What We've Been Up To (or, Why We're Social Hermits These Days)

We’ve been terrible at socializing over the last couple of months. We missed parties, we don’t call or e-mail and we even skipped our normal New Year’s Eve gala this year. You can probably guess some of the more obvious reasons why we’ve been holed up in our house or otherwise unavailable: the trip to Italy, surgery, recovering from surgery, etc.

We’re both also terribly busy at our respective jobs. Shauna’s been in the middle of a year-end payroll conversion that’s drained her of every last waking minute, leaving no time to even touch the myriad tax issues that filter into the office. I’ve been dealing with literally a dozen clients that wanted to be on live usage of their software for the new year, not all of whom were fully prepared. In addition to long days and some working from home on Saturdays, the work is stressful and mentally demanding. We’ve even had a hard time getting motivated to cook dinner each night, something that’s usually a given for us. (We’re not the type to eat out several meals a week.) We get home and have barely enough energy to putter in front of the computer or the boob tube until it’s time for bed.

The good news is that there is some silver lining to this thunderhead. Remember the shiny new budget we came up with back in May? By following it, we’ve been able to eliminate over $10,000 in debt instead of watching it hold fast. We’re now projecting that we will be rid of all non-mortgage debt by November. Of this year. In that time, we’ve still managed to buy a new fridge (it’s the uber-sexy bottom freezer, french door model from GE) and take a vacation to Italy. The New Year’s Eve party this year will be off the hook, we are even thinking on visiting isla mujeres this year, but we will see if it happens.

With that light at the end of the tunnel, we took a moment to re-evaluate something we thought would be insanely difficult for us to pull off: being able to rely on a single income. After some evaluation of creature comforts we could cut and figuring a modest increase in my wage, it would be entirely attainable by as early as this time next year. Since we bought our house, I’ve fretted about being able to drop one of our incomes. After all, a mortgage is a sizable responsibility and we were cutting it pretty close on being able to afford it at the time. It seems, though, that listening to inspired counsel to eliminate debt and always continue learning is going to get us where we need to be. (There’s your token spiritual thought for the sabbath; don’t wear it out, you don’t want to be on first name basis with the most popular companies for repair your credit, do you?)

Even though we’re both really tired all the time, we’re both really excited for where we see our future heading. It looks like hard work sometimes pays off.