Riches to Rags

By Brandy Ferner
Web Exclusive - January 30, 2009

It's amazing how life can turn on a dime. One week I was rolling my eyes at all the coupon clipping my husband's great-grandma does, and the next, I was begging her to keep an eye out for deals on Newman's Own pasta sauce. My journey from riches to rags was really that quick—or at least my realization of it was.

As with many mamas, before my active and wonderful two-year-old son was born, I helped bring home the bacon. You may have heard the acronym for it: DINK, dual income, no kids. Looking back, that was the good life, and we didn't even know it. It was time to work hard and stow away the rewards of our labor?or travel to Japan, go to massage school, and occasionally remember to look at price tags. Part of me is furious with myself (and with my husband, too, for he was my partner in crime) for spending frivolously, but the other part of me knows that the places we explored and the things we learned in those years have made us who we are today. I don't know that I would've been able to give birth at home had I not been first introduced to the idea of the mind-body connection through those pricey massage classes.

My choice to be a stay-at-home mom gives me immense pride. But it does not give me immense piles of money with which to buy every little item that might seem like a necessity at the time. Wipes warmer anyone? Even though our household income had been cut in half, we were used to living a certain way. We did not take charge of our finances—we had other things to attend to. After a long day of nursing, laundry, playing, and cleaning (okay, I'm lying about the cleaning), we didn't want to look our checkbook in the face and accept that we probably couldn't afford to order in.

To make matters worse, my husband works freelance, and his monthly income is never guaranteed. He doesn't get benefits like health care and a 401K. As with most people working freelance, he lives by feast or famine. Now add to this mix the current economic climate. For us, these circumstances led to some pretty serious credit card debt. I cannot blame the economy for most of this. In fact, you could say that the economy is what finally brought the situation to our attention.

My husband nearly had a as we discussed the severity of our situation. After I calmed him down while simultaneously reading my son his bedtime story—"Clickety clack, clickety clack? it's going to be okay, we'll get through this even if we have to sell our condo? clickety clack...", we vowed to do whatever it took to get out of debt and start living credit card-free. After much hemming and hawing, we knew the only way to do it was to—gulp—change our lifestyle: eat cheaper foods, possibly sell one of our cars, use our cell phones less, buy and eat responsibly and sleep without the air-conditioning on.

What happened next shocked me. As I looked into how we could save money—big money—I realized I was actually enjoying myself. I was not in tears; I was calling my mom and celebrating every time I found a new way to lower our expenses. Not only did it feel like a scavenger hunt of sorts, but banishing those credit cards from my wallet was the most freeing feeling in the world. Sure, we hadn't technically paid any debt down yet, but we were on the right track, clickety clack!