Lisa Hood

My most recent goal is to write 5 articles a day: one each for LH, PF or HUB, WP or SQ, Icebarrel & Fictionway. So far I’ve managed just 1 article a day. It’s better than nothing, which is what I’ve accomplished the last few months. A’s business was such a booming success, it became my focus. Now it appears we’ll be going out of business thanks to the FDA. I wish it had lasted longer because we certainly needed the income and A certainly needed the boost to his confidence.

Money has always been a touchy subject in our household, even when we have enough. I guess it’s because we know how quickly it can be gone and we’re both afraid of being broke. Though I have to admit, some of my most valuable life lessons occurred because we were broke. They were lessons learned the hard way, but they’ve stuck with me all these years.

Don’t borrow to spend more than you can afford and know exactly how much you spend and how much you can afford.

It seems simple enough now, but at the time A & me were learning these particular lessons, they were completely foreign to us. We had massive credit card debt, two new cars in the driveway, two homes and three mortgages. Then A lost his job and we had a pile of unpaid bills, threatening letters and foreclosure notices. We started small, figuring out exactly how much we needed each month for the necessities: rent, utilities, food and gas. Everything else was considered a luxury, including: clothing, eating out, vacations and entertainment. When the kids needed new clothes, I shopped at Goodwill or Savers. I’m not embarrassed by that, because you do what you have to do.

Eventually I took out a hardship loan on my 401K to pay most urgent bills; we sold both our new cars, lost our real estate in NM and tried our best to start over. There’s no such thing as a clean start though, because those bad debts followed us for years. And those hard times haunt our memories.

We’re both afraid of what the future holds, but I do know that we will make it through together. We’ve faced hard times before and they passed. At least we know more today then we did before. We’re not in debt, we only spend what we can afford and we know just what we spend and what we can afford. Sometimes we have to make do with less, but that’s a small sacrifice. Come to think of it, maybe it’s no sacrifice at all.