Conscious

For the past year or so I've being banging on about living consciously to anyone who would care to listen.  I think that having a child changes the way we think and so I'm trying to change from a life of excesses to living a life more true.

I've made small moves, I planted a vegie patch, this is two fold in it's purpose, one is to have fresh vegies and the other is to cut down on our carbon footprint as a family. We've also installed solar panels for the same reason.

I have also - which has to be the biggest change - been very diligent with menu planning, shopping to a list and trying to get the food budget under $200 per week without compromising food quality. 

Part of my banging on included wanting to creating a budget, but like all bad habits it was hard to break - self delusion is so sweet.  But this was the week of change, when I mentioned that I was going to do a budget to the other half I was given this response, but we do them all the time and we never stick to them,  normally I would fold at this point (sweet delusion), but this time I had this response, would you tell a smoker that?  If they said to you that they were going to give up...AGAIN, no, you would say good on'ya and do what you could to encourage them.  

Creating a budget has been eye opening, I said to one person I didn't realise how poor we were?  Not that it's as depressing as it sounds, but I can now see where all our money goes and some of the places are ridiculous and too embarrassing to give examples! However this is a turning point, I feel empowered by this information and ready for change.  I'm ready to be conscious of our financial limits.  This includes realising just because you qualify for a $25K visa limit doesn't mean that you can manage it!