Me: no dollars and no sense

So, here is the beginning of a new blog. This is a blog about my financial life. I don't love the idea of having two blogs, but I don't want to bore the readers of Tender Arts! They have been trained over the last three years to expect dollies and crafts and happier life moments. My financial state could scare them away for good!

I intend to be completely open about our state of affairs in the hope that seeing my situation in black and white will help me to stay on course with my budgeting efforts. I do find this embarrassing though, so we will see if my pride will let me "get naked" in public! Why attempt this? Why not write in a journal or keep a private file on my computer? Because I think there is strength in numbers. I have stumbled onto this site and I like what all these other bloggers are doing- sharing their struggles and triumphs as a means to teach and encourage themselves and their readers.

I work in a land surveyor's office and during the housing boom that is now sadly over, I saw a lot of people come and go that were splitting their lots in order to make a wad of cash. Like every endeavor, there are frugal ways to do it and extravagant ways to do it. I developed a catch phrase in our office when describing the foolish people that went about their split in the most expensive ways possible-I like to say that they have "more dollars than sense".

Well, I guess my husband and I must be that way too because even though we've had an amply adequate income, we now find ourselves maxed out on credit card debt, upside down on our mortgage and struggling to make our minimum payments. So, my goals with this blog are to

1. learn effective ways to manage our money,
2. share what I am learning,
3. record my efforts to pay off our debts and build our savings.