The Act of Frugality

I'm back! I know, I am so utterly inconsistent with my blogging that it is almost pointless to even have a blog. But, the truth is that it makes me feel good to occasionally sit down and blog. So, here I am!

I am officially learning the act of frugality. Jack and I met with Candace Bloomley at her Nine12 Ministry workshop a few weeks ago. We are beginning to put together a budget that allows us to spend wisely and give generously. We made it through our first year of marriage with little to no financial disagreements, but figured it would be wise to learn how to honor God in our finances. When we met with Candace, we walked in thinking it was going to be a sad, depressing meeting where we inevitably would learn that we didn't have enough money for the things that we wanted. We knew we had enough to be able to provide for the things that are necessities in life. When we left the meeting it was super encouraging. She is straight up a blessing from the Father above. She encouraged us that we were in the best possible place we could be. We have our kinks to work out, but her point was that we're in the beginning of our marriage and we don't have kids yet. She was so excited for us to begin our road to spending wisely and giving generously. We left there encouraged and pumped to create our budget.

We are still figuring out the specifics, but one of the things that I feel God strongly convicting me of is the amount of pointless shopping that I do. Well, I'd beg to differ that it is "pointless" because I feel like I have a pretty good way of justifying almost every purchase I make whether that's at JCrew or Target. But, that's not the point. I have PLENTY of clothes. In fact, I am learning that I have more clothes than I actually know what to do with. I don't have an insane amount, but I am learning to mix and match things and that I really only need a small amount of necessities to create lots of fabulous outfits.

I feel that God is challenging me to stop, breathe, and remember that simplicity and frugality are two things in life that I want to strive for deep down in my heart. I know that when we give up all of our earthly possessions to him He blesses us in unexpected ways that we could never dream up in a million years. So, feeling this conviction I feel like God is challenging me to not buy clothes until December. It will be about 4 months of discipline that will challenge me... mainly because there are some extremely cute clothes out there. And Lord knows that I like to look cute. I want to give it up and learn to give generously instead of spending my money on numerous outfits that I wear 20 % of the time.

I am starting the cash system in a few weeks. I ordered this super cute cash fabric envelopes that will last me for a long time. I figured that if I wanted to start the cash spending system I might as well put the money in something that made me want to keep it in there because of how cute it looks.

Thanks for reading this time of mindless blogging. It feels good to get my convictions and challenges out there. God is going to do great things through me during this time.