With the economy circling the drain these days, everyone has had to find ways to cut back, to scrimp pennies and reduce the amount of credit they use.  Which makes Kile and I think, “Wow, we’re finally ahead of the crowd on something!”

We haven’t used credit for much of, well, anything besides our home and vehicles since before we were married.  I was one of those kids who got sucked in by the credit card companies my first semester away at college and then I racked up a huge (at least, it was huge for me back then) debt that I couldn’t pay.  My parents found out, paid it off and then I had to pay them off (which SUCKED because not only did I not have the opportunity to rebuild my credit, but I got about $35 a week off a $300+ paycheck during my summer vacations).  So my credit sorta sucked to begin with.  As did Kile’s.  So we learned then not to rely on credit.

Basically?  If we don’t have the money in our checking account, we don’t buy it.

It’s been hard, especially when we see so many other people over the years who have thrown caution to the wind and purchased whatever and whenever they pleased.  There’ve been a lot of things we’ve wanted that we’ve had to put off or plain not get altogether.  And when we see the Smith’s down the street be able to get big screen TV’s, new vehicles, fancy electronics, etc and so forth, it has caused us to feel a little jealous.  Not enough that we wanted to put those purchase on credit though.  That’s the key.

It sorta sucks when it comes to things like needing to replace a mattress (ahem) or fix a fence or something, but we have always made it work.  We do a LOT of window shopping.  We’ll go out on the weekend and go to a lot of different stores, but it’s mostly just to browse and get out of the house.  We rarely buy things outside of groceries or gas.  We don’t even eat out very much anymore (however, hot dogs at Sam’s Club are fabulous for a cheap, quick lunch at $1.50 for a hot dog and ginormous soda!).

The upshot here is that now when things are looking so grim, we don’t really have to change our budget because we’ve been trying to save money all along.  PLUS, we just paid off our van so we don’t have a car payment anymore.  That’s a good chunk of change each month.

I don’t want to make it sound like I think we’ve got all the right answers.  Believe me, we don’t.  But on the other hand it’s comforting to no longer be the lone pennypinchers in a sea of spendthrifts.