We’ve got corn coming in from the garden now and a friend gave me a sack of corn. Today I blanched and cut off all the corn my kids couldn’t eat for lunch.This is just the beginning. Later this summer, my dad will bring me two big bags of corn that will need to be shucked, blanched and put up for winter.
While I was working on the corn, and trying to finish school with the kids, the baby was whining at my feet and my house was steadily becoming a disaster area. She was following me around whining because isn’t that what always happens when you’re trying to do more than one thing? A squeaky wheel shows up.
A squeaky wheel with sad eyes.
And I wondered, why do we do this? Why do we put up food for the winter from a garden when you can buy it all from Kroger? Why do we do all this extra work when it’s easier to buy it in a can? We do it because we know we’ll be hungry for it again. We’ll be hungry for the taste of fresh summer food. And some of us do it because it saves us money.
Speaking of saving money.
What if your husband lost his job? What if you had a major medical event? Do you have enough saved to get you through those rough times?
When we read the Total Money Makeover we found out the first baby step is to save up $1000 ($500 if you make under 20,000 per year). We already had that step done, but I loved what he had to say about having this cushion between you and an emergency. It makes sense. Now, $1000 doesn’t seem like that much, but if you need new tires, if your brakes go out, if your child needs to go to the emergency room, that $1000 is there to give you peace.
After you pay off all your debt, you save some more. Baby step 3 is to save 3-6 months of living expenses. This, to me, is huge. We’ve never had that much in savings and when we do, I will feel real financial peace.
It’s not easy to save, and it’s nearly impossible when you put all your money in the spend pile. For us, what works is having my husband’s check direct deposited with some money going directly to savings and some money going directly to our tithing account. These funds are taken off the top first, that way we never see them. We never group them with our spend money and it’s much easier to forget about that saving pile and let it grow.
Why save? Because you will be hungry. It will rain. Rainy days happen to everybody. The only difference between you and everybody else is that you’ll have an umbrella.
