Digging out & Climbing up

I've told you guys about our struggle with finances and making ends meet while continuing to fund the business. Well, the truth is, the struggle has been a lot harder than I've admitted to.

In the last year, we've fallen way behind on rent. We've managed to keep ourselves from getting evicted but honestly, I'm not really sure how, besides having a really awesome property manager who has taken (and dodged) many bullets for us.

We were struggling to keep up with bills, usually paying them right before things got shut off or soon after. We went two months without gas; no hot water, no heat, no stove. We made do. We asked for help when things got really bad, for the boys' speech therapy, and we did get a little bit here & there but for the most part, we've been on our own. Which is fine; we made this mess so we get to deal with it.

This is why Jay has been working so hard, so often, and that is the only reason we've been able to stay afloat: Jay. The work he has managed to pick up in the last four months has literally saved us. We started paying rent again, plus a few hundred extra, but we still owed more than a few months' back-rent. We got the gas back on. We've managed to keep our phones on, our cars insured & gassed up; we've kept the business supplied and we've caught up with bills, one by one.

We've ignored our impending-pauper status for birthdays and Christmas, yes; maybe not the smartest thing ever but it helped keep us sane. Just recently, we bought a new Xbox 360, which is definitely not necessity but I say it was a justifiable purchase for under $50. One of those sanity-keepers, you see.

After all this time, stress, worry and fear, I can't even begin to explain how amazingly glorious it feels to be able to say --

WE ARE ALL CAUGHT UP. 

Thanks to our tax refund, we paid every penny of back-rent. Every. Single. Penny. We are CURRENT for the first time in I-can't-remember-how-long and we will be able to pay rent for March, ON TIME & IN FULL. I know Jay got a rush from handing our on-site manager a check for over $4200 and I know she was happy to give it to our PM.

I know our PM, Scott, was happy to get that check because he came by Friday morning to tell me so. He even asked for a hug and told me, we are now called "Mr. & Mrs. 42". He told me how much he appreciated it and that he knows how badly Jay needs a new truck. I told him that was a mistake we just couldn't make. We paid in full as much to get it paid off as we did to say 'Thank you' to him for dealing with us and not kicking us out.

We had money left over and paid more bills and rolled the rest over for next month. It feels so good to have bills paid and still have money in the bank. It feels like we are finally making it. Jay has six days this week booked up, with three rentals on top of his regular clients and he only has two open days left in February (excluding weekends). Our anniversary is at the end of the month too and while it's tempting to plan something "exotic" like a night away from the kids, in *gasp* a hotel, we won't. Maybe we'll get the night away from the kids but we'll stay home instead of going out, if we do. Much better to sit on the money we have than to rush out and send it.

Plus, there are still many things we have put off buying because we just didn't have the money; things like clothes and a doorknob for our bedroom. New sheets, picture frames and glasses; all those little household items you need but forget you need or put off getting because they aren't really necessary. CONTACTS, which I desperately need & are very necessary. Not to mention, car registration and all that noise.

Now we can finally get to some of that stuff. Who knows? Maybe we'll even be able to start saving for a wedding or, I don't know, our first home. You know, real grown-up stuff. For right now, I just want to bask in the awesomeness of being caught up, paid up and in the black. After an arduous, rocky, pitfall-filled climb, we've finally managed to get on top of our finances and I want to stay here for a long, long time.

Like, forever...

I am my blog.

Most of my posts on here relate to parenting or my personal struggles as a stay-at-home mom. I try to keep things light for the most part & really only delve into the heavier stuff when I feel I have to. I'm going to stop this. I need to be as real on here as I am in real life (that is the point, anyways) and I'm very honest about what happens in my life to the people in my life. If you read this, technically, you are a person in my life & you deserve the same honesty as everyone else.

This inability to really be honest is the main reason I haven't been blogging lately; I didn't really want to share all the turmoil and drama I was going through. I realize though, my blog is really a release for me. Yes, people read it. Yes, some of them are total strangers but it's still for me. No one else. I don't blog because people read what I write; people read what I write because I blogged it. They know that what they are reading is truth, it's my feelings, my experiences, my fears and goals.

One of the things I've avoided blogging about is our money trouble. When people hear you own a business, they assume you are rich from said business. WRONG. You actually need money to start a business; it is very expensive and often, you find yourself supporting your household AND your business on the profits from your business (like we are). If that's the case, things that run the household soon take a backseat to things that run the business because if there's no business, there's no house. Instead of paying utilities or rent, you have to buy supplies & gas to get to work to make the money to pay the utilities and rent.

Since the business is doing well & we're three-quarters of the way through our First Year, we feel confident the money coming in will keep coming in. It's just not enough to support us. What do we do? I like to think we're doing the smart thing; we're downgrading. Honestly, we don't need the third bedroom or the family room & paying $1200 a month in rent just isn't possible but with two little kids, an apartment seems more like jail cell to me. So I got brave. And responsible I guess. I called our property management and told them we need out, was there any way they had a place we could get into or could we get rent here lowered...surprise, surprise -- they have two-story townhouses not too far from where we are now.

Now, I started this post on the premise that I'm letting all the walls down; no prettying things up for you. If we didn't need to do this, I would never, ever move into a place like this. We drove by last night, after looking at the pictures and getting (uselessly) hopeful. The screams of unsupervised, ragged children hoodrats greeted us and my little bubble of hope burst. What did I expect? I don't know. The pictures looked so nice...but for $350 less a month, we get two bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, two 'balconies', a small fenced patio and covered parking. The goal is to stay here a year, fix our credit & pay off our debts, save some money (lots of money) and move out; hopefully, we'll be able to buy a house when the year's over -- hopefully.

I'm still waiting to get approval from management; I'm hopeful because frankly, I have to be; if we had other options, this would be a wholly different post (if a post at all). I'll be sure to update when we do find out, in the mean time send us all the good energy you can. We need it!