thankfulness

what are you thankful for today? after all, today is the day, well now half a day if we are lucky, we set aside to point out what we are thankful for. if you ask my 5 year old son, today its teenage mutant ninja turtles. for me its actually the same thing just a few months ago i was whining about. money. no, our finances haven't hit the jackpot. they are actually on a slight downturn from a couple months ago. thats my fault, and another blog post. i am actually thankful that we didn't have the cash to begin Christmas shopping just yet. i wasn't tempted to leave my family early to go get the best deal at the local walmart, or get up at 3am to drive an hour to the nearest mall. (now if a friend had asked me to go, i probably would have just because i am a blue and all about the fun). anyway, i am thankful i am not in the insanity that so many of us are. if you are out shopping the black friday madness, then please, take a breath and enjoy the experience. enjoy the ability to be out. enjoy being. as for me and mine, we had a nice slow paced little thanksgiving. just me, my hubby, our 4 kids, and my mom. my mom came to our house and we had a great meal, at like 4pm. haha. the positive in eating so late...it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. so i could go back for cake AND pie, and that was ok, because it was the only meal i had today. oh, and i now have installed blogger on my phone...so maybe now i can recommit to blogging, and stick with it this time. i just know the cyber world will be rejoicing soon!

Bills, Shmills

Bills. Yay. What fun, what joy they bring to our lives. To open the mailbox, hoping for a huge check from publishers clearinghouse, only to find tons of envelopes and post cards, none of them sending you money, but all of them reminding you to send them money. You'd think they'd return the favor a few times a year, wouldnt ya? My question, and yes I want you to answer, is this. How do you and your spouse divvy up the bill paying? Do you combine both of your earnings into one pot and then pay all the bills out of that pot? Why? Do you do a his and hers type set up, where he pays a portion of the bills and she pays a portion of the bills? Why? If they are in a one pot process, who is in charge? Why? We have tried several different methods over the years to see what works best for us. We have done it with me being in charge of the pot. We have tried it with him being in charge of the pot. Both have pros and cons. For the next few months we are going to try this his/hers method. I dont know what is going to work best. I dont suppose it really matters so long as it all gets paid, right? But for curiosity sake, I wonder what other families do and why. Do you have any great pointers to share, or any great failures to share? I know for us our greatest failure is lack of organization. If the bills dont get put in the same place no matter who checks the mail....well, you can imagine how that goes.