By Maria Rikka Ocena
I kept glancing at my paycheck hoping the figures would change, but I knew they wouldn’t. My heart started to race and my mind began to calculate how we could make this last another fifteen days. Rent, food, allowance and utilities, I felt anxious.
Four months before our wedding, my fiancé called me up from Dubai and told me that UAE was in recession and he was going to be laid off. He stayed for two months more to look for another job, but opportunities were scarce. In February 2009, a month before our wedding, he returned to the Philippines with only his back pay in his pocket.
In the beginning of our marriage, we struggled to make both ends meet with my income from a faith-based organization. We cried and we prayed – we didn’t know what to do, but I saw great faith in my husband’s eye and it made all the difference. We started to cut back on our spending. This meant saying no to eating out on weekends, buying DVDs on sale instead of going to movies and avoiding chocolates and chips at the grocery store.
My sister introduced me to ukay-ukay and I have been a fan ever since. We learned to be practical and content, even if we didn’t own the latest gadget or wear branded clothes. And even when money was difficult, we never ceased to give to others who were needy. We decided giving expressed our dependency on God and we were surprised how God caused us to have enough.
Living within our means was humbling, and at times uncomfortable, but having a simple lifestyle helped us stay out of debt. It was during this time that God taught us principles that allowed us to make the most of our peso earning.
