we did it!

This is it. Our final blog post for this season of Project Money! In a lot of ways, it feels like we just started, but we know we have come a long way. We went back to our original application and questionnaire that comes when you are being considered as participants, and we reread our answers and thoughts that we shared at that time. The fact that we are in a contest and we were working to save more money and pay down debt has been with us since the contest began, but it was good to revisit some of our original thoughts and goals before we even started down this new path.

One of our initial comments or thoughts was, “We are doing okay, but we feel like we can be doing better.” That was both true and an understatement! We were doing okay, but we have learned so much about savings strategies and plans to pay down debt and we are definitely doing all of that A LOT better than when we started. Our impulse buys on Amazon and trips to Target have been drastically reduced, and we have really learned to make do and value what we have in most circumstances. We look for other ways, such as borrowing an item from a friend or buying second hand. We are also a lot better about sticking to our savings goals and using multiple accounts to track goals and reach the milestones we need to so we can do the things we love.

We were more than a little anxious about the transparency of this process and turning our financial lives over to our coach and in some ways to one another. One of our biggest lessons from Project Money is the importance of talking about money. Maybe it’s generational or geographical or societal, but most people really are not comfortable talking about money. We, as a couple, had good communication when it came to our finances, but at the beginning, Dustin was running the show. Money just wasn’t Scott’s “thing.” Well, we are here to tell you, it is now. Almost everything we do comes up during our Money Monday meetings and whether it is savings or spending, we talk about the impact, goals, and timing – all of it. It has definitely made our relationship stronger with one another and money.

We will always be so grateful for this experience, and there is so much that we have learned it’s impossible to share it all in a short blog post. Whether we win or not, the strategies, lessons and tools we have learned from this experience are now a part of how we manage our personal finances. Our coach, Nic, as well as everyone else on the Summit team, have been so awesome and supportive of everything we have done on this journey, we really do feel like they are part of our team, and we thank them for that. We hope what we have shared has helped some of you following along tackle a money question or develop a new strategy for spending and saving. At the very least, we hope this has sparked a conversation for you. Maybe with yourself, your family or a member of Summit Credit Union, and you realize too, it is your money, and you can own it. We did.