I need a little help..

I’m not sure if this is the group to post to about this, but I’m about to be 27 and I was pretty much thrown to the wolves at 16.. Well, I messed up when I was younger because I didn’t understand how credit worked and I ruined my credit. My husband has terrible credit too. We want to buy a house so bad, but we can’t with the credit we have.

I’ve been trying to work on my credit(mine is easier to fix than my husbands).. it’s slowly getting better. Once mine is fixed, we’re going to work on his. My husband makes great money, but we have zero in savings. The bank actually closed our savings account because they were charging us for it being empty 🙄.

Because our credit is terrible, we usually have to pay cash up front for things like vehicles, car repairs, expensive deposits, etc… We can’t even get a small personal loan from the bank, not even a title loan because of the credit.

So, I’m trying my best to start a budget. I have never done a budget before. I really need a little advice or help on how to do this. Right now I have our weekly income written out and most of our big expenses like rent/power/water.. We have a checking account and some of the other bills like internet, phone, and Netflix comes out of the checking account, so I don’t know the dates for when they’re due because they just take it out of the account. I’ll have to get a bank statement and figure it out so I can work the dates into the budget. I’ve also wrote down how much money we need to put back each pay, but it’s overwhelming to me and I feel like we can never get ahead. Something’s always coming up and that money never gets put back. On top of that, it’s hard to get a budget started with absolutely no savings.. like we’re starting from scratch. We basically live paycheck to paycheck, but you wouldn’t tell.. We just end up having to pay for unexpected expenses, like a car repair, or we spend the money stupidly. We literally just paid $1000 to get our car fixed. But, when I say we live paycheck to paycheck, it’s not like we’re hurting for that next pay.. all of our bills are paid, we have food, the rent is paid, we have gas money, clothes, our children are taken care of… we just enjoy spoiling the kids with nice clothes, toys, taking them to amusement parks, out to eat, to fairs, etc.. basically, after all the necessities are paid for we spend what’s left on the kids. (I think it’s because my husband and I didn’t have the best childhoods and we want them to have everything they could ever want.) They’re great kids and they’ve earned/deserve everything we do for them.. so it’s hard for us to not want to do all of these things for them when they absolutely deserve it! But then we also have to pay for school stuff, sports, and holidays.

However, my husband and I are starting to think more long-term, instead of “in the moment.” We want to own our house, have a college savings for them, be able to buy them vehicles when they’re old enough to drive, we want to provide a good future for them so they don’t have to struggle for everything like we had to... you know?

So, I need some advice on how to start a budget with zero in savings. How do we keep from spending money on unnecessary stuff? What do you guys do to keep yourself on track and motivated? Any budgeting tips?? Motivational tips? How do we stop going overboard with our kids? PLEEEEASEEE HELP 😩 lol

(Please no hate.. It’s not necessary.)

-TIA!