What Being Frugal Has Taught Me

There are not many times that you can tell the difference between a frugal person walking down the street and someone who is not frugal. These differences appear more in the conversations and day to day life of a person. I find that our frugal-minded friends tend to talk more about how they are doing i.e. their family, their children, friends and so on. They talk more of relationships. When I talk to my not so frugal friends the topics tend to be more on things, careers and stress.

I've come to a conclusion about this. I love being frugal!!! I love that my focus has shifted away from the "stuff" to the things that matter. I used to be sooooo focused on appearing successful and having what my friends and neighbors had. Now? I could not care less what kind of car you drive or how big your house is, what kind of TV you have. What matters most is who you are, not what you have.

I am happy to just be able to enjoy life. Sure, we still have things that we like, but if they broke or were stolen, it just wouldn't be as big of deal as it used to be.
Taking a step back from consumerism has made me a million times happier with the stuff I have now. It has also helped me to realize that I don't need all the stuff I have now. (I will be working on de-cluttering very soon) It's amazing how much more joy and contentment you can have when you stop collecting more and more stuff.

Our lives have become more about making memories and finding the joy in everyday. So, one example is  instead of buying our son a bunch of toys he will scatter all over the house and barely play with for his 2nd birthday we got him a membership to the zoo.We aren't having a party for him because he is just turning 2 and just plays near kids not really "with" them, and frankly he wouldn't care if we did throw him a party so why spend the money?  We decided to do something meaningful for him. He loves spending time with his family and learning about animals. With the membership he can enjoy family time and all the animals that little boy could want and I won't have to trip on any extra toys, everyone wins!

To sum it up this debt free journey and learning to live beneath my means has made me and the rest of my family happier, contented and closer than ever. We couldn't be happier to be the weird family on a budget.

What differences have you noticed as you started this journey? Do you think you are better off now? Have you always been frugal and lived a life of contentment? Are you thinking about starting the journey but something is holding you back? Let me know!!

The Plan!

Hello friends!! So in the last post I  briefly talked about living on just my husband's (Eric) income. I have devised a plan to help us do just that. Let me say this, I do not make a lot of money at my job, I work part time. So it won't be a terrible adjustment, living on half our income (which we have not figured out how to do yet )will be harder. This is just our first baby step in that direction.

We have cut down a couple categories in our budget.

The first one being our pool. We have a 16x48 intex pool that we have used the past couple summers, we love it. It's expensive though.

Xander playing in the pool last year

At the end of last year the liner got a significant un-repairable rip. The new liner would cost us 200 dollars plus shipping. We started saving for it, but quickly realized there just wasn't enough room in the budget to save up for it by summer. We also realized the pool costs us an extra 50 dollars a month in chemicals, water, and electricity. If we didn't replace the liner and didn't put it up this year we could save ourselves about 400 dollars. So although we will be missing our pool very much this year, we will be closer to our goals. We will continue to save a little bit each month towards a new pool but it is probably 2 years away.

We are ditching Amazon Prime. We have loved this service a lot, but it just doesn't make financial sense to pay to have free shipping. I will just wait until my amazon purchase equals 35 and buy it then and get free shipping. I have heard people say they save money using their bulk purchasing options but I myself haven't been able to find anything with significant savings.I know there are other benefits like the prime video but honestly, it's almost exactly the same as Netflix with maybe a few more titles in it's library. I happen to like Netflix's selection a lot better. Then there is the kindle lending library which is great if you have a kindle, but we don't. That's fine by me I have a free lending library (the actual library) a couple blocks away and they have a lot more titles :)

 All in all I don't feel it's worth it to pay 99 dollars a year for prime. We also decided to get rid of Hulu plus. We just don't use it anymore. Together that saves us 17 dollars a month.

We cut our spending money a little. Not a lot. Five dollars each per week. No biggie to us but it adds up to 40 dollars a month.

We cut down the amount in our clothing category. We have 100 dollars in there right now and no one is using it. We are cutting it in half saving us 40 dollars a month.

We turned our date night envelope into a day trip envelope. We just haven't been using our date money. Though we love spending time just the two of us it's very easy to do for free. We have our daughter Hannah who loves her brother and offers to watch him a lot. She is 15 and a very good, sweet, patient sister. Yup, we know how blessed we are :)

So we opt for free date nights so we can put that money in the family fund to do some fun stuff with our kids over the summer. Thus eliminating the camping/day trip fund saving us 20 a month AND we still get to have a good time!

We will be doing a spending freeze in May when it comes to food. We will only be buying fresh produce, dairy and eggs (with the exception of Eric's Veggie sausage for breakfast). This will continue until we have used up all the stuff in our freezer because it is SO FULL. This won't be a reoccurring monthly decrease in spending however, it will give us an extra savings boost for our poor drained emergency fund and save for yet another car repair.

So that's that for now as we do more or think of more I will let you know!! Thanks for reading guys and thanks for being awesome.

How We Live On A Very Small Budget

Hey there guys!! I share a LOT about how we make our food budget work well for us but there are other things I haven't shared with you yet. These things are ways we make a small budget work for us and not feel like we are deprived. I share this with you as I am actually working on tweaking our budget to get it even tighter believe it or not :) My goal is to try to live on half our income, my first stop along the way will be living on just my husbands income and then trying to go down from there. This will NOT be easy but I really think you can do anything you want to if you believe, work hard and pray.
Anywho I digress..... the point of THIS blog post is to talk to you guys about how we save money in every way possible. You can actually check out 10 ways with the collab video I did on youtube here.

So here are some extra ways we save money. These are not all of them but they are some of the ones that save us the most.

Household items such as shampoo. soap, toothpaste, feminine products, toilet paper, lotions and etc. We don't ever buy anything like this without coupons. I usually go to Target or Walgreens to get all these kinds of products and I check thekrazycouponlady.com and hip2save.com every Sunday to look for the best deals when I need them. They do all the work for you and the sites are completely free! I can usually count on at least 1 good sale every month or so, I buy enough (or a little more if the budget allows) to get us through until the next sale. Sometimes I really luck out and can buy enough for months!

We give ourselves spending money. I know that sounds counter intuitive doesn't it? Trust me, if you leave no room for fun (or in my case bubble bars, bath bombs and coffee) in your budget you are headed for disaster. We tried the no spending money thing when we first started budgeting. Eric and I were so frustrated we blew our budget a LOT.

We take advantage of free days for museums, zoos, etc. We like to get out and do things as a family and we don't like to pay a lot of money to do it. We do our research and go to as many free events and free days as possible so we can have fun and not break the bank. The library is such a great resource for family friendly activities, I know I sound like a broken record but seriously! Story-time, crafts, movie nights so many fun free things to do at the library. They even have teen activities!

We shop yard sales. We look for almost everything at yard sales but especially clothes for us and the kids and toys. Xander does not care if the toy he has just gotten has been previously loved, just if it's fun! We try to go to neighborhood yard sales in very nice parts of town to get the best products. We buy furniture, small kitchen appliances and dishes, books, records you name it!

We don't have expensive hobbies, enough said :)

We participate in a program that pays us 60.00 a month. This was something I hesitated to talk about because the program is invite only and it appears it's now closed. However, it is a way we save or earn money. We participate in something called screenwise panel. They monitor your internet usage for google. You can sign up to earn a little (I think it's like 6.00 a month) a month by installing an app find out about it here. (Please note I am not affiliated with them, this is not a referral link I don't earn anything if you join. I'm just trying to help :)  )They pay us by visa gift cards which we use for a variety of things most of the time groceries sometimes for family nights. We receive the same amount as our internet costs a month, that  works out pretty well.

We live in a small house we can afford. Our house is very small for four people but we make it work! Luckily we have a finished room in the basement that we use as an extra bedroom. Living in 742 Sq feet helps me (the most disorganized person in the world possibly) to be organized. In a small place you really have to organize. It also helps us not overbuy. We have to think about most purchases before we buy them, do we have a place for it? We usually only buy things to replace something that has broken or been grown out of. Another way a small house helps us save is heating and cooling. Most people we know pay twice or three times what we pay for our gas and electric bill.

We only have one car. Yup, sometimes this is annoying. Honestly though? We are used to it and it doesn't bother us at all. It saves a ton on only doing maintenance and gas in one vehicle. Eric usually takes it to work and luckily enough for Xander and I there are just a ton of different places we can walk to including the library!Can you tell how much I love the library yet? ;)

I use swagbucks (<-----this one is a referral link I will get some points if you sign up.  Here is the regular link that is not a referral if  you would rather go that route)  to buy a lot of birthday and Christmas gifts. I turn my points in for amazon or target gift cards. It's a fantastic way to buy gifts without having to have it come out of your normal budget. I use a couple other survey sites to earn money for presents too (none of these are referral links) https://www.globaltestmarket.com/ , http://www.i-say.com/  and https://www.mysurvey.com .

We have a positive attitude. This one doesn't seem like a money saving tip, does it? It is! If you approach life with I an"I'm so happy we can do this" attitude rather than "I can't believe we can't do that "attitude it helps you stay on task, stay on budget and be HAPPY about it. I am not perfect and sometimes I have to stop my bad thinking in it's tracks. The best way I have found to do this is find 10 things I am grateful for. I can usually do this in less than 2 minutes, and I am back on track.
If your family can only afford to visit the local park rather than Disney world take the approach of I'm so happy we get to enjoy time together at the park, Disney World isn't going anywhere and some day I can get there. I CHOOSE to enjoy today rather than think of what I can't have. Happiness really is a choice, choose it! (read about the science of choosing happiness here)

Anyways guys if this helps in even the smallest way, it will have made my day. Tell me your ways you save money or ways you would like to start trying. Stay awesome!

Emergency Fund Gratefulness (debt free journey update)

                                                          (Xander in the spring last year)

Hey guys!! Happy Spring! If you live in a cold climate like me you know exactly how exciting SPRING really is :)

Well today we had to use our remaining emergency fund we built back up.

 

Sometimes I really do feel like we are spinning our wheels but I can look back and see our progress and then I feel better. I highly recommend keeping a chart or something plainly visible everyday to remind yourself that you are winning. However slowly or quickly you are winning.

Anyways.............We went to get our van brakes repaired and what we thought was going to be a 100-200 brake pad repair ended up being (the rotor and drums in the rear brakes were shot) 476.00. Just a little over what we had in our emergency fund right now (430.00) the rest was EXACTLY what we had in our car repair envelope! Crazy huh? 

We found out a bit of bad news too apparently the wheel bearings in the back need to be replaced, another 450 repair :/  SO we are hustling now to get the money to fix the car and get it fixed quickly and build our emergency fund back up.We are doubling the recommended amount this time so it will take a while. 

I am so grateful we had the money to repair the brakes!! We had no idea they were so bad. Now I am going to be a mess until we get that money back in! (Security gland in full meltdown mode) We can do it, this much I know.

That's all for now guys, just wanted to give you guys a quick update on our journey. How are you guys doing?

Comparing Your Situation To Others (or how to ruin your day for no reason)

Hey everyone!! I recently had a lovely time hanging out with a good friend. While we were chatting and hanging out I started to notice differences between her and I. She had better baby gear, better clothes, used money way more freely than me and I began to get jealous. I started to compare her newly remolded home to my old and not the prettiest home. I started comparing work, income, lifestyle all in my head of course.
 For a moment, a brief flash I felt bad about myself. I felt lesser than because of meaningless possessions. I was taken aback by this because I have never really been that person to covet anothers lives or stuff. I had to stop that thought process right in it's tracks and when I got home I read the post I wrote a month or so ago here.

I wanted to share this moment with you guys because being on this journey can be rough and you may have these moments of self pity. Remember to keep your eyes on the prize and off of other peoples lives. Be happy for what you have and don't take anything for granted.



Thank you for taking the time to read this and for being your awesome selves!!

I will leave you with this:

 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.   

Matthew 6:19-21

6 Ways to Have Fun On a Small Budget

Hello friends!!!I know a lot of you out there are in the same boat as us so, I thought I would share some of our very, very favorite activities we do on our super low budget.

1. Board games. Seriously guys we love 'em. It's a great way to have fun and bond. We have bought games new once in a blue moon after saving up holiday or family money we have budgeted BUT a great free  way to get games is to borrow them from friends or family. You can also find very cheap board games at the thrift store or yard sales. Along these same lines are doing a puzzle together, or play cards.

2. Spending time outdoors. Take advantage of your local parks, you help pay for them with your taxes so don't forget to use them :) We do all kinds of different outdoor activities. Take a hike, if you have small children try to make them a scavenger hunt sheet to take on the hike. Include things that are easy to find for littles like leaves, a bird, a squirrel, a flower. For older children you can make it more difficult looking for specific animals and plants. This is great for learning, exercise and fun!

Don't underestimate the simple joy of just taking a walk and talking.

You could try geocashing  read  all bout it here- https://www.geocaching.com/play.

Have a picnic. Food tastes so much better on a park bench, just trust me ;)

Don't forget to bring a ball and Frisbee to the park or your backyard and play some catch!!

Get out those bikes and go for a ride.

3. The library. Friends, I love the library. SO much. There are a ton of things to do there and they are all free! Eric and I even had a date at the library a couple weeks ago and I can't wait to do it again. Check and see what is going on at your local library. Ours have family movie nights, indoor play areas for kids, story time for kids, workshops and fun activities for teens and adults. Not to mention all those books, movies and music there!

4. Check out what your town or city has to offer. Become a tourist in your own town. Check out some historical sites, or a beach or river or pond, take a walk on another side of town you don't go to often. Find your city's website and see what free activities or festivals are going on, you might be surprised.Or check out the next town over :)

5. Dollar menu date, we do this more in winter. Make sure to give your family a big breakfast at home first. Make it a fun one have pancakes or waffles or whatever your family loves. Find a fast food place that has a indoor playground for the kids and get yourselves a cup of coffee. (I pack a few snacks for the kids shhhh don't tell!) let the kids play and enjoy your coffee.


6. Make a time capsule. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun. Find things that represent you and your family at this point in time. Take a picture of yourselves that day and include it in there. Make it as fun  or silly as you want. I buried a Twinkie.  Here is a video of us doing ours.

Remember money doesn't buy happiness or quality family time! You can make your own fun for free

or very cheap. What do you guys like to do for fun on a budget?

Practicing the Art of Contentment

We have been on this journey, this journey to debt free for almost a year now and have made very little progress. In fact we have actually racked up an extra 8000 in medical debt, but I am not mad, I am not ready to throw in the towel. I am thankful. That sounds weird, right? It's true. I am thankful that even though we have this medical debt we are all healthy and safe because we were able to get the care we needed.

I am thankful that we are on this debt free journey. We haven't paid a lot off, and while that is frustrating I am thankful that we are in a position where we can pay it off eventually. Slow and steady wins the race, every time.

Our house needs repair and it is certainly not the prettiest or biggest one on the block. The four of us live in 742 square feet and I am grateful for every single one of them. We have a roof over our heads and we can afford it, I am so thankful.

We don't have a lot of money to do things out of the house with our family and for that I am thankful. We have had the best quality time together as a family playing a board game or just talking and hanging out. When we do get to go and do things everyone is excited, happy and you guessed it thankful that we get to go out and do something together as a family. A family I could not be more grateful for.

God is great, look at your life and all he has given you. You may feel deprived while you are on this journey, but take a look around you. I betcha you can find 5 things you are so thankful to have in your life in a matter or minutes. Remember this isn't forever, it's for now and for now be thankful for what you do have and practice the art of contentment. It will make you feel better guaranteed.

We don't have the best of everything but we make the best of everything we have.