than we could afford to fix with the insurance money. To this day, my car starts with a screwdriver. It also has well over 100,000 miles on it, and we simply couldn’t not find anyone to buy it to even break even on our loan. So no, that is not an option.

I dont even want to address student loans at this point because we do have some leeway on the payment time as long as we are in school and we are both slowly working our way toward a bachelor degree.

Medical bills. Really. To date, this is the BEST job Heath has ever had. He enjoys the company, the job, and the people, but the insurance SUCKS and we have a yearly deductible of $4,000! Never have we had to pay anything other than copays.. and this is a hard pill to swallow. We are currently in almost $8,000 in medical bill debt that we are very very slowly paying off. Everytime I think about it, it makes me sick! Blah!

On the positive side, we are both working; Heath full time and myself 2 part time jobs. We are easily on top of our bills, but never ahead and that is okay, for now. I try each day to remember that there are people out there struggle much worse than myself and at the end of the day, my kids love me and we have food and a warm place to sleep. I just hope that I can pass that way of thinking on to my children.

Onward and upward I suppose.