Our Financial Story Part 3

2016, though a dark year for the oilfield, was pretty positive for us in a number of ways. We were now 100% debt free having sold our house in California and were renting a house in Williston. We bought a new camping trailer in cash, a new to us F-150, and were getting settled into the pace of a smaller community. Shopping in Williston was a bit lacking and so Amazon Prime was everyone's best friend. That UPS truck made a ton of rounds in our neighbourhood!

It was about May of 2016 that it dawned upon us that we were having trouble with our money again. We were not going into debt, but our emergency fund had shrunk some from the move and never got built back up. It was becoming obvious that the pay restructure for Drilling Fluids Engineers in the company I worked for was a much larger hit than I was told it would be. All said and done, I had about a $40,000 reduction in pay in 2016 and I was never busier! We also came to a realization that Martha's income was not coming in anymore as now she was staying at home full time with Penny. So in reality, we just experienced about a $100,000/year reduction in income and had not adjusted our spending. This was a crisis.

We dug into everything. We had the reduction in income however did not reduce our spending habits. We had been so gung ho on getting rid of the debt that when we finally did, we got into reward mode. Mine was a trailer and truck and a new rifle. For Martha it was a steady stream of Amazon packages. This had to be fixed.

It was around this time that the Ramsey group came out with the EveryDollar budgeting app. Now, we had always done a zero based budget, but it was not always really exact. The app made us budget down to the single penny. It took us about 4 months to get it dialed in, but we did and we have used the app ever since.

I remember the first month we did the budget with the app, we completely underestimated our grocery category. I mean, it wasn't even close. In Central California, food is cheap. For Martha and I, we could eat well off of $300/month for groceries. In North Dakota, we discovered that it took about $500/month for us to eat the same way. Let's just say, that fall, I honed my pheasant and deer hunting skills!

We also forgot to account for fuel when we went on vacation to Alberta that summer. In fact, we really didn't budget our trip at all. So we ended up having to rob from various categories that month to ensure we had enough to cover our trip. It was a stressful time learning to live with a drastically lower income and to actually properly budget for the first time.

Even with the struggles at work where we all did not know if the doors were going to be shut on us and the stress of Martha's Dad's health all along with learning how to budget and live on less, it was a really good year. We met great friends in North Dakota. By getting our act together, by that fall we were able to help so many people out with money, time, knowledge and food. It was a tough year for so many in that area. Between my friend and I in South Dakota, we brought 4 deer home and were able to feed 3 families that winter. We were able to chip in and give some money for a friend who had to stay in Bismarck when their child was ill and in the hospital. Martha inadvertently fell into her ministry helping organize meal trains for all the mothers who just had a baby. We were able to help so many people, albeit sometimes not as much as we would have liked to, yet we were able to help. It made us realize that the whole point of getting our financial act together, getting to this point and staying the course, was to be able to help others. Beyond wanting to be financially secure and able to do whatever we want when we want to, having the ability to help others in their time of need is THE reason why we live the way we do.

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