New Job: I Get To Work From Home!

My husband and I both work at a motorcycle dealership and have always worked retail hours. Over the years we've managed to wrangle our way out of working Saturdays and have managed to cut off the later hours but we were still working at least 9-6 every day. 

Since I've been on maternity leave I've been stressing out about what I would do once it was time to go back to work. I knew I wasn't going to be able to work my old hours if I wanted to remember what my kid looked like awake.  I avoided thinking about it because I didn't like any of the options I could think of. 

I love my job. I manage a shipping and receiving department (among many other things...) and I enjoy what I do.  We have benefits now and I can't get another job that pays me a wage that's even close at least to start. 

The best solution I could think of was to continue working 20-25 hours at my current job (just enough to keep the benefits) and then pick up some weekend work (maybe as a server) when my husband was home to watch the baby.  The only problem there is that I would have to find a way to get my full time hours back when we wanted to have another baby in order to get full maternity leave benefits. I thought about going back to work pregnant (I'd have to get on that now as my mat leave is up at the beginning of June) but I don't really want to have another baby yet. I just want to enjoy the one I have a little longer...  This was all weighing very heavily on me and time just seemed to be flying and I was getting a little panicked.

A couple of weeks ago my husband texted me and told me to call my boss. I said, 'What does he want?' and husband said, 'Something managery.' OK. So I called my boss and he suggested that when I come back I become more involved in the management of our online store and website. I was a bit taken aback at first as I wasn't sure if he was trying to push me out of my current department or what. I had actually been pushing for the online stuff to be taken care of by my department for some time already but I didn't think it was ever going to happen.  I told him I'd think about it. At that point it didn't really appeal to me.

Over the next few hours though the idea really began to grow on me.  It occurred to me that if the bulk of what I was doing would be web based, I might be able to work from home for some of the time! The more I thought about it, the more excited I got.  I developed a pitch and sent my boss an email to look it over.  I proposed that, when my mat. leave was up, I would come back for 5 days a week from 9-1pm and then work from home another couple of hours each day. I still was quite unsure that he would even consider it.  This type of arrangement is not one that our workplace really sees much of. 

To my surprise, he completely agreed that it would work.  I am able to work a few hours currently while I am on maternity leave without losing any benefits so I have begun working a few hours a week for now and will be returning to a 30 hour (or so) work week at the beginning of June. I am so stoked that it has all worked out this way!! I can't wait to be making a more regular amount of money again as well so we can really see some progress in our finances and well, save some money up for the next kid! :)

How We Save Money By Using Our Credit Cards

Credit cards have gotten a very bad rap in the personal finance world for quite some time now.  This is for good reason considering the amount of debt many people are carrying around on their credit card accounts and how much interest most of them are paying to service that debt.  We have been there and it wasn't pretty!  

As we began to dig ourselves out of debt we naturally had to stop using our credit cards (with some small exceptions).  It was very important to do this at the time as we needed to make changes to our relationship with money and the way we viewed it.  We needed to be more aware of our spending and feel the pinch of a lower bank balance at the same time as the high of a new purchase. 

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How We Budget: A Simple and Easy to Maintain Budgeting Strategy

I have previously shown a breakdown of our budget in percentages (here and here) but neither of these breakdowns really served to show exactly how we budget on a day to day basis. I shared our budget categories in 'Our January Budget' but didn't go further than that.  We've finally come across a great method that's been working for us for about 9 months now and if it can help you do the same then it's worth sharing!

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Our Financial Goals: Where We're Headed

Our specific goals are always changing. However, the general idea behind our goals stays the same; we want to achieve a level of financial freedom that allows us to create an acceptable (to us) balance between work and play.  Throughout the years, we have felt forced to stay at certain jobs and work extra hours because of financial obligations and we want to feel as though we have more of a say in this.  (We realize that we are responsible for our actions and that we always have a choice as to what we do, but we have sometimes felt that the monetarily responsible choices in our situations aren't very agreeable when they mean staying in an exceptionally stressful work situation or seeing less of our family than we desire.)

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Our January Budget

I realized after attempting to show an accurate picture of our current budget using a piechart here, (and failing miserably) that because of the way we budget, the only way to paint a realistic picture of a budget was to give an accurate accounting of where our money has gone in any given month.  As previously mentioned,  we have a Manulife One account and I had to make some major adjustments to the way we budget in order to get the most out of this account.  It took me about a year to really feel like I was 'on top of things' in this area.

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Budget Buster: Forgetfulness

We went away this past weekend and battled the Great Canadian Winter...  We travelled 'home' to see my family which is about three hours away from our actual home.  It was a less than awesome trip due to the very inclement weather.  We started out in freezing rain and ended up in extreme winds and white outs.  We were driving our truck which does not have four wheel drive.  When we finally arrived at our destination we ended up getting stuck at the top of a hill that was our hosts' driveway.  Lots of 'boy fun' later our truck arrived at the bottom of the hill via the other side of the hill (not meant for driving) and less one mirror thanks to an apple tree.  Thankfully, it's a beater truck and the mirror will probably be very inexpensive to replace.  It was definitely an adventure.

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Our Next Big Purchase

Currently we are saving for our next big purchase.  This is a bit of a new concept for us as we've never really saved for anything big before.  We've always just financed and paid it off after obtaining whatever it is we 'needed' at the moment.  It's actually very exciting!  We are planning to buy a new vehicle and pay for it in cash!

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Our Journey So Far

My husband and I managed to get by without any debt for about the first 4 years we were together.  After that it all started to go downhill.

The debt spiral started when we moved from our original town to our current city.  My husband was laid off from his construction job (it was winter) and he was offered his current job at a motorcycle dealership.  We actually turned the job offer down at first because the job was three hours away from where we lived at the time but after a few weeks we reconsidered and decided to just go for it.  The problem was that the new job was slightly lower paying than his old job and our rent would more than double.  Further adding to our problem was the fact that it took me a couple of months to find a job at the new location and even then, it wasn't as well paying as my old one.

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An Introduction

We are a family of three working towards a more self-reliant, financially free lifestyle.  My husband and I have been together for about 10 years.  Since then we've acquired a cat, a turtle, a dog, a house and a baby.   We do not mind working hard as long as it gets us to a place where we can enjoy ourselves and our family a little more and more as time goes on.

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