I think Dave said this about twenty times today on his show. After today I know exactly what he means. I just finished paying our entire budget for June, and we made it with exactly one penny left over for the top of our debt snowball (we went ahead and carried it over for July).

June has been the hardest month of our six months so far to meet our budget. Between getting our house ready to sell, paying the mortgage and rent, and all my traveling with the Army, it was not easy. Having to bring in over $6800 to make it didn’t help matters either.? As you recall from my post earlier this week, I don’t make that much money.

After my first year of college I came home and worked on a farm for Don Hutcheson each of the next three summers. Many times we found ourselves in seemingly impossible situations; yet Don’s response was always, “It doesn’t matter if it is possible for us to do this, it just has to be done.”

One time Don was on vacation for a couple of days in July and he had told me the priority of work for the week.  While I was plowing on the first day with our only functioning plow at that time, one of the middle three hundred pound shanks broke off.  After helplessly lifting on it for about fifteen minutes, I was ready to give up. It was an impossible situation.  I couldn’t plow a narrower girth because it was a middle shank, and I couldn’t have Don come back three days later with only four hours of work done. So I figured out a way to jury-rig a couple of small hydraulic jacks along with what we called a “cheater bar” for leverage. I lifted and lifted with strength I never knew I had until I was finally able to get the first bolt in. OSHA would have had a heart attack if they would have been watching. Simply put, the facts were irrelevant; I just had to get it done.

June was a lot like that scenario. There were many times I thought I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. When it came down to it, the facts didn’t matter; I just had to go out and kill it and drag it home. I took advantage of opportunities I won’t have again anytime soon. Thankfully I have a little more structured plan for July, but there is still an element that I have to make happen. I wouldn’t want to be comfortable:-)