5 weeks

Five weeks could mean a lot of things to a lot of people.  To our family at the moment it means we have gone five weeks without using our credit card.  For us that is an amazing accomplishment.  It also means that we have had our new truck for five weeks.  At the end of last week I wrote the check and sent it out to pay off our one credit card that had interest on it.  It was a good feeling to be able to pay the balance off in full.  It's been a three year struggle with it but now we are determined to not travel down that road again.  Our biggest challenge will be navigating a credit card free household when we have a second child.  But with some discipline I am sure we can do it.  So far we have been able to get everything we need for day to day living using my paycheck.  Even though my hours have been cut at work we are determined to use my paycheck for groceries and every day expenses.  It's all about figuring out what we need as opposed to what we want and doing smart shopping.  Looking for deals, coupons and price comparing.   So far we have done pretty well with that.  We have a stock of things and honestly our pantry looks like we are preparing for the end of the world.  I have a ton of canned tomatoes I got during a sale, also a ton of spaghetti noodles.  Ok well I guess that's not how you prepare for the end of the world, but for me that's how you have more then enough stuff to make spaghetti for a while.  The only thing I need to buy for spaghetti is the meat because I now have enough of the other stuff to make like four or five batches, which we go through spaghetti at a decent rate.

We also have a stock of soda, toilet paper and dish soap.  It's an odd combination of things to have a stock of but it's what was on sale and honestly you can never have too much toilet paper because you never know when you are on your last roll and the dish soap doesn't go bad and there have been times i have opened up a bottle and rinsed it out to get enough soap to do the dishes because I didn't have a new container.  The goal is to make the stuff we have plenty of last as long as possible that way we aren't buying new every week or so.    We also just need to keep our eyes out for good deals and good coupons on the things we use.  We are not going to be extreme couponers who buy things that we don't necessarily use just because we can get it at a low cost or no cost.  It's all about smart shopping.

So here is to smart shopping and another 5 weeks of not using the credit card.