Too much to be thankful for

Whew! It's been a while huh?! I feel like I always start my posts this way... hmmm. Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to all, and let the madness begin :) I really don't know where the money is going to come from this year. Last year I just charged stuff, which I refuse to do this year - trying to maintain the debt-free status as I enter my marriage. Well, technically I'm nowhere NEAR debt-free (about $20K in undergrad loans, soon to be multiplied many times over!) but in terms of credit card debt, that's just unnecessary and I refuse. So I apologize to everyone in advance if your Christmas gift is lame (or non-existent...).

Quite frankly - if I may be frank with you all - I'm already starting to regret our wedding budget. It's too late to scale back now, but holy crap. Is this amount of money REALLY necessary for ONE day? I know it's the most important day of my life thus far - trust me, I KNOW - but it really is one day, one party, and then we're left with nothing because we poured it all into the wedding. I just wish we had left ourselves some breathing room. I'm literally putting away 3/4 of my paycheck every month (I get paid monthly - it's a stipend), right off the top. This leaves little if any room for things like Christmas, lunches and nights out with friends, and even things I want for myself for the wedding that I didn't include in the budget... like shoes for instance. Even Ben's wedding ring (I figured it was unfair to put his ring in the budget and not mine, since he'd already bought mine, so I left it out. Idiot). Ugh. It's just rough. It's going to be a beautiful, wonderful, memorable, FUN wedding - there's no doubt. I know I won't be disappointed. We won't wish we had gone bigger or had nicer food or sprung for the open bar or had a better DJ or anything... we've already done all those things. We just might wish we had more money left over. It's funny how we NEVER would have saved this amount of money if it weren't for the wedding - we wouldn't have had the discipline or the motivation without an immediate, important goal looming less than a year away. It's so sad - it's obviously possible, and we could have saved this money just to start a savings account for our future or pay off some debts or whatever. I'm glad we're getting married and not just saving for some unknown future (unknown in terms of when we'd be getting married and living together), but it's a good lesson for both of us, I think, to see that with some discipline and an important goal, we did it. Hopefully we'll be able to look back on this and think "if we did it then, we can do it again". Of course we won't be able to save this much money again for a very long time - we won't have this much financial freedom in terms of our income to responsibility ratio for at least a decade, I'm sure. But just to know that we were able to REALLY stretch and pinch and put away such a large percentage of our "free" income should serve as a motivator for us in the future.

So, just a word to the wise - PRAYERFULLY consider your wedding budget before setting it in stone, and if possible, set up your married life budget BEFORE you set up your wedding budget. It'll give you a sense of just how tight money will be AFTER the big day, and it might make you think twice about delegating every penny that you can possibly save between the engagement and the wedding to the wedding itself. If I had been able to set up our post-wedding budget earlier, I know I would have scaled back. I would have made sure that we were putting aside several thousand of what we could save between now and May 29th for the days AFTER May 29th. I'd like to have at least two months worth of our combined monthly income sitting in an emergency savings account - that is our goal for post-wedding savings. That way if something happens to one of us, we know we have a two-month buffer. Or if an unexpected bill comes up, we have something to fall back on. Now, we're in a situation where we'll be trying to save up that two-month buffer at the rate of $50 per month (that's how much we'll be physically able to save, based on Ben's base pay and my med school borrowing, according to our budget). That's going to take years. Now granted, that's worst case scenario. We'll get wedding money, Ben will get overtime money as long as he's allowed to keep working it, etc. But we could have easily put that much money aside out of our wedding budget and still found a way to have a great wedding. Just food for thought, for anyone reading who isn't married yet.

So anyway, it's Thanksgiving, and I really shouldn't be stressing and complaining about money. God is good, He will provide, and He has taught us valuable lessons through all of this. In the end, I have so much to be thankful for - more than one person SHOULD have I think. I'm marrying the person I met when I was 13 years old. We were just kids, and God allowed us to meet each other, grow together over 8 years, find it somewhere in our adolescent mentalities to truly commit to each other, knit ourselves into each other's families, and all without ever breaking up. He spared us the heartache and frustration and loneliness of dating and being single (not that those are bad things, but they can be incredibly painful at times!). He didn't force us to try out lots of different people. I guess that the way our relationship developed did bring up its own challenges though. We had to get over the idea that maybe there's someone else out there, or maybe we need to "experience other people". We had to get through A LOT of ups and downs that young people aren't well-equipped to deal with. We had to find the maturity to stay together out of pure commitment when the "feelings" didn't come easily, even for weeks on end, when we were just high school kids. We had to deal with living apart over four years and spending only limited amounts of time together, during a time in our lives when everyone else was dating around and I was constantly meeting new people and having new experiences, while Ben felt left behind and out-of-the-loop at home. We've actually been through a lot together, and had so many opportunities to grow apart. But we always grew together. Now, I have an entire extra family to be thankful for. I have, HANDS DOWN, the most amazingly kind, giving, caring, FUN, friendly, and loving sisters-in-law that anyone could ever ask for. I couldn't have found better ones if I went searching for them on my own. My mother-in-law is simply one of the most spiritual, kind, compassionate, outgoing, selfless women I've ever met. These people took me into their family with such warmth and such complete lack of hesitation, and I could never express how much they mean to me. Through them, I've been blessed with a sweet, smart, beautiful niece, and two absolutely PRECIOUS, entertaining, adorable little nephews. I've gotten to watch them grow and become such a part of their lives that they don't know their uncle Ben without me. I have my own incredibly supportive family who have given me all they could give in order to see me succeed, and have never withheld a single thing from me. My parents have loved me with such devotion and pride throughout my life that I don't have a clue what it's like to grow up with anything less than amazing parents. I'm in a very small minority in that respect. I've been accepted to a GREAT medical school that is going to give me the opportunity to pursue a career that I love, make a great living to support my family, and have the career I want to have all right here in Maryland with my family. And there are so many little things, too. I have a job now that allows me to drive in to work and home again every day with my mom, allowing us time together that we wouldn't have otherwise. I have a roof over my head and have never had a real need go unmet in my life. I had a wonderful undergraduate experience that gave me some of the greatest memories and the greatest friends I could have ever asked for, and allowed me to remain close enough to home to maintain the friendships that made me who I was when I got there. And now, those amazing friends love me enough to be a part of my wedding day with me - spending their hard-earned money and their scarce time and energy making my big day special.

Obviously, I could go on all day. The reality is, we all could! No matter what season of life we find ourselves in, there are always blessings to count. Even if it's counting each breath as we take it, God gives us so much to be thankful for. Each beat of our hearts, each moment that all of the intricate systems that keep us healthy and alive function perfectly together... being a science nerd really makes you wonder how God keeps it all running smoothly! But He does, because He loves us and He put us here to enjoy the fruits of His creation. And now, I'm going to go enjoy one of God's greatest gifts... a good night's sleep, in a warm and comfortable bed, with a full belly and a full heart :)