Wow! Thanks to all of you who responded (and read) my first note. I didn't expect so many people to stop by so soon, but boy am I glad!

I've tried to put on paper a budget allowing for $1,026 income. I decided not to go through the motion of figuring withholdings, well, mainly because it was just gonna take too much time and second, I'm not able to scale back to a "zero based" budget with that gross income anyway. So my first step is just to balance the monthly budget!

I do want to start giving $102 to church each month, that being 10%. Maybe I'll round it down to $100... we're already giving $80 a month, so that shouldn't be difficult to start. Then I am allowing $755 for the house payment, which I HOPE will end soon, and that leaves $169 for utilities. I think I can do it, at least for the spring/summer months. Last month's utilities were: electricity, $50.11; natural gas, $69.87; water, $46.10; total of $166.08. Okay, so BARELY.

I have a little income from my boarding & grooming, so I'll cover gas for the auto & groceries with that.

With the "leftover" income from the real check, for now I will be focusing on getting out of debt. We have some medical bills and a couple of credit cards, so I hope to put everything toward those.

We've already cut back about as far as we can go, cutting out DirecTV, phone, and eating out, so there's not much more we can do there.

I haven't yet figured out the $20 challenge, so I need to do a little more surfing and get details on that.

I'm off to listen to Dave Ramsey now...

Paula

I am a homeschooling SAHM, and we rely solely on dh's income. We live on a farm, in a rural area. The cost of living is relatively low, but my husband's salary isn't really great, so we have a strict budget.

My biggest issue is, my husband wants no part of the budgeting or bill-paying. We don't always have enough money at the end of the month, and it all falls on my shoulders to make ends meet. I hate it! But he works a lot and is away from home lots of hours, so he maintains that I do a great job, and that's pretty much the end of the discussion.

Because he doesn't want anyone knowing the personal aspects of our budget, I can't really talk to anyone local (about money). No friends, no family -- that's off-limits! So I'm turning to the net... I really like the idea of the minimum wage challenge. I know there's no way we could live on minimum wage now, as our house payment is about $755 a month, but we are actively trying to get the house ready to sell, and if it does, we will be renting (from ourselves) for $435 a month. I'm pretty sure we can survive on minimum wage then, especially if I can come up with some ways to save a little more money around the house.

It's sad, but I didn't even know what the minimum wage rate is. I looked it up, and I think it's $5.15. It's my understanding that's the federal rate, but some states are higher. At 40 hours a week that's $206 (honing my math skills here!), and with 4 hrs overtime at time-and-a-half on Saturday a.m., that brings weekly gross to $236.90. Multiplied by 52, as my husband takes no paid vacations, and divided by 12 since he's paid monthly, that brings the total to: $1,026.57. I'll have to look up social security and medicare withholdings to get the net take-home, so I'll do that and come up with a budget to post later.

Thanks to all who take the time to read this, and I look forward to learning a great deal about budgeting and "doing without".