The Enhancement

My debt reduction marathon is enhancing my family's quality of life. Let me explain. In July when I made a budget for the first time for Chuck and reviewed his June expenditures, we were both shocked to see that he had spent over $200 in restaurants. And the majority of that was fast food. That's a whole lot of junk food! Normally when I would get home from work in the evenings Chuck would get ready for work and leave right away. His logic was that the earlier he got there, the earlier he got back home, even though most nights the kids and I are fast asleep by that time. What often happened is I would make dinner for myself and the kids and Chuck would go grab some fast food at some point in his evening. Last month Chuck only spent $130 on restaurants and some of that was food while we were traveling. We took two long weekend trips last month. I'm so happy Chuck has cut back on the fast food. It's just not healthy for him! The other thing our new debt reduction priorities has given us is family meal time. A few weeks ago I started meal planning in an effort to bring down our grocery bill. I succeeded in my primary goal, bringing our every other week grocery spending down from ~$165 to ~$130. That's $70/month we'll be saving! There was a secondary benefit to this change for us though. We now make dinner, whatever is on the calendar for that day, and sit down and eat it together before Chuck leaves for work. Family dinners! We actually ask each other how our days went. We talk with Anya about her day. We laugh at Jamison figuring out finger foods with his chubby little baby hands. And it's a wonderful time to just be together before we split up for the evening again. I'm so glad I got my wake up call in June and started down this debt elimination path. And I know my family is reaping the benefits from it too, in more ways than we expected.