A Day With Xander

Yesterday I went to the museum with Xander, all day. I didn't work, I didn't blog, I didn't answer emails, I didn't vlog. I just focused on my newly 2 year old son.

It was the best day! We spent the day learning, talking and playing. I got to really focus on his voice and his little view of the world. We didn't rush through anything. I let him lead me to where he wanted to go, which was the African prairie display 9 out of 10 times.

                    

He was so excited to share with me his major love of all things Zebra. I was excited to listen to his squeals of joy and zebra facts he rattled off to me. "Zeeyas are black and white momma", "I love zeeyas" are the only facts he really can articulate, but  I appreciated them :D

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Time goes by so fast and I want to revel in every minute I have with my children. That's why I have decided that once a week I will spend unplugged, uninterrupted time with each of them. This day reminded me of just how important that is.

Do you spend unplugged, un-phoned time with your kids? What's your favorite thing to do with your kids?

Blowing Up The Log Jam

I was watching a video clip of Dave Ramsey's Radio show a couple weeks ago. (Did you know you can watch the radio broadcast live on daveramsey.com ? Or clips on youtube here ) The clip I was watching had a caller on the line asking Dave what he could do when he felt like he just couldn't get traction. He was making enough to just pay all the bills and minimum payments. Dave told him something has to give. You need to sell something or increase your income. He compared it to when loggers used to float logs down stream and they would all get so stuck, this is called a log jam. To get the logs moving again the loggers would have to use dynamite to blow up the log jam. Once the log jam was gone everything could keep flowing smoothly down river.


With my probable job loss (the company I work for is being sold) and having to save my income for now, we have our very own log jam. I keep having to pull some out of savings just to keep our payments (our gazelle intense payments) the same. So, I am having a hard time reaching our savings goal, which is 2500 dollars . The reason we chose 2,500 instead of the 1,000 dollars Dave Ramsey recommends is because we want to be prepared for a job loss and a possible big emergency at the same time. Our insurance deductibles for our house and car are both set to 2,500 to save us some money every month in the premium. If an emergency came up where we needed that deductible, we need to make sure we have it safe and sound in the bank. We need to do this as quickly as possible.


So, that is our log jam and here is how we are going to bust it! We are having a yard sale. A huge one. I have asked some friends to come and sell too. The reason I asked friends to come and sell is the more you have out there the more likely people are to stop and shop. I have been going through every nook and cranny of our house and boxing up anything that we no longer use, or barely use . If we barely use an item we can more than likely borrow that item from someone and don't really need to own it. As I have been going through our home I am realizing HOW MUCH STUFF we have. I wish I could go back and kick myself for every item I bought and never used or used once. I have 15 boxes and a couple garbage bags FULL of stuff, ready to be sold! I am pricing everything to move because we are not taking it back into our tiny home. Anything left will be donated. We are hoping to make a couple hundred bucks and blow up the log jam for good! All of the garage sale money should be going into savings. If we do make more than expected I will take a tiny bit out of the profits to do something fun with the family.

The Value of Memberships

Hey guys!! How are you?? We are plugging right along on our debt free journey, slow and steady wins the race.

I wanted to talk to you guys today about entertainment on a budget. One of our favorite ways to have fun and not spend a lot of dough is through memberships to different places. We actually have three of them and it has saved us tons of money! We always have a place to go to meet friends or take family from out of town. We have extra passes that came with each membership so we can take friends and family with us. Since we can invite them along we don't need to meet at a restaurant or any other place that would end up costing us extra, and since we can take a picnic along to each place, we save even more.

We have one for the zoo ; that we bought for Xander on his birthday. This zoo is so big! Instead of rushing around to see everything in one trip we now get to take our time and look at just a few animals a visit. We find many teachable moments at the zoo too. Xander (and even Hannah!) is learning so much and so fast.The zoo never really gets old either, because the animals are always doing different things!

We also have one to a beautiful nature center. I can't even tell you how nice it is to leave the city behind and take a walk in the woods when ever you want. Also, talk about learning opportunities! Xander is learning about trees, animals and plants and even how to catch frogs :D
There is also a serene beach. It's the prefect way to de-stress and unplug for a while. We don't bring our gadgets with us (except for my camera of course!) we just hike and enjoy the beauty of god's work.

The last one we have is for the  museum,.We buy this membership as a Christmas present to our family. We have been going to the museum for quite some time now (5 years) and it still isn't old! There is so much information in there I don't know if we will ever be able to see it and read it all!!We find this membership especially valuable in the loooong winter months in Wisconsin when it's too cold to be outside. It gives us a place to get out and walk and learn with out any extra money being spent.


We feel like with these 3 memberships we have the best of all worlds! We get to spend the whole day exploring different places and when we do the math it costs less than .50 a trip. That is hard to beat. Do you guys use memberships? What is your favorite way to spend your down time?

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?