Poverty Climb Weekly Progress: #1

This is the first in a series of weekly posts detailing any progress my family has made towards getting out of poverty in the last 7 days. My goal is to make sure there is always at least one thing to write about on here.

This has been a hard week, but it has been a better one than the previous few. Having a defined plan for the first time has really given me a lot more drive and hope. There has been setbacks, there always are, but my goal in this weekly edition is to simply focus on the progress my family is making. This being the first week, there isn't going to be a lot of big progress, but that's ok. I hope there a much bigger milestones to write about in the future.

We got mattresses!
They are twins and only the thickness of a phone book, but just having something warm cushioning us from the floor is wonderful. We decided that our daughter should sleep on the futon (she is much lighter and doesn't feel the beams). We took both twins and pushed them together on the floor, put a sheet over them, and snuggled close. We did this because no matter what, keeping our marriage strong is of utmost importance and our day end conversation and cuddling are very important to our bonding since my husband is basically gone all day.

We got hair cuts!
My husband is easy to groom, he has a very nice beard that he keeps trimmed and a good, short haircut that can grow out quite a bit before looking shabby. Me and Thing 1 however, had very long, dry, crunchy, tangled hair that reached our lower backs. $10+ for a haircut is a luxury for us. However since moving, we are closer to my M.I.L. who is a hair dresser. So for the cost of gas, my daughter and I got refreshing short haircuts. She doesn't look like a ragamuffin now, and my confidence was boosted because I feel like I look less shabby and scruffy (and well, poor).

We got prepaid phones.
I am unsure whether this was the right thing or not. It required $140 to get 2 prepaid phones and to start service. That is money we really didn't have, however we will begin saving $40/mo on our phone bill starting next month. That's worth it right? Goodness, I hope so. It really hurt to shell out that much right before Christmas, and pretty much at all, because we just never have enough for everything.

All of the rest of my to-do's this week are still works-in-progress. With this being Christmas week and so many places being closed, I have doubts that I will make much progress. We'll see, maybe there are some other small things I can do to improve our circumstances (hello, like get laundry done?!). Sometimes small battles are the only ones you can win.


As a side note, if you're reading this , could you make a comment somewhere? Even if it's just a hi? I'd like to know if there are any actual human beings reading this, or if all my page views are bots. Please, and thank you!