New Years Resolutions

I have been pondering my New Years Resolution for 2012 several months now. Obviously, I would love for my health to get better so I can get back to blogging regularly and a "normal" schedule again, but at this point I don't have much control over that. I have decided instead to keep it simple, attainable and something that will make my family's life and hopefully some of the world a tiny bit better, here is my goal:

To be a better steward of our money.

That might sound strange since you know I already coupon, yard sale and buy everything on sale, you could be thinking "what else can she be doing???" After considering the economy (it's not getting better anytime soon), the companies our money is going to, and the economic situation of people worldwide, I came up with three parts to my resolution.

1. Get back on the coupon train. No huge revelations here, I've been very lazy about getting to the drug stores, using coupons regularly at the grocery store and relying on my stockpile the last few months. The result is I haven't saved us as much money and I haven't had as many items to donate. This is a priority and I will find the time to do it each week.

2. Purchase from brands and companies that are making responsible choices, helping others and taking care of their employees. Bonus points if they donate their profits to charity (Newman's Own). A good conversation with my sister in law over the holidays drew the question, are we really being good stewards of our money if we support companies that run sweatshops? The second part of this is to buy local when I can--produce, meat, small businesses, etc. These are all things I've done on a small scale for years but have not been diligent about.

3. Give, give and give some more. I will confess, I've been pretty grumpy about our ugly linoleum kitchen floor and mismatched downstairs flooring lately, among many other things I would like to update. I see friends with brand new houses and shiny pretty things and I want them too. Then I met a recently homeless family with two kids living in a 12' X 12' apartment with roaches and not enough food to eat even though the father has worked every single day for almost two months (including Christmas) and it brings me to my knees in thanks for all of the blessings we have. It also makes me think about how we normally give. We take care of our needs and make sure we're comfortable, then we give. This year we're going to be a tad less comfortable (cancel cable, turn the thermostat down a little and put on an extra layer, give up eating out and only cook at home, etc) and hopefully we'll be able to pass on the blessings that have been given to us to people in need both locally and internationally.

Do me a favor the next time you see me and ask how my resolution is going. I need and want to be held accountable for this one, especially since we decided when I became a stay at home mom that Chris's job is to make the money and my job is to make the money go as far as possible. I now realize our spending is not independent and it needs to go "as far as possible" for the rest of the world too, my financial choices have an effect on others-how did it take me 31 years to learn this?