As I look at my life and the changes I'd like to make, I can clearly see that how I manage my family's money directly impacts everything else. If I manage our money wisely, I can lower our stress level while increasing our quality of life. Now I don't mean quality of life as in having fancy things and going out on the town all the time, but quality of life as in how happy we are. If you replace some of those status things with time to develop the relationships with those you care about, you will be a much happier person.
When I was working to try to help with the family finances, we realized that I wasn't adding a whole lot of income due to extra expenditures on child care, horse care, eating out (since I didn't have time to cook), gas and more. At the same time, both my husband Mike and I were a whole lot more stressed out and felt guilty that neither of us had much time to spend with our son. This arrangement was just not working for us at all!
Going forward, I will still be teaching some riding lessons and might even pick up some editing or proofreading that I can do from home (may as well put my OCD English major tendencies to work), but my first priority has got to be my family. As I thought about this, I realized that I can contribute to our family finances by saving money rather than earning it. I can also contribute to our quality of life by taking care of things around the house so that when my husband comes home from work, we can enjoy some time as a family.
On my main blog page, Time to be Mom, I have a Resources page which lists some helpful websites and blogs on finances. I will still be putting all of my posts on that page, but I will repost any that are helpful on money issues on this page as well.
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