Fishie's due in about a month now, and I've spent the last year or so really making some changes in terms of how we deal with our finances. Since my wife got pregnant, we've paid off my medical bills and some credit card debt.
We've been using a debt tsunami technique instead of a debt snowball. The original debt snowball was developed around the idea that paying off the smallest debts first would motivate you the most, but as Adam points out in the debt tsunami article, sometimes the debts that drive you the most crazy aren't the smallest, or the ones with the highest interest rate.
The card we paid off drove me crazy - I first opened it in college, and I made all the classic debt mistakes with it. It was a symbol of all of the things that screwed up my relationship with money, and so it made sense as a part of the effort to correct my relationship with money to pay that off first.
While Mara is a wealth goddess, I never really stopped to think about what that means until the last year or so. She's a household goddess and a marketplace goddess. Instead of just depending on her to get me out of the occasional jam, this has been a year of working seriously to correct my relationship with money, to start seriously paying down debt and pursuing freelance work. It started long before Fishie was in the picture, but she's definitely been a motivating force.
From taking on regular freelance work to confronting the way that certain kinds of charitable giving interact with my OCD, she's pushed me - or maybe I should say she's encouraged me to push myself - far outside of my comfort zone this year.
The thing that I keep rediscovering is that everything is connected. Housekeeping is sacred. Writing is sacred. Finances are sacred. To live a life where your every decision is influenced by your gods or beliefs doesn't have to mean living in near-hermitage and doing nothing else but ritual and worship. It means living your life with your gods and your goals in mind. The living part is important, at least to my gods.
