kids, house!! Those are the things that hold us back!! DH has money taken from his check for his retirement but since I dont work none is for me!! I dont make any money so its hard for me to save anything!!

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Kelly mom to 3 great girls

#1. Credit card debt.
#2. I'm a SAHM. If I worked, we could save. However it is our opinon (DH and I) that
our qualty of life would lessen with both of us working (outside the home).
#3. The rising cost of gas and food.
#4. Unnecessary expenses -- cell phones, Netflix, and Internet. In the big picture, these
are unnecessary, but they help my mental health!

Marlene

Among other things, paychecks not increasing to match the rising costs of everything - including necessities.....

Every shopping trip I come back with less and less or lower and lower quality items because the prices on groceries alone here are so high!

Suprise medical bills (we have crappy insurance that doesn't cover anything), too much debt, and a massive car payment. What we are saving is my dh's recent raise. We are continuoing to live on his previous salary and put the extra money directly into savings each week. It does have to be dipped into sometimes though, but we're at least saving something. I no longer take care of one child so that extra money that I really counted on is no longer coming in.

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this is me to, but replace cell phones with cable tv and crafts But I don't think they are unnecessary expenses. We havbe a special needs child, and without these few "luxurys" me and dh would both lose our minds. so they fall under our mental healthcare expenses

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stay at home mom to my crazy toddler with sensory issues

Our expenses exceed our income! We try to save and then something happens with the car or kids and it is needed elsewhere! We are taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace classes and hope to be debt free by 2009!

For us, it's been unexpected medical costs (I had two trips to the emergency room and surgery, son broke his collar bone playing football all in a six month timeframe).

We're putting money away for savings, but it's not nearly as much as we should be putting away.

For us, it's also been medical related expenses. We have decent health insurance, but my husband has been having to seek medical treatment a few times since July. The hospital/ambulance copays are placing us in a bind. Some car repairs depleted our emergency fund earlier, and we didn't have enough time to recover before this hit.

I lost my job.

COL in a nutshell we bought the least expencive home we could, try to be as frugal as we can and still our budget does not have wiggle room for the 15% savings.

Last Year we saved 3%, this year 6% come January we are making it 9% with the 15% savings goal to be reached by the time we are 30.

It works because DH gets an anual raise in October so we have a few months of extra income to go toward the holidays and then after word we up our 401k

yes we do have a bit of CC debt which we are working to pay off this next year.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma