The Month We Lived Off Our Stash

Life was humming merrily along for us, a two income family, as it usually did.  With my home-based business bringing in a healthy paycheck each month, I never had to worry about money.  All this came to a sudden, terrifying standstill recently when, without warning, our income for the month was cut in half .

I wish I could say that I took a few deep breaths and made plans for tightening up our budget, and I did, eventually.  At first, though, I panicked.  I panicked hard.  In short order I discovered that our mortgage company had no “compassion policy,” for a family needing a brief grace period.  Our electric company had already sent a second warning for the previous month’s bill, and I knew there would be no mercy for us there.  A truck payment was due in just four days.  Ditto no mercy.

With our monthly expenses laid out, I began to surgically decrease our budget.  A plastic surgeon could not have done better.  I cancelled our YMCA gym membership.  I re-gifted an old Christmas present for an upcoming birthday party.  I went through our car insurance policy line by line and discovered that we were paying for unnecessary towing coverage, since we also belong to AAA.  Every little cut added up.  I was pleasantly surprised to see just how little money we really needed each month.  We could pay all of our bills.  We would make it.

One area in which there were no worries was food.  My pantry was stocked up for several months, and our freezer was bursting at the seams with every type of meat that had ever been on sale in the past six months!  Over the next four weeks I discovered three holes in my food storage plan.

1. Vegetables.  Other than canned veggies and a few bags of frozen, I wasn’t prepared enough with a variety of my family’s favorites.
2. Fruit.  Sure, we could have eaten canned pineapple and mandarin oranges every day, but I worried about a mutiny.  I had some dehydrated fruit that made great snacks, but we really missed fresh.
3. Recipes and menus using the foods I’ve stored.  I have many recipe books, but since we weren’t eating in restaurants, preparing three meals every single day became tiresome for all of us.  By the end of Week Three, I was serving slabs of cooked ground beef and not much else!

On the other hand, we had every other supply we needed.  It was a relief to grab a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of laundry soap, deodorant, and Motrin from what I had been storing up for the past year.  Because I wasn’t going to the grocery store once a week or more, I wasn’t spending extra money on all those tempting “bargains”.

In spite of having virtually no extra money, we had a great month.  I took the kids to museums on Free Fridays, they enjoyed the local pool for only .50 cents each, and we spent a lot of time with friends.  Although it was sometimes hard for me to say, I think it was good for them to hear, “We don’t have the money for that right now.”

As a family, we learned to be grateful for even the smallest blessing that came our way.  When my bank reversed a $30 charge on my checking account, I felt overwhelmingly blessed.  My husband found two movie vouchers in his desk drawer that allowed us a family movie night.  A small stash of Visa gift cards came in handy for small expenses during the month.  I kept a list of every blessing that came our way to remind us that God, not any paycheck, was our Source.

The most difficult moment of the month came when my daughter used a gift card to one of those pottery painting stores.  Her gift card covered her project only, and I had to tell my teary-eyed son that there just wasn’t enough money for his.  It was a horrible, heart-wrenching feeling, and I slipped him a note telling him that somehow I would make it up to him.

Let’s face it.  Our country, our world, is at a tipping point right now, and no one knows what might happen.  How many more banks will fail?  How many more jobs will be lost this year?  Are we as safe from terrorist attacks as our leaders claim?  For many of us, hurricane and tornado season is just around the corner.

I have no control over the decisions made by our President, Congress or my local government.  However, I do have control when it comes to providing for my family.  Without our stored provisions, I’m not sure how we would have made it through the month.  Each day I was grateful that we had planned ahead.  My advice is to seize what you have control over, make a plan, and act on it.  I’d rather have my stash of stored provisions and not need it than to need it and not have it.

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