I have been blogging on here since 2020, but I blogged on a google site for a few years before that and I kept a financial journal even longer than that. Recently, I was cleaning up some documents in my financial folder and I found my old e-journal. It was from 2015 and even though I don’t feel like we’ve had any growth in our financial situation, I can now see that we have.

These are some snippets from where we stood about 9 years ago:

We haven’t had enough money for gas or food and to pay our bills and right now our emergency fund is sitting at $6.  Plus, going into the holiday season is very expensive and we are struggling to pay for it.

We currently have no emergency fund and we need to build it back up. Plus, with borrowing the kids’ money, we don’t even have that small cushion to fall back on. I’m very sad I had to borrow their money again, but I am going to work quickly to pay it back.

We have $450 in savings, $300 in our Safeamerica account, and another $400 in cash scattered around our house. (With no money in sinking funds.)

 Right now we are in the “stealing from Peter to pay Paul” cycle and I hate it.

This is what I owe: (2015)

                            Bank of America: $944.70 ($4600 bill paid 2/10/14)

                            VFCU credit card: $7067.10

                            VFCU car loan: $842.59

This is how much we have:

                            Checking: $75.20

                            Savings: $3.83

                            Savings (Jaron): $3.95

                            Savings (Presley): $2.55

Not only did we have credit card debt (less than now, but we are working on it), but we had no money in savings, no cash savings at home, and were borrowing money from our kids’ bank accounts. To see that we only had $3.83 in our savings account is scary, especially because we had no cash on hand to act as a cushion.

Although we are not in a great financial situation today, we are better off than 9 years ago. We have $1500 (and growing) in cash in the bank plus an additional $1400 in a sinking fund savings account. We don’t owe our kids any money. They each have over $7000 in their accounts.  We have around $5500 (one month’s BARE BONES expenses) in cash on hand that we can access at will. We also have an additional $4500 earmarked for a future car purchase, which we will be using sooner rather than later, now. Any way you slice it, we are in a much better position.

We are not out of the woods yet, as far as our finances go, but we do have money in the bank, money in hand, and have steadily been decreasing our credit card debt. More importantly, I am not in a constant state of anxiety about paying our bills or our lack of security. (Admittedly, I am not happy with the low number in out savings, but we are working to increase it this year.)