Money

I follow a few blogs written by women who have children or are pregnant and one common theme is money. I know I'm not breaking any ground here, money is important to survival. Bill and I had a discussion last night about our finances and I'm concerned. I work as a teacher in a small urban school district and I absolutely love my job. Bill is a delivery driver for a local dairy company. We both make a decent living and own a home together. We each have car loans and I have student loans. That's really the extent of our debt and I'm really proud of that. However, we don't have much in the way of a savings.

We were doing really well saving money until our wedding in October which completely wiped us of our savings. Right after our wedding, we began Christmas shopping. We ended up going in on big gifts with our siblings for our parents which we were fine with. We bought a TV for my dad and a TV for Bill's dad. We got some other generous gifts for our mothers and for Bill's step-dad. All told, we fronted about $1000 for the gifts with the agreement that the sibs would pay us back. Almost 2 months later and we're still waiting for Bill's siblings to pay up. The thing that frustrates me to no end is the fact that Bill doesn't think we should ask them for it! His sister is perpetually broke and I understand that but come on! She agreed to the price before we bought anything. Bill's brother and his girlfriend did purchase a large gift that we agreed on so they are probably waiting for us to tell them the balance but Bill doesn't want to go there. He hates asking people for money but this is our money that they owe us!

The reason I'm so stressed about it is because my job is not safe. My school district is in a huge budget crisis and I may end up being laid off. I would really like to put aside a bunch of money to fall back on if that is the case but it's hard to when we're still trying to recover from wedding and Christmas expenses. Ugh.

Money sucks.