I have my principles about money and I want to share them here. Just don't ask me how often I stand by them because I am working on that!
Only spend money you have. I don't like credit and I need to get control of my life back.
Never borrow money again. Did I say I don't like credit? I didn't realize how expensive it would be.
Save for the future. I have had enough rainy days in my life to know I will never have enough money saved for all of them. But it's good to try. And then you should save for retirement too. We are working on that.
Treat your taxes as a loan. This had my family arguing for an hour. Should we have more taxes withheld than we'll owe or should we pay them at the end of the year. I finally decided that if I can't get my taxes to zero out I would rather have the government owe me than me owe the government.
When you don't have enough taxes withheld you are borrowing money from the government and if you cannot pay the taxes on time then you are setting yourself up for an expensive loan.
Make more, save more, spend less. We need to boost our income even if we cannot change jobs. We have been talking about ways to do this. But we also need to save more money and we need to spend less money than we have been.
