Living Like No One Else

Help! How do we cut our budget when there’s nothing left to cut?

by Crystal on May 08, 2013

My husband and I have been trying to live as cheaply as possible, and almost every article I read on the subject recommends cutting back. What can I cut back on when I don’t feel like I have anything to spend?

We don’t watch tv, don’t pay for internet, and don’t rent movies. We can’t afford to eat out, and the only dates we go on are funded by a change jar. The debt we have is his college loans, which are over $31k. The interest rate is 6.8%, which means we aren’t seeming to get anywhere on it.

We don’t buy new clothes, or get our hair done. His mom feeds us as often as she can, and we don’t need to buy much milk, meat or eggs. What more is there to cut back on? -Ambrosia

When I read your note, my heart hurt for you. I well remember the law school days when money was tighter than tight and it felt like we were never going to make any financial traction.

It’s hard when you feel like there aren’t any other corners you can cut and yet you are still stuck. Here’s my advice:

1. Focus on the Progress You Are Making

There is always something you can do — even if it’s as simple as learning a new way to stretch beans and rice, playing the drugstore game, or taking surveys online to earn money. Often, you can’t do a lot to change your financial situation overnight, but focus on what you can do and it will help you stay empowered and inspired.

Giving into hopelessness and despair will never get you anywhere, but it will make you feel powerless and stuck. And when you decide to give up, your chances of actually getting back up on your feet again are pretty slim.

Also, be encouraged! Your sacrifices and careful money management are actually doing quite a lot for you as they are keeping you from getting mired in a much deeper financial mess. While $31,000 in debt feels massive to you, many people would love to be in your shoes instead of dealing with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt they’ve accumulated.

2. Keep Cultivating Contentment

Now, more than ever, you have the opportunity to choose to bloom where you are planted. Challenge yourself to keep a gratitude journal and write down at least three blessings every day. This will help you to weather the difficult days and weeks — and will remind you that even though life may be hard, there is much to be thankful for.

Looking for more encouragement and inspiration? Check out my article on 16 Ways to Become More Content.

3. Find Ways to Increase Your Income

The easiest way to dig out of this hole you find yourself in is to give yourself a bigger income to help shovel yourself out more quickly. This will benefit you not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term as it may allow you to completely change your financial situation within the next five years.

This is exactly what happened with us. When Jesse was in law school, we were determined to stay out of debt and I really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. So when we found out we were expecting our first baby, I kicked into overdrive and started researching and trying everything possible to make my dream of staying home a reality.

It wasn’t easy — in fact, there were many months when I worked too many hours and made very, very little for all my time and effort. But it eventually paid off in great measure as I landed upon this thing called blogging, started MoneySavingMom.com and eventually turned it into a business that earned enough for me to make more than a full-time income and to pay for a wonderful team to work for me, too.

Read the whole series of my journey to becoming a work-at-home mom here.

There are a thousand and one ways to bring in extra income. Start researching, experimenting, learning, and putting forth a lot of time and effort and you’ll likely land upon something that works well for you. It won’t be an overnight success, but if you persevere, I’m certain you’ll find some things that will bring in extra income.

What advice do the rest of you have for Ambrosia and others in her shoes?

photo from Big Stock

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Yesterday’s Mud Experience & Why You Should Always Watch Where You Walk

by Crystal on April 29, 2013

Yesterday, we went to a nearby nature trail for a picnic lunch after church. It had rained Friday and Saturday, so the ground was still wet and muddy in places.

But it was a beautiful spring day and we couldn’t resist, despite the mud. We walked the nature trail, observed animals tracks, discussed bird calls, walked down by the river and found shells, and just enjoyed the quiet, peace, and fun family outing.

When it was time to go, we found a short cut across the field to get back to the parking lot. A lot of people were taking this route and so we followed suit.

There were lots of muddy places on the short cut route, so we kept reminding the kids over and over not to step in the mud. Things were going well until about halfway to the car when one child forgot to look where they were going and stepped right into a mud hole.

They had trouble getting their shoes out from the strong suction of the mud. When they finally did, they had mud all over their shoes and feet and were pretty upset about the whole thing.

The mud slowed them down considerably and us, in turn. Then, we had to spend a long time wiping everything up with baby wipes (the only thing we had!) when we made it back to our car.

It was all good in the end and, once the mud was cleaned up, this child’s attitude lightened considerably. So the fun day was salvaged, in spite of the mud experience.

While we were dealing with all the mud, I kept thinking about the life analogies that it contained. How many times in our adult lives do we get distracted and not pay attention to where we’re going and all of a sudden end up in a muddy mess?

This is especially true when it comes to our finances: we can make a plan for our finances, but then we get busy and we take our eyes off of the path we’d mapped out. We get distracted, we become undisciplined, we let our good habits slip.

Little bit by little bit, we start veering off the path. And then, all of a sudden we can find ourselves stuck in financial mud and frustrated that we didn’t notice we were walking right into it.

The moral of the story? Keep watching where you’re walking.

Have accountability in place so that you’re constantly checking the path (your financial or life goals) to make sure you’re not getting way off course. Those little course corrections will keep you from ending up mired in a mucky mess.

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52 Different Ways to Save at Least $100 Per Year: Use Cloth Diapers {Week 11}

by Crystal on March 20, 2013

At the beginning of every week in 2013, I’ll be sharing a different way you can save $100 this year. If you do all of these things, you’ll be able to save over $5,000 this year alone! Many of these things will likely be things you’re already doing, but hopefully all of you will pick up at least a few new ideas or some inspiration from this series.

We talked about eliminating disposable products earlier in this series, but I wanted talk more extensively about cloth diapering in a stand-alone post. Why? Because you can fairly easily save $100+ per year just by eliminating disposable diapers completely — or even just partially.

However, making the switch to cloth diapering is a big decision and not one to rush into without some thought and research. It’s a commitment of time and energy and it’s also usually a financial commitment. But it can pay off in fairly big dividends.

Our Cloth-Diapering Story

When Kathrynne was born, Jesse was in law school and our budget was extremely tight. I had wondered how we were going to afford diapers.

Well, we didn’t end up having to worry about it at all because shortly after Kathrynne was born, some good friends of ours called us up out of the blue and generously said they wanted to give us an entire set of Fuzzi Bunz diapers. We were overwhelmed at their kindness and enthusiastically accepted their offer.

We exclusively cloth-diapered Kathrynne and loved it… plus, we saved so much money. In fact, I don’t know how we would have ever afforded to buy disposable diapers since there were many weeks in those days when we struggled to just pay for our food and rent.

When Kaitlynn was born 2 and 1/2 years later, we planned to cloth diaper her as well. However, she was extremely allergic to every cloth diaper and diaper we tried. I was determined to make it work, but after a few months and many, many severe diaper rashes, I finally concluded that she could only use Pampers.

Gratefully, by this time, I had discovered the Drugstore Game and was able to work in Pampers purchases to my overage (that was back in the good old days when overage was a whole lot easier to come by at CVS!).

What Are the Cloth Diapering Options?

There are many, many different cloth diaper options out there. I recommend researching them all so you understand the lingo. For a basic primer, check out these two articles: Having a Baby Without Breaking the Bank: Cloth Diapering and Cloth Diapering 101.

There are many different ways to build your cloth diaper stash other than buying them brand-new yourself:

Ask for Cloth Diapers for Gifts — If you’re a first-time mom and you’re planning to cloth diaper, asking for cloth diapers as gifts for your baby showers might be an option for you.

Buy Used — Check Craigslist, garage sales, eBay, and online diaper forums for used cloth diapers. This might not be appealing to some people, but it is an option.

Make Your Own — If you’re handy with a sewing machine (unlike me!), I’ve heard it’s fairly simple to make your own cloth diapers.

Get Creative — Willing to think outside the box a little? Check out these two articles: How to Cloth Diaper for Practically Free and Start Cloth Diapering at Home for $20 (no sewing required).

How Much Can You Save?

How much you save by cloth-diapering will vary a great deal depending upon how many children you have, what kind of diapers you buy, how much you’d usually pay for disposable diapers (if you read this blog and print coupons, you likely pay a lot less per disposable diaper than many people do!), how much your water and electricity costs, whether you line-dry your diapers or not, and so forth.

However, regardless of your situation, I can fairly safely say that you will save at least $100 per year by using cloth diapers at least half the time. And there’s a good possibility that you’ll save significantly more than that if you cloth diaper exclusively, don’t have high electricity and water costs, and use your diapers for more than one child.

BabyWorks has some interesting statistics and stories on how much you can save by cloth diapering. You can also read some of my readers’ answers to this question. And here’s a breakdown of a number of different diaper costs from Diaper Decisions.

Save Even More By Making Your Own Cloth Wipes

If you’re already cloth-diapering, it’s really simple to use cloth wipes, too. With Kathrynne, I just used baby washcloths and water. However, if you want something a little more handy, you can Make Homemade Reusable Baby Wipes.

Related: My Journey to Cloth Diapers

Have you tried cloth-diapering? If so, what tips and suggestions do you have to add to my post?

photo credit; photo credit; photo credit; photo credit

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Does TV-watching increase your spending?

by Crystal on March 20, 2013

I found this quote on Dave Ramsey’s Pinterest Board and thought it was very interesting. Do you agree or disagree with it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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By Getting Our Finances in Order, We Were Able to Say “Yes” to Adoption

by Crystal on March 12, 2013

Testimonial from Beka of Unconventional Homemaker

My husband and I were married in 2005 and kept two separate checking accounts for our two separate incomes. My husband knew there must be a better way to handle money — so being his frugal man, he went to the library and found a little book by Dave Ramsey called Priceless.

It was the shortest book we’d ever read! Yet it got us on the same page and gave us new ideas. We immediately combined our bank accounts, like any married couple should do, and sat down to do our very first budget.

We went to the bank, filled our envelopes with cash, and started our game-plan using the cash envelope system.

By Getting on a Budget, We “Found” an Extra $300 Per Month

With that very first month of budgeting, we found an extra $300 we didn’t even know we had! Since we had already cleaned up the couple of tiny debts we had, we figured we might as well put that $300 as an extra principal payment on our mortgage. Might as well pay that 15-year loan off in 12!

It didn’t stop there though, we kept putting extra money on our mortgage, month after month after month. The snowball effect started happening to us! We saw that our mortgage could be paid off in 10 years… then 9… then 7.5!

Three Years of Sacrifices Was Completely Worth It

We began selling anything and everything on Craigslist and putting every dime (after giving) from bonuses straight onto that puppy. You know what? From the start of that very first budget until the mortgage was paid off in 2009, was just three years!

Three short years of sacrifice — minimal restaurants, older cars, tightwad vacations, thrift store shopping, garage sale hunting — and we were done with all our debt. Praise God!

Some people might not want to sacrifice for three years, but honestly, it was the best time of our lives. We had fun teaming up together and finding the cheapest ways to live. It was a blast and we’ll never forget the memories we made by doing it.

We’re Debt Free!!

You ought to have heard my “We’re Debt Free” call on The Dave Ramsey Show, I was over-the-top enthusiastic and also a total corn ball. It was amazing! (I must just turn really corny when I talk to Dave, because a few years later we stopped at his office to meet him and right when he came out I yelled, “Cheeeee-tahhh!”)

People often want to know what life looks like for us since we have no mortgage, no debt. The obvious differences are that we are able to give a lot more money away to those in need. That’s definitely the best part of not being tied down to payments every month. Secondly, we’re able to invest heavily in our retirement and our children’s educational funds. The third thing we were doing was saving up to buy a rental property.

But then it happened… In September 2012, God, in an enormous way, opened our eyes and our hearts to adoption. We already have three biological children but it pained us so bad to know that there are little ones going to bed with no one to tuck them in at night. There are nearly 150 million orphans suffering while we live in our 2,000 square-foot warm home. Surely we can take just one.

Saying “Yes” to Adoption

So we stepped out in faith and said “Yes. Yes, we will take in a little one who has no hope. Yes, we will give of ourselves to raise this little one. Yes, yes, yes!”

If we had not paid off our mortgage and built up our savings to buy a rental, we may not have said “Yes” to adoption. Of course, finances should not be the main concern when considering adoption (there are grants, scholarships, fundraising, and many other possibilities out there), but our situation sure did put us in an easy position to say “yes”.

Two weeks after we started the process to adopt, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Oh, we didn’t even talk about how we’re going to pay for this, did we? I guess we’re getting a child before we get a rental!”

Thanks to starting that budget, sticking with it every single month, and letting God tug on our hearts, we’ll be traveling to China this fall to pick up our little boy! An orphan no more!

Beka is a homeschooling mom of three (almost 4!) children ages 5, 3, and 1; their 2 1/2 year old boy will be joining their family this fall. She blogs at Our Eternal Treasures about their upcoming adoption and at Unconventional Homemaker about wholesome living.

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52 Different Ways to Save $100 This Year: Ditch Your Cable Package {Week 3}

by Crystal on January 22, 2013

At the beginning of every week in 2013, I’ll be sharing a different way you can save $100 this year. If you do all of these things, you’ll be able to save over $5,000 this year alone! Many of these things will likely be things you’re already doing, but hopefully all of you will pick up at least a few new ideas or some inspiration from this series.

You knew it was coming… I just couldn’t write a series on ways to save $100 or more per year without going there.

Yup, we’re talking about ditching cable TV this week.

Some of you are thinking, “Of course. We ditched cable a long time ago.” Or maybe you’re like us and you’ve never even had cable.

But others of you are clinging pretty tightly to your cable package and hoping that you can find a way to justify keeping it. :)

How Much is Cable Really Costing You?

Well, if you need a little motivation to consider ditching or downsizing your cable package, how about you do something for me, okay?

Go get your latest cable bill. Yes, go get it — or look it up online. See how much you’re spending per month and multiply that by 12. That big number you’re seeing? That’s how much you’d save per year by giving up cable.

Stop and consider what you could do with that kind of money if you weren’t sending it into the cable company every month.

Now, every cable package is different, so I can’t tell you exactly how much you’d save, but I took a poll on Facebook over the weekend and do you know what the average amount people were spending on cable TV per month is? More than $46.

That’s over $550 per year. Multiply $46 per month over five years and you’d come up with $2,760 in savings.

That’s no small potatoes we’re talking about here!

And some people are spending more like $68 per month. That translates to spending $816 per year or $4,080 over five years!

What Could You Do With the Time You’re Spending Watching TV?

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I believe Americans, in general, could survive just fine without watching as much TV as they do. In fact, I think many Americans would be much more fulfilled, more active, healthier, and happier if they spent less time sitting in front of the tube for a few hours or more per day.

I hear so many people lament their lack of time to pursue their dreams or start a business. And yet most people seem to find plenty of time to watch their favorite shows. Is there possibly a disconnect there?

Less TV watching not only frees up more time and encourages you to be more active, it also brings less of the consumerism mentality into your home. If you’re not watching all of those commercials, you don’t know what “amazing” things you “need” to buy! This, in turn, can help you become more content — all while saving a hefty amount of money, too!

Three Alternatives to Paying for Cable

Now, hear me out, I’m not saying you can’t ever enjoy a TV show. We have a few we enjoy watching occasionally and I think some of the things on TV can be educational or clean family entertainment (though the commercials sometimes ruin the “clean” part unfortunately! :( )

However, we have found ways to watch TV without having to pay for it (other than our monthly Netflix bill). Here’s a guest post that Jenae from I Can Teach My Child wrote in 2011 on three alternatives to cable that I thought was so helpful that I’d just post it in its entirety here…

There are so many alternatives to paying lots of money for cable each month. Here are three we’ve found to be helpful for our family.

High-Definition Antenna

What if I told you that you could still watch most of your favorite shows for free? ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS and even a few other random channels can all be received for free in most areas* with a high-definition antenna. After a little upfront cost, you can watch these channels for the rest of your life. All you need is a converter box (if your TV does not already have an HDTV tuner — every new TV has one) and a high-definition antenna (which can go in your attic, wall or outside).

High-definition antennas range from $40-$150. You can purchase them at your local home-improvement store (Lowe’s or Home Depot). You can also go here for more information and to purchase one as well. And if you’re really handy (or you know someone who is), you can supposedly even make your own HDTV antenna for less than $10! It might be worth a shot!

If you own a TV that was manufactured after July 1, 2007, it should already have an HDTV tuner. You only need a converter box if your analog TV is older than that. Converter Boxes start at $40 and go up from there. Go here and here for a few converter box options.

*I realize that good reception depends in large part due to where you live. If this isn’t an option for you, you could still opt for the cheapest plan from your cable or satellite provider and implement the other two suggestions.

Netflix & Redbox

Many of you know that you can receive unlimited DVDs in the mail for about $10 a month from Netflix. But did you also know that they have thousands of movies on instant play as well? We’ve watched entire series of very popular shows instantly. You can stream it to a Blu-Ray player, XBox or Wii, or you can just watch it on your computer. Netflix is also a great resource for children’s television shows. The best part is that there are no commercials.

Redbox (a $1-per-night video rental kiosk that can be found outside many McDonald’s, Walgreens, and Walmarts locations) offers at least one free rental each month (usually the first Monday of every month) when you create an account on their website.

Borrow

Libraries are not only a great resource for books, most libraries also have movies as well! And the best part is that it’s free! You can browse most titles on your library’s website. Another option is to borrow movies from friends.

We’ve gone without cable for our entire married life (almost seven years). At first, we simply couldn’t afford cable and opted for bunny ears. Now that our income has increased and we could afford if we really wanted to, we still choose not to. We enjoy enough television and movie time without spending all that money every month!

Jenae is a wife, mother of two boys’ ages 3 and 15 months, and former first-grade teacher. She loves spending time with her family and sharing fun and educational activities for young children on her website, I Can Teach My Child.

There are also options like Amazon Prime and Hulu to check out now, too! For more ideas, check out Amy’s post on How to Ditch Your Cable Bill.

By the way, if you have sports fans at your house, you’ve got to check out this piece on A Coach Without Cable. Thought-provoking stuff!

photos from Big Stock

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How to Celebrate a Wonderful Christmas — Even if You Don’t Have Any Money

by Crystal on December 01, 2012

I was honored to be featured on DaveRamsey.com sharing about how our family learned to have a wonderful Christmas — even when we didn’t have any money to spend. Here’s a snippet from the article:

I’ll never forget December 2004.

My husband and I had been married for almost two years, I was nine months pregnant with our first baby, and we were living on a beans and rice budget. There was not a penny left for Christmas presents that year.

When we got married, we committed together to an audacious goal: to go through law school debt free. The goal sounded cool on paper, but let me tell you—living it out wasn’t so easy.

Beans and rice got old really quickly. Driving a very used vehicle that occasionally wouldn’t start at all wasn’t fun. Not being able to afford to even shop at the thrift store was hard.

Read the full article.

Would you do me a huge favor? If you liked the article, would you take a few seconds to share the article on Facebook, Twitter, or click here to repin it on Pinterest? Thank you so much!

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31 Ways to Earn Extra Cash Before Christmas: Flipping the Coin (Day 31)

by Crystal on November 22, 2012

We’ve talked about a lot of ways to earn extra cash before Christmas in this series. Many of you have written in and shared stories via email how you’ve implemented the ideas successfully! That makes me so happy to hear!

Before we close off this series, though, I wanted to end by talking about the flipside of earning extra cash. Because it is even more important than earning extra cash when you have a strapped budget.

The Flipside: Managing the Money You Already Have

If you earn more money, but you don’t manage it well, your bottom line isn’t going to change. Instead, you’ll just end up spending more than you used to — and no financial traction will be gained.

If you’re struggling financially, can I encourage you to first focus on getting on a written budget and maximizing the mileage of the money you already have before you go out and try to make more money? Not only will this help you to achieve better financial traction if your income increases, but you might find out that you don’t need a pay increase in the first place — you just need to manage what you already have!

The Best Way to Save Money: Stop Spending It

I’ve got a surefire, proven method to help you save more money. This method has been concocted from years of my own personal experience and years of observing other people’s money management.

It’s very simple: Just. Stop. Spending. It.

It works every time. :)

Yes, you definitely need to spend money on necessities like making sure everyone has warm clothes to wear, food in their bellies, and a roof over their heads. But beyond that, there’s very little that we actually need to survive.

There are many things that make survival more comfortable or enjoyable, but when we boil it down, many of these things would be considered incredible extravagances to most of the world.

Our culture is constantly sending us messages that we “need” this or that. Tune out those messages and train yourself to focus on the blessings you already have. Buying more stuff might give you short-term enjoyment, but it will never satisfy you long-term.

Two Things to Do Before Trying to Increase Your Income

If you’re feeling financially strapped this Christmas, make sure you’re already doing these two things before you put time and energy into increasing your income:

1) Commit to getting on a budget and sticking with it. It’ll be the best Christmas present you’ve ever given yourself and your family.

2) Be content with what you already have. “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”

I’ll be posting a lot of the best deals I find this weekend to help you save money on Christmas presents, but I want you to keep these things in mind before you buy anything. Evaluate every purchase to make sure it’s a good deal for you and your gift recipient. Don’t buy something if you’re not completely sure that it’s going to work or if it’s not in the budget, okay?

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Is it possible for us to live on $460 a week?

by Crystal on September 18, 2012

I have been following your site for a few years now. I have a pretty difficult question for you. My husband is a youth pastor and makes $460 per week. We have three children with one on the way.

We want to save and budget better but don’t know how to on such a small amount. We do not have cable, or internet at home and the only thing we do that we do extra is eat out due to our crazy ministry schedule. Any help or suggestions would be AMAZING!!! -A very stressed wife

My heart goes out to you in the stress you’re experiencing! I wish I could hug you in person and tell you it’s going to be okay.

You might have some tough days ahead of you, but you are going to survive. So don’t lose hope, okay? That’s the first step to your success.

Here are some practical ideas and suggestions that I thought of for your particular situation:

1) Get On a Strict Written Budget

It’s easy to feel discouraged when you only have a little bit of income coming in, but I know many, many families who are surviving on $460 per week or quite a bit less. So it is entirely possible.

But a budget is imperative. Even if you feel like you don’t have enough coming in, you need to maximize the mileage of every penny you’ve got and a budget is the best way to do that.

I highly recommend reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. Your library should have a copy. It will walk you step-by-step through the basics of setting up and sticking with a written budget.

2) Prioritize Your Basic Necessities

Once you have your budget put together (and I’d heartily encourage you to sit down and get it done by this weekend, if at all possible), really go over it with a fine-toothed comb and consider what your basic necessities are. These will be things like food, shelter, transportation, and clothing.

What are the barebones payments/purchases that you must make to survive? Make these items your top priority in the budget before considering spending money on anything that is a non-necessity.

Often, when you strip your budget down to the barebones, you’ll realize that you actually have more wiggle room than you first thought you did. And that’s always an encouraging thing!

3) Cut Everything You Can Possibly Cut

Taking the time to consider and determine your basic necessities will prepare you for this step: to cut out as many expenses as you can. It sounds like you’ve already cut many things — like cable and internet — but you could definitely cut out eating out, as painful as it may be.

Find creative ways to make meals at home more doable by using the crockpot, having freezer foods and snacks at-the-ready, and prepping ahead for the week on the weekends. It’s not a fun proposition to give up eating out, but remind yourself that it’s a short-term sacrifice you are making for the good of your family’s budget and for long-term success.

4) Experiment With Ways to Bring In Additional Income

If you can carve out a few extra hours each week, put these toward doing things to increase your income. Sell anything you have that you don’t need on Craigslist, eBay, or in a garage sale. Look into the possibility of doing house-cleaning, teaching classes, or babysitting. If all else fails, there’s always the option of getting a newspaper route.

I encourage you to read The Other 8 Hours and 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think if you’re feeling like you just don’t have any extra moments in your week to put toward income-earning possibilities.

5) Don’t Give Up Hope

As I said in the beginning, your attitude will make or break this situation.  A can-do, committed, creative attitude will take you worlds further than a frustrated, complaining attitude will. And I promise you’ll enjoy the ride a lot more, too.

Choose to bloom where you’re planted — even if it feels like it’s among thorns!

What advice do the rest of you have for this reader? Please chime in with encouragement and practical tips in the comments!

photo from Big Stock

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Now That We Have More Money, We Spend Less

by Crystal on August 30, 2012

Testimony from Carolynn of My Little Bit of Life

We took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University in January of 2007 and are very pleased with our efforts. We have finished Baby Step #3 and are currently working on saving up for a down payment on a bigger house.

However, I was thinking the other day of how my mindset has changed over these past five years.

Our Old Mindset: Buy Whatever We Want or Think We Need

Appearances used to mean a lot more to me. I do still care, but in different ways… and honestly, not as much.

I did not grow up with good financial role modeling. Growing up, if I wanted something, I usually got it. If my mom thought we needed it, we got it. It didn’t matter if it was really a need or even if there was money for it.

After I got married, I brought this mindset with me. If I wanted new workout shoes, I bought them. I spent tons of money on groceries for two people and we ate out a lot more than we should have.

When we got pregnant, we bought a house (I wanted to get a house for the amount that the bank would loan to us. Thankfully, my husband put this foot down, and we got a house that was $55K less than what the bank would loan us!), and of course when the baby came, he had to have everything.

Before long baby #2 came along and I was close to having to buy groceries using a credit card. That’s when we went to Financial Peace University and started turning our lives (and little did we know, our minds and values, too!) around.

Our New Mindset: Consider Whether Each Purchase is Truly a Need

Now, before we make a purchase — especially a big purchase — we think about if it’s really a need and if it’s really worth it to us to part with our hard earned money. For example, my husband got into a car accident and the car got banged up pretty bad (the hood was bent up). My husband got home, hooked the car to our tow hitch and pulled the hood back down, then took a piece of wood, placed it in certain spots on the car, and used a hammer to even out the rest.

There is also a hole in the front. This happened about six months ago, and we still haven’t gotten the car fixed. It works just fine, it just doesn’t look pretty! (Five years ago, I would have been very adamant about getting it fixed right away!)

Having pictures taken of my kids and family is very important to me. I sometimes go overboard when it comes to pictures and it can add up fast; not only on the pictures themselves, but the outfits that the pictures are taken in.

This past Christmas, we were getting our family picture taken. I had already bought all of the outfits for my children. I found a shirt for me that I really liked and that went perfectly with the other outfits. I also found a sweater for my husband that was a perfect match to one of our son’s outfits.

The only problem: This sweater was over $50. My husband hates sweaters, he never wears them, and I have to bribe him to wear them for pictures. He also had another sweater (that he had only worn once), up in the closet that would work for our family picture. As much as I really wanted to buy him the sweater, I didn’t.

I didn’t want to spend that much money for something that he’d never wear again, that would be stashed in the back of the closet, when I could just go to the back of his closet and get another sweater that would suffice. (This also would not have happened five years ago. I would have just bought the sweater!)

The Irony: Now That We Have More Money, We Spend Less

I find it ironic that when we didn’t have the money, these things were so important and I would have gone ahead and bought them. Now that we have the money for these things, we didn’t buy them.

I find it amazing how much I have changed in five years when it comes to finances. I no longer agonize about money, I handle it. I no longer check how much money we have in our checking account five times a day (as if it gets updated that often, I know, but I did it).

Now do I wish we had more money? Honestly, yes, I do. But money is no longer as stressful as it used to be.

I find it funny that now that we have a savings, we don’t want to part with that money. If something comes up that’s not in the budget, we usually will cut other areas before dipping into our savings. We have a goal of a bigger house and we are being very careful to stay on track.

Carolynn is a former teacher turned stay at home mom of four: ages 6, 5, 4, & 2. She blogs about parenting and life at My Little Bit of Life.

How has your financial journey changed your life?

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