By Nicole

For about three weeks Leilee's favorite joke was: "What is the difference between a guitar and a fish?" *************************************** "You can't tune a fish!" Actually - that was her favorite punchline.  She would ask any question as the first part of the joke and end it with, "You can't tune a fish!" She thought she was hilarious. Well I can't really tune a fish.  But I can tuna fish.  Like a pro. Although, the truth is.... this is only my second year.  Two years ago my sister gave me home-canned tuna for a birthday present.  We scarfed it down like it was ocean candy.  So freaking good. The next year, I went to a canning party at her almost mother-in-law's house.  She taught us how to can tuna, and I waltzed home with a hundred jars and self-proclaimed title of "Fish-Whisperer" because I had mastered the art of picking the tuna carcass clean.  No joke.  Hand me a fillet knife and a spoon. ...

So, about two and a half years ago, a dear friend of mine, who also happens to be a financial guru in my opinion, got me onto the envelope budget and accompanying debt repayment calculation Excel spreadsheet. Jason and I had been essentially living from paycheck to paycheck with good intentions of getting everything paid off, but we still spent every two weeks looking at each other and wondering where all our "extra" money went. Yeah - he would work his butt off doing all the overtime possible... just to hear me say that we didn't have any money. Somehow we were throwing it all away... We jumped into a new life of budgeting... every pay period I would faithfully enter in our payments, check credit card balances, and fill our hand labeled envelopes with the cash we were allowed to spend on groceries and miscellaneous. Let me tell you - the envelopes didn't have to be very big. We faithfully put money into savings every paycheck. I even began to tithe like I was suppose...