The newest Frugal News

Okay, so Kurt and I are really going at this spending less/saving and giving more thing. We did something that I wouldn't have DREAMED we would have done a month, or even two weeks ago.

We sold our Honda and paid it off. As of right now, we are a one car family! AAAAAaaaahhh! As we were trying to decide if that was the right thing for us and how would that work, etc... we got to talking about how warped our American mentality is. Our conversation turned to "Good Lord, what would Saidi and his family say about this..."

Let me give you a little background...

For the past six years, we have sponsored (which means we give money to) a young boy and his family in Malawi, Africa. We write letters and send small gifts, and he writes back to us. He likes to draw us pictures. We get his report cards from school and the program (World Vision) sends us information about his parents and his sister. In the letters, we aren't supposed to talk about any of our material things because most of the families there have NOTHING.

Here we were at Carmax making a *serious* decision about whether we could SURVIVE with ONLY ONE CAR. There are millions of people in the world, including Saidi's family before we sponsored them, with not enough to eat, without clean water, with disease and illnesses with no money for medicines... and Kurt and I were deliberating about having ONLY ONE CAR. Perish the thought. We felt rather humbled as we came to that part of our discussion and realized that having one car is just what we may need for this very moment, even if it lasted for 3 days, it was enough to bring us out of our crazy "we need more to survive" mentality. Living in this country of plenty, we become so warped as to "what we need".

We eventually do plan to buy another car when we find a good deal, but we want to take the money from the sale of the Honda and buy a small, used car in full. Hence, no car payment...

And that brings our current monthly savings to...

Drumroll please...

$896.00/month!

Incredible.

By the way, if anyone is looking for an enriching way to reach out and truly help someone in need, you can sponsor a child through World Vision. Just check out their website. It is amazing to see a child grow and know you are feeding, clothing, and helping their family to survive for the same amount of money that we can blow here with one meal out at Red Robin!