Yikes!

I feel like we are hemorrhaging money lately! And as a reformed spender and now a big-time saver, I hate it!

On Wednesday, we bought our plane tickets home for Christmas. It cost us $1500 but we know it's well worth it to see our families. Still hard to pay for though. And I cringe when I think that the cost is going to double after this trip once the boys turn 2 and can no longer fly on our laps for free!

And Brandon's laptop has been dying a long, slow death over the past few months. It's going on 5 years old and it overheats and randomly shuts down often. But it's gotten much worse recently, shutting down on him while he's in class and working from home. Brandon was afraid that it would just shut down for good one day and he'd lose whatever he'd been working on (he backs up his work every day but he can't afford to lose even a few hours of work right now, especially with finals coming up). So, on Thursday night, we took a rare family trip to the mall and bought Brandon a new laptop. He was pretty pumped to get a brand new Macbook (I think he's been anxiously awaiting this day for a while now) but neither of us were very pumped about shelling out that much money in one night. Those things are expensive!! We sure hope this one lasts 5 years too!

And, because when it rains it pours, on Friday Brandon went out to the car and saw that it had a flat tire. No biggie, right? We didn't think so. Brandon took it across the street to the auto shop hoping to just have the tire repaired rather than having to purchase a new one. But no, both front tires were shot and needed to be replaced. And, of course, they found a ton of other things wrong with the car, all relating to the tires and wheels and which caused it to go flat in the first place. $600 later and we have our car back with two new tires. We've put about $1500 into our car in the past few months, that's like 30% of what it's worth! But we can't afford a new car, and we don't really need one either. Our Camry is 12 years old but only has 110,000 miles on it so it should last us a lot longer if we take good care of it. And since we don't plan on outgrowing it anytime soon, we're praying that it does last!

This weekend we also have to pay a HUGE deposit for the new place. And probably won't be getting a penny of our current deposit back thanks to our kids and cats who have stained the carpet beyond recognition.

Sometimes I think, "Heaven help us, how are we going to pay for anything?" Four people living on a part-time salary in one of the most expensive cost-of-living areas in the country. Add on travel out West a few times a year and miscellaneous expenses (like cars breaking down) and it's so easy for me to become anxious about it all. Thankfully, though, we do have God helping us. He provides for our every need. We're just called to be responsible and faithful with the money he does give us and trust Him with it. It's a good lesson to learn, certainly not a fun one, but good. I just keep praying for God to help us be wise with our money, as frugal as we can be, and always more trusting of Him.