The Family Financial Freedom Pledge

Here's the pledge we took:

The Family Financial Freedom Pledge

We, the _______ Family, hereby recognize that we may be slipping in to some deep “you know what” and we, being responsible people, realize that we need to make some changes to the way we live to keep that from happening.

From this day forward, we agree that we want to live within our means and get out of debt.

In order to achieve this long term goal, we agree to the following changes:

We will use a tight budget and stick to it
We will not beg, whine, argue, etc., to try and cheat the budget
We will set aside money in the budget to reward ourselves
We will not use Credit Cards or Revolving Credit accounts – we will buy only what we can afford
Any windfalls will be applied to our Credit Card and Revolving Debt accounts
We understand that going out to eat is a privilege, not a right
We will take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually
We will respect each other and ourselves
We will all be willing to sacrifice
We will all look for ways to add revenue (money in to the family) and for ways to cut expenses (money that we spend)
Mom and Dad will review our finances once per week (that’s only 52 times a year)
Dad will pay the bills once per week

This pledge we take on __________, 20__.

Moving Toward a Family Commitment

A couple of days ago I sat down at my computer and thought pretty hard about why we can never seem to get on top of our finances. One of the things I determined is that, it's "we", not "me". And I never seem to include the "we" in my attempts.

I decided that using the bank check card is actually killing us as we have no idea how much we are spending on what. We don't make enough money to go out to eat for every meal, or to buy whatever we want at Wal-mart or Target; but with the check card, our frivolous purchases keep undermining everything.

So with that, I created a pledge. A real document with family financial goals and lifestyle changes that we will need to make in order to reach those goals. My wife, my two kids, and I sat around the table, read them over, agreed to them, and singed!

Afterward, I collected all of the bank check cards and remaining credit cards.

Falling Off the Wagon...and Getting Back On

Well folks, it's been quite a few months since I've posted here and needless to say, I've managed to fall off the wagon. We started our own business but we are still using our credit cards and adding to the mountain rather than chipping away.

Here we are on December 31st, looking at a highly uncertain economic year in 2009, and we have finally decided to take up this cause again.

Time to reform the troops and take down our debt once and for all!