Alterations

I made some changes to my page today. First, it seems my old template was the most popular one out there, so can't have that now, can we? Second, my title was rather blah, and can't have that either.

One of my favorite bloggers is Linda on All & Sundry, she absolutely never fails to crack me up. And today she ranted about her husband who tends to disappear & leave her with their two kids and a crap-ton of housework to do. But the real eye-opener for me was scrolling through the comments... apparently this is not an uncommon practice. Since I don't have kids yet (notice I did say yet... I have consented to consider the option of children once we are out of debt... more on that in a minute) I really didn't realize that it was normal for guys to be, well, flat-out lazy. But at the same time, I'm still in that "oh it won't be like that for us" mindset due to the fact that the whole kid thing is B's idea entirely and if it were up to me I'd be a crazy cat-lady.

But I will admit that every now and then I think it might not be so bad, especially when I see this. Friggin cute.

I have laid down two stipulations on it though. One, we have to be financially stable, and two, B has to be done with school and have a real job so I can drop to part-time or work from home or something. Both are in the works... B should be done with his undergrad in 2-3 years tops, and we're starting a Total Money Makeover this weekend. Dave Ramsey is awesome! His writing is engaging and funny, and he doesn't make the process so intellectually challenging that it feels like a chore. We're already through "Baby Step 1" which is establishing an emergency fund, and we're going to write out a budget (gasp!) for September and start "Baby Step 2" of snowballing our debt payoffs in the next couple of weeks. I've even created Excel spreadsheets that we can fill in & print out to track our progress. The whole philosophy behind the program is "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else," which basically means that we need to cut back on our frivolous lifestyles now so we can do whatever we want a little further down the road. The concept is to pay cash for everything and not use credit or loans for anything at all (although he does make an exception when buying a home). We're also having to make an exception for B's school... we had to take out a loan to cover the money the school is demanding before the GI Bill pays out. (Which is a rant for a separate post.) So I'm feeling very optimistic about it, and I'm looking forward to cutting ties with the credit card companies!