My husband and I have struggled with finances and budgeting since we married almost 30 years ago. We come from totally different backgrounds, and have not been able to work together as a team. We experienced a lot of stress and failure at communicating about finances and were never able to create and stay on a proper budget. We have been in church small groups that teach proper financial stewardship, but we were not able to come to peace in our finances until we got help from a neutral third party, Carey Northington.
(Carey) helped us set up a budget remotely on the computer, and gave us advice and help for over a year, until we were ready to go on our own. Carey is extremely patient, compassionate, and non-judgmental while demonstrating wisdom and knowledge about budgeting. Carey had us track our expenses for a month, and then helped up set up a budget online. He helped us set up categories where our money needed to go every time we got a paycheck. The You Need A Budget (YNAB) budgeting system that Carey helped us set up was revolutionary in helping my husband and I to keep track of our income and expenses, and to stay on top of our budget. YNAB is especially helpful because it crosses over different platforms; I can work on the budget with my laptop (which is a Windows product) and we can both access and make changes to our budget categories over our smart phones, and iPads.
Now, we have categories for each purchase we need, and we do not make a purchase unless money is in that category. We can look on our smart phones when we are at the store, and see if we have money left in that category. It has been a tremendous relief to both of us, and the weight and stress of not having a good financial budget has been lifted. We are so grateful to the help that Carey has given us!
(Spiritually) it was a humbling experience to be monitored (by Carey) over a year but God worked in that to bring fruit out of the humility. 2nd Chronicles (says that) God is the ruler of all mankind and everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. We belong to God and the money that we make belongs to God. Being on a budget has helped us to keep everything in categories and making a priority to tithing in obedience to God. So the fruit of that are peace of mind and feeling closer to God. Taking away the stress of finances and having things orderly makes it easier to hear God’s voice in my experience.
