Introduction - What Am I Doing and Why?

Recently I finished reading The Hole In Our Gospel by the president of World Vision Richard Stearns. This book has challenged me to take another look at my life and reevaluate how I am spending my time, talent and treasure. As a Christian I know I am called to show the love of Christ to my neighbor. Through organizations like Compassion and World Vision I have the ability to reach "neighbors" throughout the world. One of the ways I have decided that our family can better serve these neighbors is by monitoring our grocery/restaurant budget and donating any excess from it to these organizations.

For the past several years my DH and I have followed the financial principles outlined by Dave Ramsey, so we have a monthly budget that we follow. I feel that our budget is reasonable and it is certainly based on several years of monitoring our grocery bills, so there I don't feel that there is any room to trim "excess" off the top to automatically give to these charities. Our family of five spends $450 a month on groceries and $100 a month on restaurants (we try not to eat out very often!). It breaks my heart to know that when I sit down to a full, (at least somewhat) healthy meal that in so much of the world children will not eat at all that day. If one of these precious children were in my home I would gladly fix them a meal. Unfortunately that isn't possible. But it is possible for me to reduce spending on "extras" like ice cream and chips and send that money to someone who can fix a meal for a hungry child.

Goal: For each of the next 3 months save $100 to give to Compassion and World Vision

How I Plan To Do This: (1)Reduce spending on "junk food" (2) Plan meals around loss leader sales (3) Reduce impulse buying by using a shopping list (4) Limit trips into stores - the more I'm in stores, the more I spend and (5) Keep a record of my spending to keep motivated

My Challenge: If anyone else finds this blog and has a heart for helping children living in poverty I challenge you to find a place to cut out an "excess" in your life - even small things like choosing to rent a movie instead of going out to the movies can mean the difference between life and death to a starving child. I've been on budgeting boards and I know that people make lifestyle choices such as choosing not to eat out for a period of time in order to pay off debt or save for a vacation. I wonder if we can do it for "the least of these" as well.