Whence and whither

It's harder for me to write about saving money during the winter because that's when I don't actually spend money.  (Well, not much).  Summer gardening, canning, yard-saling is over, and I'm back to doing math and pulling food out of the freezer.  It's hunker-down season for me.

So it seems like a good time to remind myself why I live this way.  The whole frugal thing is about where I've come from and where I hope to go.  It all started . . .

Well, Stage One for this story was taking on a lot of debt and also commitment to large financial obligations.  That story's been told.  That led to scariness that led to adopting an ultra-frugal lifestyle, which I discovered I enjoyed.  In fact, I got cocky (kooky?) enough about frugal living that, just as we were getting close to closing out the old debt and obligations, I opted for a huge home renovation -- meaning new debt.

That brings us to about now, heading into the future.  Goal number one is to be generous with local and global charities.  Feed people and bring beauty into the world.

My husband and I seem to have accumulated a passel of children as we've gotten older.  Goal number two is to make sure that none of the new kids who make it into our home are born in a year starting with the number "2".  Old kids only, please.  We want them all to grow up and move out before we're doddering idiots.

All the kids currently living at home came cheap -- locally grown, you might say.  K-daughter just sort of moved in with us last May, and I've decided she needed someone to claim her, so I did.  We adopted the boys through the Statewide Adoption Network, through the foster-to-adopt program.  Private agencies are pricey; not so ours.  Taking on more kids to fill up the empty rooms in the hou$e ought to be cheapish . . .

. . . unless a friend from church meets a kid while she's in Haiti and says she wants us to adopt him.  Which she did. And we thought about the money an international adoption would run us, and what that means in terms of how long it will take to pay that off.  And we decided, let's see.  So in one week we're off to Haiti to meet this kid.

The third goal, really, is to do our best to do right by a bunch of kids who need parents crazy enough to adopt and rear a bunch of wild boys.  We figure the home can hold four boys, so we're keeping feelers out for maybe two more.

But also, I really want to get my husband to the point where he's financially independent.  Because his job is far away, and mostly he loves it, but sometimes he doesn't, and once a month when the hormones kick in, he worries he'll be fired tomorrow.  I'd love to have him be a kept man, is I guess what I'm saying.  That's goal four.

It's my home renovation that ties my guy to his job for an extra two years.  And adopting this kid from Haiti will mean three more months on top of that, if it even works out.  So paying off the debts current and future comes before financial independence; that's goal 3-and-a-half, perhaps.  And those are the things that I think of as I pull the bulk-purchased turkey kielbasa from the freezer, and open up the home-canned peaches, and wear the clothes I bought 6 years ago and that still look just fine, thank you.  And don't forget to turn off the lights when you leave the room.