Keeping up with the Jones'

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Money Saving #5:
Don't try to keep up with the Jones' and lower your standard of living (if necessary). Biggest way to get and stay out of money problems and debt is to live within your means. In many cases this means lowering your standard of living. Why should you have the best of the best like Mr. Jones down the street? Especially if you can't afford it. Reality is, Mr. Jones likely went into debt to get that "thing" anyways. And if he didn't, good for him and you need to get over it.

Okay, sounds harsh. But seriously, if we "needed" everything our friends have and everything we see on TV, and everything in the magazines..... then that is gonna get us in trouble. The lust for stuff affects everybody. "If only I had ____ then I would be happy." This is what we often say to ourselves, but it is a lie. Things cannot fulfill us. Only God can do that. And I'm pretty sure he could care less if our clothes were from Nordstrom or the Salvation Army. For me, I like organizing projects. For my hubby, he likes video games. For Mateo.... well he doesn't care about stuff yet. He'll play with an empty spool of ribbon and a big cardboard box. Oh, the innocence of a child. Unfortunately, he'll be corrupted by our culture eventually...but we will pray and try hard to teach him wise money management and to be generous.

Basically, be content with what you have. And no, I didn't make that up. It's one of my favorite verses in the bible. All good wisdom comes from the bible...God's word. Something I need to work on still.

⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
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A time for laughter

I've been thinking a lot lately about how these last couple months have been filled with a lot of restoration for my little family. I think of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 when it talks about how there is a time for everything.... verse 4 especially stood out to me:

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

We are definitely laughing and dancing, now. Our first year of parenting was not very fun and we both agree that we made it through only b/c of God's grace. While many parents were raving about how fun having a little baby was and how they were savoring that stage.... we were all too excited for it to pass. Different people have different experiences. For some reason, that only God knows, things happened as they happened and even though every trial is supposed to make us joyful, we certainly didn't feel that way. Sleep deprived, energy deprived, family and support deprived, etc. etc. We were drained.
But now we are thankful for this (hopefully longer) season of rest. This is a unique season when Mateo sleeps from 7pm-7am. When we have our evenings together. When I can be home full time taking care of my boys and the house and the errands, etc. When for the first time since I can remember I am not busy busy like a chicken with my head cut off. No more degrees to get. No more homework. Been there, done that! No more sitting behind a desk. No lesson planning, grading, meetings, etc. Granted, I am still working on trying to be a little less busy. I still tend to get myself over committed...but at least this time it's by choice and not b/c of a demanding job at a title 1 school.

For the first time since high school, I did a sewing project. I made curtains for the living room, Mateo's room, the office, and valances for the kitchen. We are finally finishing the unpacking in our house. I'm doing some post-pregnancy and baby-stage nesting if there is such a thing.
I'm able to be involved in ministry for the first time in a while. Teaching the kids at church has been a fun season of time.

I'm also trying to take care of myself. Chronic problems like my back and throat pain are getting addressed. Physical therapy...so nice. Finding out I'm allergic to a lot of things- like milk and sugar cane....not so nice, but still good to know ;)

Now I better not blink b/c this time might be over. But for now, with my wonderfully awesome husband, my (almost) 17 month old son, and our great God teaching us and leading us.... we are going to be thankful and enjoy these days. Life is not easy, but it's been an awesome change.

1 Peter 5:10 (English Standard Version)

¹⁰And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Value Villiage

Saving Money #4.....shopping second hand.
OK, so yesterday there was a 50% off sale at Value Village. Since Aaron had the day off, he took care of Mateo and I snuck out early to do some shopping. Now in my opinion, Value Village is pretty spendy for second hand clothes, but with the 50% sale, there are good deals for sure. Here is what I scored for me and Mateo:


For Mateo: two onesies, four long-sleeved shirts, footie PJs, and a pair of shoes!



For me: three pairs of jeans, a pair of jean shorts, a jean skirt, exercise pants, and three shirts.

How much did I spend?
$42.50

YES! It's true. For the price of a pair of jeans at the mall, I got a ton of stuff for us. Hooray. I needed more jeans and I find second hand shopping a great way for me to stretch our dollar.

I have liked buying second hand clothes ever since college when I started buying my own clothes. Back then I made, what $6.50 an hour or something like that?? When you start to think of how many hours you'd have to work to buy a clothing item, it definitely makes you think differently!

Now I haven't always been this way. When I was a kid I HATED going into the Goodwill. I thought it "smelled funny". My sister was the one who wanted all the fancy brands of clothing that we couldn't afford (remember Guess Jeans?!). So we'd go find them at the second hand stores. But I was a pain. Not any more. Ya, second hand stores might smell a little funny, but you can find great clothes that (at least for people the size of me and Mateo) were most likely given away b/c the person outgrew it...not b/c something was the matter with it. I guess that's one good thing about being puny.

I'll admit it does take some humbling, but for me I've never really had to desire to have certain brands of clothing or to have the nicest stuff. Something that feels comfortable is good. Especially now that I'm not working, I spend most of my day playing on the floor with Mateo and crawling around in his fort with him, haha.

Lastly, I know that shopping second hand for me is only half out of necessity. Even when I got my first teaching job, I still preferred to buy second hand. When Aaron and I were both working full time, I preferred second hand. I just don't' like spending lots of money on clothes. I preferred using money for other things like paying off my car, saving for a house, or say going to HAWAII!!.

One big thing that solidified this for me was my first mission trip to Mexico and seeing the great poverty that they lived in where we were serving. You can't come back from that and not be changed. I'll will have to write a post about that a different time.

Grocery Store and Mateo

Saving Money #3

So a few months ago I become frustrated that we kept going over on what we'd allotted for our grocery budget. We have a little bit of squiggle room in the budget, so it wasn't like an emergency- but it was still something I felt I needed to tweak. So that's when I started doing the couponing, and I started also just brainstorming.

How do YOU save money at the grocery store? I wanna know!

I would love more ideas. Everything I came up with requires more time which may be difficult for the full time worker, but I'm trying to swing it. Here is what I have tried so far....

1. I no longer buy baby carrots. I buy a cheap 2 lb bag of carrots for like 78 cents and peel them and slice them up myself. Easy, right? It's also cheaper and I think they taste better.

2. We started shredding our own cheese (Oh, that's what the cheese grater is for....) and buying block cheese unless there is a good sale on shredded. I am also thinking of not buying string cheese any more since the price per ounce is a lot higher. Though yesterday I got a pack for half off with a coupon ( I love coupons! ) but without a coupon it's more expensive than a block cheese. I just use the cheese slicer and slice a bunch of slices for sandwiches or Mateo's snacks.

3. I love the bulk section at WinCo. I buy a lot of things in there like rice, beans, nuts, spices, etc. I have found it to be cheaper than buying a bag of the item. Especially spices!! I buy the tiny plastic spice containers and some of the spice and voila!

I'm not going to make everything from scratch, but a few extra prep tasks can make a difference.


On a side note.... despite the tantrums, short naps, and picky eating, and just pure ankle biting tendencies, ..... Mateo is a lot of fun. I'm so lucky to get to be with him every day. I say that today, b/c it has been a pretty decent day. Tomorrow I may say, "Get me out of here!!!!!!" He's starting to "pretend" play more and it's been pretty cute to just see how he's interacting differently with kids at play group and at the gym kid watch. He was feeding the stuffed bear "milk" from this little tiny bottle, giving it kisses, and moving his hand and saying "hi".
We built a cardboard fort out of a gigantic box downstairs. Actually, Grandpa made it for him :) It even has a skylight and a window. It's pretty fun.

That said, it is often challenging to occupy a one year old with Mateo's temperament. He's not a naturally independent child. We try to train him to be a little more independent and play by himself a little more, but he just seems to want a lot of snuggles and interaction. That's why I love love love that I have a gym membership this year. The ladies there LOVE him and he really seems to love them back. Especially if they have a ball. Mateo loves balls. SO I get an hour sans baby to exercise, and Mateo gets attention by somebody new and gets to play with new toys. Lifesaver. And did I mention that the gym has cable? :-)

Coupons

Saving Money #2

The last couple of months I have been learning and doing the "extreme couponing" thing. My favorite site thus far to help is.... http://thekrazycouponlady.com/ They are, of course, on facebook too! I also like http://dealseekingmom.com/.

Basically, it's combining different types of coupons on sale items to get them for cheap (and sometimes FREE!) Looking at our budget for the month of September compared to October, I wanted to see how much of a difference in spending there was in the categories of toiletries and groceries. I did a LOT of shopping in October. Turns out.... we spent just $15 less in October than in September. Doesn't' seem like much of a difference, but by spending a little less, I was also able to stock up on all those things in the picture below



So as you can see.... I have a year plus supply of whole wheat spaghetti and pasta, body wash for Aaron, dish soap, and dental floss (in the red box). I'm hoping that as I learn new tricks and get better that we will eventually be spending even less. But I'm happy with it so far.

I will admit I was very skeptical at first b/c there is the reputation of extreme couponing on food to be only on the unhealthy processed stuff. And much of it is. You just have to be strategic to find coupons and sales on the things your family uses and eats. I decided to focus more on toiletries to start with since I found food to be a bit harder.

I was also skeptical b/c I've been a WinCo shopper ever since I started doing my own grocery shopping. You'd never find me doing my grocery shopping at Safeway. It's expensive!! WinCo has the lowest prices. UNLESS....and here's what I'm learning. WinCo has the lowest prices....unless....you can find something on sale at another store and also use a coupon on it.

SO yes, this is more work. You actually have to pay attention to the ads and clip some coupons. I don't know that I would have the time and energy to do as much as I have if I was teaching full time. But regardless of whether you work 2 jobs, 1 job, part time, or are home full time.....I think most everybody is looking to save a little money. And coupons can help.

One of my favorite deals this last month was the Nivea body wash that I got for Aaron. He loves body wash, but it is expensive. There was a $3.00 off of one coupon and they were on sale for $2.50. This means...that the product is FREE!! Now since I only had one paper, you can actually go and get extra coupons from newspapers on eBay. Since you can't legally buy coupons, you are technically paying couponing services. Crazy, huh? So that's how I have about 40 boxes of pasta that I paid 13 cents each. And why I got 20 packs of dental floss for free.

Another nice thing about having your "stockpile" of items you've gotten for free or inexpensive....is that you have some extra to give away when you know of people who need it. And it's not a huge financial burden b/c things in your stockpile were bought at the lowest prices you know of. So being generous is fun :)

Budget Smarts

I am back to e-blogger! The thing I liked about Xanga is no longer available- so here I am.


Saving Money #1

I've decided to write about budgets and saving money for a while. I find the topic very important. It's very near to my heart. I'm not sure quite yet WHY it is, but it is. I see so many people hurting financially. I hurt with them. I see so many moms that want to stay home but can't. My heart breaks with them. Of course there are plenty of moms that DON'T want to and I can see why. Believe me. I can see why someone wouldn't want to do that, hehe. But for some reason, I do. And many other women do, too. Yes, there are moms who are the sole provider or are single, etc. But there is a small part of me that thinks that more moms (that want to) could stay home if they made some changes in how they used their money.

For me it isn't that hard b/c I've always been a saver. When my sister and I were kids, we would get Christmas money from Grandma. I would save mine. She would spend hers. I don't know why, but part of me is naturally frugal and a saver. I'm being honest when I think that's just how God designed me.

When Aaron and I got married, we set up a computerized budget not long after. It was good and really interesting to see where we were spending our money. You can categorize your budget however you want and there are a lot of options. Some of our categories are groceries, gas,savings, eating out, utilities, toiletries, rent (then mortgage), etc. Some new categories we've added recently are a BABYSITTING fund b/c it really is nice to get out of the house just the two of us a couple times a month and since we don't have family in town, we have to pay a sitter. We also added a hospitality fund for hosting things or bringing food to events so it didn't seem like a burden and was more of a privilege. I got that idea at a women's conference recently.

Regardless of what categories one chooses, the important thing is to know how you're spending your money. Look at your income, then allocate money to bills and different areas accordingly. If you do this, you aren't spending money you don't have. It can keep you from falling into the trap of our country and going into DEBT!! I hate that word. Debt really is restrictive. If you want to be a SAHM (Stay at home mom) or just want to stop being mastered by your finances, get out of debt ASAP! Start a budget!

Take into consideration that I am ultra conservative with money at times. Not always, but in some sense, yes. Which is good b/c Aaron works hard to bring home a paycheck every month and I work hard to spend it wisely! And when I was working and we lived in our apartment, we tried to live off of just one income in preparation for having a baby and save as much as possible. God has really blessed us us.
That said, If I had a debt to pay off (college, car, credit card, etc.), I think I'd rather go without certain things (like cable, smart phones, nice clothes, new danskos, a trip to Japan, etc.) and put that money towards the debt. I know, I'm WEIRD!! A very low percentage of people would actually do this. But what if....... people really did this??

What if we lived within our means?!?! Imagine what could happen. Interesting concept. More to come. This is one of my favorite verses in regards to how God would have us use our money:

"Honor the Lord with your wealth. With the first fruits of all your crops; then your bars will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine." Proverbs 3:9-10

What does honoring the Lord with your money mean? Could be different for each person. Not something I can tell you. But I think I know what it looks like for us right now and we continue to pray to be wise stewards of our resources and money.