The Goal

With all of this couponing, saving, and sales shopping what is the goal? Is it to get more stuff? Is it a competition? Is it all for fun? Well for me, I wanted to challenge myself to be a better steward of what we have been entrusted with.

Have I succeeded so far?

Well, with this week's groceries I saved 42% and spent $84. Now that's great, but of course that's not the only money I spent on food. Inevitably, I tend to find myself at a drive-thru once a week with the kids. Not a bad thing entirely, but at the end of the month I'm always surprised at how much money we spend on fast food.

While we are trying to be more consciencious with what we spend Simon and I have stepped out and have committed a certain amount of money over our tithe to help support missionaries we had the pleasure of meeting at our church's recent Missions Conference.

We call it our Faith Promise and it can be described as this: An amount not yet seen or accounted for. It is excess money that (1) you must trust God to give you, if it pleases Him, and (2) that you promise God to give back to Him as he provides.

Now this isn't a way to pat ourselves on the back or to "do good so we will be blessed back". It is much more of an awareness of how incredibly blessed we are and the privilege it is to be able to serve others.

So, in our case we are keeping track of every dollar that comes in that does not come from Simon's salary and will be giving this money to help support our missionaries. While we have only made this committment in the past two weeks, it is so exciting to see how unexpected money has come our way. 

So far, I have consigned some things at a children's consignment sale, received money from my Amazon associates account (for the very first time even though I've had the account for more than a year!) and am teaching a sign language class to child care providers tomorrow.

I am keeping a running tally of it all and I'll be sure to report back!