Coupon Queen of Corning: THE ECONOMY

Our family, as well as many other American families, are concerned with the recent happenings in regards to our economy. I can't say I didn't see this coming. I took an economics in the spring of 2007 and I was already noticing a slow down. I look back and think, why didn't we do more to pay off our credit cards and save more money? Then I start thinking about what was going on last year.

It sure was a crazy year. I quit my job the first week of January so that I could stay home with our then 4 month old daughter. So, living on only one income took a while to adjust too. Though I have to say we actually did better financially after I stopped working. We spent too much money eating out and really didn't have a budget. In August of last year, the union where my husband worked went on strike. So there we were living on a strike bonus of $300 until he could get the unemployment. Once we got that we were getting about $700 a week, which was more than enough to live on. Though we ended up being financially ok, it was a very stressful time for everyone. In November our son was born. My husband put an application in with his current employer and started working there in January of this year. The company had stated there was an impasse and they were calling people back, but my husband hadn't been called back yet. They called him a week after he started his new job.

My husband's new job is wonderful. He gets paid well and the company really cares about its employees. He works Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights 7pm to 7am and gets paid for 40 hours. He brings home a little over $600 a week and we've been doing great with our budget. We have paid off several hospital bills and smaller credit cards. We did have over $600 in our baby EF, but we needed to use that for some bills, because we spent too much when we went on vacation camping.

We are debating on what is the best course of action: save up more money in baby EF (currently about $250) or start snowballing our credit cards again. We had to stop paying off our credit cards for the last few months because we had to save us much as possible to get our house put in (building permits, fees, etc). It won't be a whole lot we will have extra (we are using $250 cash for Christmas), only about $80 extra for the next 2 months. We put $20 a week into savings no matter what. With the economy the way it is, what is the best move. Voice your opinion and post a comment!!