Well, the deadline has come and gone and many of us let out one big sigh of relief when we learned that we would indeed receive our full pay April 15. And in case you missed it, here was the DoD’s official word on that -

All military and reservists will receive full pay on April 15 for duty served. There will be more than one deposit into your account, but again, all payments will be deposited on April 15. Check with your bank to confirm the amount deposited into your account on the 15th. (http://www.dfas.mil/)

In the first part of this post, I talked about the importance of remembering where our true faith and reliance needs to be, particularly when we’re hit with a crisis (and judging from the FB and blogs and Twitter responses last week, this was a crisis.) Today, though, I want to talk about what we can learn when we’re hit with a crisis. Because the chance of this happening again is possible. Our government still has not reached agreement on a budget yet. Our country’s economy continues to suffer. Just this morning I saw our copy of this past week’s Navy Times announcing the Navy will cut 9,000 sailors over the next 5 years. The Air Force has already started a Reduction in Force and more cuts are on the way.  Deployments, often seen as extra money, are being cut.

Of course, it does no good when your well suddenly goes dry for someone to say, “Well, you should have shoveled and created another well so you’d have a backup if and when something like this happened.” Because that doesn’t help the current state of your empty well at the moment! But that’s what many well-meaning folks were saying last week when so many military spouses were panicking at the thought of missing one pay check. Some had savings – many did not. And even those with savings in the bank probably had plans for that money which didn’t necessarily include covering just basic necessities, not when it’s assumed a paycheck will cover that.

So asking “What could I have done differently?” and “What should I have done?” doesn’t really work when you’re in the middle of the crisis. But after the crisis has passed is a perfect time to take a good, hard look at what happened and what we can learn from it for the future.

My husband and I had to do this after he was laid off from his civilian job six months after his first deployment as a Navy Reservist. We started out asking questions, like – “Do we really need digital cable? Or can we make do with (oh, the horror!) Basic?” “Can we stretch our food budget by eating out less and cooking a whole lot more?” “Can we be willing to eat the simple stuff, like soup and sandwiches instead of steak?” “Can we give up certain brands and go with the cheaper store brand version?”

Then we moved to the harder questions like, “Can we survive on one car?”, “What can we do to bring in more money?” and “Can we sell the house and move into a smaller and cheaper rental?”

What we found by doing this self-examination of what we were spending and what we weren’t saving was that there were a lot of things we could do better. We could waste less. We could save more. But we needed a plan and the plan we came up with carried over when we did get back on more solid footing with income coming in. Here a few things we thought about and continue to think about. I hope maybe some of these ideas may help you as you look at your own financial situations.

1. We will not compare our situation to others. We’ve listened to Dave Ramsey for many years and we have prescribed to his thinking that we can “Live like no one else today so we can live like no one else tomorrow.” That means when we see friends and family and others around us coming home with the latest outfits, toys, gadgets or going off on the big vacations, we don’t worry about it. We have our own goals in mind. And we want to reach those goals, more than we care about competing with anyone else.

2. We will not be in debt to anyone else. We want to be free to make decisions for our money, not have someone else make decisions for us. For years early on in our marriage, we had credit card balances. Car notes. Student loans. Thankfully, before unemployment hit, we cut up the credit cards and paid those balances off. And no longer used them. Instead, we learned to use an emergency savings fund, keeping a minimum of $1,000 in there at all times. When an emergency happened, like a car breaking down, or unexpected expenses, we’d pull from that fund – and then refill it as quickly as we could. Just last year, we paid off our last student loan and became debt free. The new feeling of being able to tell our money what to do for us, instead of the other way around, was incredible. But just because we finally had no ongoing debt to pay off didn’t mean we went on a blow streak. We know there’s always the possibility we can once again find ourselves without income one day – and so we still place savings as a big priority for our family.

3. None of our cash will be nameless. Creating and staying on a budget has always been a challenge for us. We’ve tried and failed, tried and failed. But last year we had a wake up call. As we were trying to get a handle on where all our money was going, we sat down and I went through all of our receipts for groceries and eating out. I won’t tell you the amount of money I discovered we were spending in one month on food alone, but it was an absurd amount for just 3 of us and it was money that could have been used for so many other wonderful things – definitely not needed for my waistline! From that moment, we started developing a budget and naming what, and how much, we’d spend and save each month. The best budget tool we found that really helped us get on track was Joseph Sangl’s free tools he offers on his website. We’ve tried other budget helps in the past, but this was the one that got us on track.

4. We won’t give up. Some days it’s not easy, especially when we’re stretching our money as tight as it will go. With my husband deployed, knowing when he comes home there is no guaranteed income until when he finds a job, I’m saving as much as I can while still paying our rent and our bills each month. And being near family again doesn’t exactly make it easy. Family members like to eat. Go to movies. Go get nails and toes painted. So I have to pick and choose what we can do. Some weeks are harder than others. But we’re not giving up. And though I technically don’t have a full-time job right now with actual income, I know that what I do to help us save and to help us plan makes a difference for me, my husband and our family. And when we are able to one day move into our next house, I’ll have helped make that happen.

5. Ultimately, we trust God’s plan. James 4:13-15 says “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” We never know what tomorrow will bring. But God does not call us to squander away what we have. Or be irresponsible with it. Or waste it. And while I know for many of us, it doesn’t feel like we have much – compared to the other 98% of the world – we are millionaires.

I tell the military wives I talk with often about deployment that I believe we can always learn something from our experiences, whether deployment or something else. And this crisis that has come – and hopefully has gone – is something we can also learn from. Something we can learn about ourselves. Can we be more ready the next time something similar happens? What’s one thing you can start doing differently? Saving a little bit each month, whether that’s $10 or $100? Making changes in your eating habits or your entertainment choices?

God has been teaching me in the last year or so how much of an influence I, as a woman and a wife and mom, am. For good – or for bad. You as a wife have enormous influence. Let me encourage you to look for new ways to bring your family good from this. If there’s anything I can help you with, or pray with you about, please let me know. sara@wivesoffaith.org.

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