What was your turning point? What was it that made you break the cycle?

__________________
"Ordinary riches can be stolen: real riches cannot. In your sould are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken away from you." -- Oscar Wilde

Visit my Forget the Joneses blog - new entries added recently
Check out the Mommysavers Group on Facebook
My frugal tips are on YouTube
I've been posting frugal tips in the Mommysavers Photo Gallery

Kim very good question!I can't wait to see how people did it.I have changed it around yet but I am working on it.I have stopped going out to eat on the weekends and cooking on the grill or planning picnics.I have cut back on buying so many groceries that we don't need.

I do need more help with this!

__________________
*Wife to Rick since (14 years)*
~Mom to 2 boys Dakota 13 & Ryan 8~
__________________________________

~Month~Budget~Spent~
February~400.00~380.35
March~400.00~419.65
April~400.00~395.94
May~400.00~391.53
June~375.00~373.13
July~375.00~365.62
August~365.00~363.24
September~355.00~

We stopped living beyond our means. Literally one day we said enough is enough. We stopped eating out, stopped shopping, and learned the difference between a NEED and a WANT. that was a HUGE step for us. I started working part time, even though I didn't "want" to at the time (now I love it!) We now have a set amount we save and we are paying down out debt BIG TIME (we put $1,000 towards it this month so far). It has been hard, not getting what we want, when we want it, but we are half way to having 6 months of living expenses saved.

We are in the proccess of converting. Next month is going to be a lot easier. I just can't deal with the stress of it anymore. I want to save for a house. DH graduates in 3 years and I want to move into a house in a smaller town. The only vacations we plan to take are the trips we take at Christmas to KY to see his family. I need to build an emergency fund. Right now we don't have one. In January when we get our tax return, I am opening a money market account. We've lived on a whim for 6 years. We have everything we need. The only thing I really want is a new table because this glass round one I bought at Walmart 3 years ago sucks. I may go get that at the Salvation Army, though. We have one here that has nice furniture. Other than that we are good!

DD#2 was very ill during her first year of life (Thank God our insurance covered all medical expenses), because of her illness we couldn't take her out of the house for anything other than necessary Dr. appts. During that time we managed to save quite a bit of money by just staying home, no shopping and no eating out. I would make a grocery list for DH to pick up on his way home from work, he only got exactly what was on the list since he hates shopping. We managed to pay off our debt during that time just on what we used to waste by buying unnecessary things. Now we have no debt except for monthly utilities and a mortgage.

__________________
DS-16
DD-12
DD-5
DS-2

WE GREW UP! Yup, I said it. One day it was like someone smacked me in the forehead and said "grow up and quit your whining"!

There are circumstances that will put you in debt no matter what, ie: like medical expenses. These can't be avoided. There are others, like what we did, who just spent money like we had it and didn't give much thought about the interest etc. on CC's and loans.

Looking back now, I think some of our spending was due to depression regarding our inability to conceive. We thought "if our life isn't going to turn out like we planned, we might as well have fun".

I can tell you that now that we are debt free (except mortgage) and have a nice emergency fund, we have more fun than we ever did spending money willy-nilly!

And, as you can tell by my avitar, our dream did come true through adoption. I've never been so happy that I couldn't carry a child and I am VERY serious about that......life is better than any penny spent in the past. But that's a whole other storey!

__________________
Children Learn What They Live, And Live What They Learn.
What have you taught your child today?
When life throws you a curve ball...it's up to you how you catch it!

we refinanced our house to a lower interest rate....took the extra money and paid off our debts - credit cards, car loans, etc and kept them paid off...not only do we still have extra in the bank for the in case of emerency but we can also stop stressing! it really is nice not fighting with DH about money problems ...now we have more room to fight about other things LOL j/k

__________________
Gimme a break~ gimme a break~ break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar :happy dance:

"When your a mother you stop being the picture and become the frame"

For us it was really when we realized that what I really wanted to do was to be a SAHM. We had started trying to diminish our spending but it was hard since I was so unhappy working. It was like I had to compensate somewhere so I was spending to try to create happyness when deep down I knew something was wrong with our choices.

Now we are trying to pay off our debts has fast has possible and then we will be able to save for an emergency fund. I wish we did not have so much debt but I know we can do it because now I'm happy and I don't need to spend so much.

__________________
MARIE --- MOTHER OF TWO ANGELS (MOST OF THE TIME )

Waking up, growing up, being responsible and then lots of slow steady work to get the debt down, get expenses down and save money.

It took me several stabs to really do this, I didn't succed the first time, I still have moments of weakness.
I still have debt, and will for the next year or so, but I have a $2K EF and am making large payments to get rid of that debt.

It's not going to be a magical overnight process, just like losing weight isn't a magical overnight process. One has to work at it to succeed.

It's all about choices. I choose to get rid of cable TV, I choose to cook dinner at night instead of ordering out, I choose to keep the heat at 65 in the winter, when I really want it to be 70, but could survive if it was at 62.

It may sound a little cheesy, but my turning point was finding this website! I read about the grocery challenge and thought about how stupid I was being walking into the grocery store whenever I ran out of food and just buying whatever looked good that day with no real idea of what I'd actually make with it! Plus of course the fact that I was doing my grocery shopping at Wal Mart and probably buying $20-50 worth of extras each time! Junk I didn't need, but felt I needed at the time!

Then on this site I read SO MANY great reviews of Dave Ramsey's books! I checked my library, but it was out so I bought the book "The Total Money Makeover" on amazon.com for $11 and read it in 2 days! His book has motivated me to watch the rest of my spending and to pay off my debt ASAP! Technically we were probably living paycheck to paycheck before all of this, but it's hard to gage since I was paying huge chunks to the credit cards, but we were also racking it up each month too! We didn't go crazy, but we didn't watch it too close either!

Since then I've been staying home more - eating out almost never - and just overall I see an end in site! I have a plan and I'm sticking too it!

__________________
Stay at home mom to my 3 boys... ages 5, 3 & 1!

I can do all things through CHRIST who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13