by Audriona Chellsen
Audri: So I am here with Stephanie Stone.
Audri: Do you think an extra $500 would like change your life?
Stephanie: I don’t think I would really notice it that. I got a raise recently, but it’s like you get the extra money and then you just spend more money and so you don’t really notice it the way you think you would, because thats what happens you just gets the extra money and it’s gone and it doesn’t ever seem like, you know your noticing a big impact from it.
Audri: And so you say you’re good at saving money, putting money away, financing money?
Stephanie: I think I am creative with money. I found ways to save it if I have a savings and if I need some extra money, maybe during a pay day for some expense that comes up, I always make sure to pay back my savings. I get paid every 2 weeks, so say during 1 pay period I need an extra $200 or 300, then when I get paid the next pay day I pay my savings back, so it would at least always stay the same. And then there’s other things that I use as far as credit and I try to be smart with my credit, not run up to many credit cards bills and then I am going to charge stuff for things, I look into the smartest interest options, like 0% interests deducting rate and then if they had a period of time you need to pay your balance off with, to maintain that 0% interest then I try to be really good about taking care of that and getting it paid off within a certain amount of time, to avoid additional fees and it’s important to me make the most of the money, and to be smart with it.
Audri: It’s something you're good, you’re not worrying about putting food on the table for your kids, for your husband.
Stephanie: Yeah don’t unless something really extraordinarily happen, if there we had a large expense, it could be trouble, there’s even a period of time when my husband was out of work and we were living off of a tight budget, and we still maintain, we’re still able to just be creative with meals. I have always thought the time period of like the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was really interesting, I think it’s was because of my grandma grew up around that time and she would go and tell me about some of the meals that they make. Just being really creative with like beans and some meat and the way they would make stuff stretch and I always thought that it was nice even though were times where we had to work a little harder when life wasn’t easy and you had be more creative with those budget friendly meals, it just felt like you were just living a little bit more, like life wasn’t just so easy to where I was just had everything in my pantry and I’m just throwing this together and there’s things you start to take for granted, so even in those times when things just aren’t as abundant it’s nice to, there’s something rewarding about making it work.