Saving Families Money Since 2007
Does your daughter have a pair of capris she’s no longer wearing? My Way Home gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to turn capris into a cute skirt.
Do you have a fun and frugal DIY idea to share? I’d love to hear about it! Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.
Guest Post by Amy Andrews who helps with much of the behind-the-scenes work at Money Saving Mom® and blogs at BloggingWithAmy.com
Hey there Money Saving Mom® readers! I’ve communicated with many of you behind the scenes via email, so it’s fun to have the opportunity to talk to you on this side of things. Crystal asked me to introduce myself and tell you more about time budgeting as part of her Time Management 101 series. So here’s a little bit about me…
My name is Amy Andrews (not to be confused with the very classy Amy McGuire of Amy’s Finer Things — the advertising/giveaway guru here at Money Saving Mom®). My husband Brian and I have been married for 13 1/2 years and we have 4 children.
Online, I blog at BloggingWithAmy.com which is aimed at teaching others how to start a money-making blog from scratch. I also do some blog consulting and I just released an ebook about time management called Tell Your Time which, incidentally, came to be after helping Crystal with her schedule.
If you’ve read Money Saving Mom® for any length of time, it’s likely you have heard Crystal talk about the envelope system for money management. The goal of the envelope system is to pre-determine where you will spend your money so as not to overextend yourself financially.
Earlier this year when Crystal and I discussed how to make her schedule more workable, I told her about a similar concept which I refer to as “envelopes of time.” They work the same way in that you pre-determine where you will spend your time so as not to overextend yourself commitmentally (is that a word?).
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This is how the concept works (excerpt from Tell Your Time):
- Total up the hours in a day (or week). That’s easy, 24 (or 168).
- Make a list of the activities you want to accomplish in that time (i.e. your envelopes).
- Divvy up your activities between your allotted time envelopes.
- If there isn’t enough time in the day to cover one of your activities, you have four choices:
- “Steal” time from one of your other activities.
- Figure out a way to streamline so it takes less time.
- Get someone else to do it for you.
- Drop it completely.
In the ebook I move on to talk about how to determine your priorities/life goals and how to accomplish them by incorporating them into your daily schedule, but here I’ll expand on the four choices we have when we don’t seem to have enough time in the day.
When the total hours of our daily activities exceed the number of hours we have in a day, it often results in us stealing time from other activities in our schedule.
For example, too much time on the computer might steal from my personal time, too much time studying for an exam might steal from my sleep or too much time shopping might steal from one-on-one time with my kids.
Often we steal time from other areas without even realizing it, or, we realize it only after it leaves a gaping hole. Life happens of course, and occasionally we have no choice but to steal time from other time envelopes. Stealing will happen, we just need to proactively make room for the deficit elsewhere.
Also, we need to remember that stealing time has a domino effect. Whenever we steal time from one area, another will always be affected.
I am a streamliner. Whether I’m contemplating how to get from my house to the grocery store or thinking about a new giveaway entry system on Money Saving Mom®, I’m constantly thinking, “There must be a more efficient way to do this.”
I’m on a neverending quest to figure out how to do things quicker and cheaper. Streamlining is, no doubt, very handy when it comes to shaving off precious minutes in my schedule, but it can cause its own trouble too.
Streamlining itself takes time — time which must be accounted for. If I’m determined to find a faster route to the grocery store but I end up getting lost every time, streamlining doesn’t really work in my favor at that point.
Another downside to streamlining is paring down your schedule just so you can pack more in. It’s great to be productive, but if you’re so productive that you end up cramming your day with things that do not help you accomplish your life goals, it’s not benefiting you in the long run.
Streamlining is great when it reduces stress, however, if you’re streamlining but your stress level remains the same, you might have to consider another option.
Another way to combat a too-full schedule is to figure out how to get others to do things for you. In our house, my husband and I take care of various responsibilities and our children are expected to help as well. We all work together to share the load.
I’m also in favor of looking to others outside our home for help. I loved what Crystal said the other day about focusing on the things you’re good at. I am guilty of trying to do everything because I’m either too cheap to pay someone else or too prideful to ask for help.
Granted, we are on a limited budget so paying someone for help is not always an option, but I am 100% in favor of this idea. I see it as a win-win — I am relieved of something I don’t like to do or don’t know how to do, and someone else gets to make a little money doing something they’re skilled at.
But lack of money doesn’t have to be prohibitive when it comes to getting outside help. Be creative! Bartering, swapping babysitting with another mom so you can go to the grocery store alone or making a few homemade pizzas to feed a group of friends willing to pitch in and paint your house are all great ways to get help, without spending money.
And there are plenty of people who are more than willing to respond to a humble, un-reciprocated request for help. All you need to do is ask.
You are only one person working within a limited amount of time. You can only do so much. If you’re like me, you might simply need to let some of your commitments go. Gone. Finished. Done. Outta here.
Now, I’m the first to say this is not always easy, nor is it pleasant, but if you constantly feel overwhelmed and stressed out, it’s likely you simply have too much on your plate.
For a long time, I kept looking for things to cut out of my schedule. The problem was, I couldn’t find anything to cut! It took me a while to figure out that I was looking for the “bad” stuff to eliminate, but all the activities on my calendar were “good” things (church ministry, building my business, excellent learning opportunities for my children, etc.). It was freeing to realize that I could choose to let go of “good” stuff in order to make room for the “best” stuff.
This is how I said it in Tell Your Time:
Are your daily activities really helping you achieve your life goals, or have you gotten swept up in the tumult of your to-dos? Whether it’s an inability to say “No,” the fear of missing something, the need to keep up with the Joneses or just careless planning, many of us are masters at committing to things that sound like great ideas, but do nothing to get us closer to [reaching our life goals]. Frankly, if they’re not getting us closer to [reaching our life goals], they’re a waste of time…no matter how amazing they are.
Amy Lynn Andrews shows step by step how to make money blogging at BloggingWithAmy.com and is the author of the time management ebook, Tell Your Time.
Note from Crystal: Use the code MoneySavingMom if you want to get a copy of Amy’s ebook (and I highly recommend that you do!) for only $7! The code MoneySavingMom is good through Friday at midnight only. Tomorrow, I’ll share more about how I’ve implemented a Time Budget in my own life and how it’s revolutionized my life.
The Big Red Pot teaches you how to cook, cut and freeze a Butternut Squash to use as baby food in soups or to serve as a side dish.
Do you have a fun and frugal DIY idea to share? I’d love to hear about it! Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.
From The Happy Housewife:
If you have 20 pounds of potatoes to wash for your Thanksgiving meal throw them in the top shelf of the dishwasher. Set on the quick rinse cycle and let your dishwasher clean the potatoes. Not something I would do every day, but definitely a space and time saver during the holidays.
Thanks to Habits for a Happy Home for the post link and picture!
Yesterday, I encouraged you all to stop trying to do it all. You only have 24 hours in your day and when you let go of trying to be superwoman and just be content with being who God has made you to be, you’ll find your life is so much more peaceful and calm.
In addition, if you want to be a better manager of your time, you need to determine what your priorities are.
I promised you I’d share my list of priorities and what I don’t do. However, I want to remind everyone that this is just my own personal list for this current season of my life. Your list will likely look much different — and it should!
Everyone’s list of priorities is going to look different because we’re all different with different family situations, different needs, different commitments, different struggles and different strengths and weaknesses. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. And what works in one season of our life might not work at all in another season.
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1. Having a strong and vibrant relationship with the Lord. I make it a goal to spend around 30 minutes first thing in the morning reading God’s Word and praying. In addition, I seek to continually be nurturing my relationship with the Lord by reading spiritually uplifting books, spending time with other Christians and being involved in our local church.
2. Having a wonderful, open, no-holds-barred relationship with my husband. My goal is to flirt with my husband at least once every day. I know it might seem trivial, but it’s the little things which keep the spark going in a marriage. We try to never let anything come between us. So when we have disagreements or misunderstandings, we take the time to discuss these and talk things through until we reach a point of unity — even if it takes a long time! We try to set aside at least an hour to spend together one-on-one every day and then have at least one at-home date night each week and a monthly date where we leave our children and go out to dinner or on a fun outing.
3. Teaching and loving and enjoying my children. Next to the Lord and my husband, my children are my top priorities. In addition to homeschooling, reading, teaching, discipling and playing with them, I try to spend at least 15 minutes with each child one-on-one every day. I also try to take one child with me on an outing every week and we rotate whose child’s turn it is each week.
4. Staying healthy and energetic and constantly seeking to improve my mind. I’ve found that if I’m exhausted and burnt out, I’m not a good wife and mom. So I make my own health a big priority. I try to exercise at least four hours each week, get at least seven hours of sleep every night and eat healthfully. It’s also important to me that I constantly seek to be improving my mind through reading, thinking through issues and learning new things; I don’t want my brain to turn to “mush”. My husband also encourages me to go somewhere by myself (to the coffee shop, grocery shopping, an evening with friends, etc.) for a few hours once a week as this refreshes me and energizes me as a wife and mom.
5. Keeping a fairly clean and orderly home. Our home is never perfect — and often far from perfect! — but I aim to have it completely picked up at least once a day, to stick with my cleaning and laundry schedule (I’ll be sharing more about this next week) and to always keep it 45 minutes to “Company Ready” or less. We don’t have a lot of clutter, so this helps tremendously in keeping things more organized.
6. Running a blog. I really enjoy blogging — especially when I’m able to have my other priorities in order! — and it’s also a way I can minister and help people from a laptop in my living room. So my husband and I feel it’s something God has called me to do right now. That may change as my children grow older; we’ll see how God leads! For now, I am blessed to have a team of six people working for me to help shoulder this load so that it’s not overly-burdensome to me.
7. Sticking to a cash budget. This involves, among other things, setting financial goals, looking for the best deals on items we’re planning to buy, waiting until we have saved up enough to pay cash for something and making sure we stay within the cash budgeted in our cash envelopes.
8. Ministering to people in our community. In this increasingly virtual world of social media, real-life relationships are very important to us. We try to open our home for hospitality at least once a month and then I aim to minister in specific, practical ways to people in our church and community at least a few times each week. Usually this is something simple like having my children write notes to someone or put together a care package, getting together with a friend who’s struggling, jotting a quick email to let someone know I’m praying for them, bringing a batch of rolls or a frozen casserole to church to give to someone who just had a baby or something of this nature.
Things Which Aren’t On My Priority List Right Now:
::Crafts
::Gourmet Meals
::Gardening
::Sewing
::Watching TV
::Decorating (My sister is helping me decorate our house as I already told you this is an area I have absolutely zero giftings in!)
::Ironing (We try to buy mostly wrinkle-free items and my husband takes his work clothes to the dry cleaners.)
::Frequent Shopping Trips (I don’t do that much shopping and I prefer to shop online whenever I can.)
::Lots of Extra Curricular Activities for My Children
::Making Homemade Gifts & Cards
::And much, much more!
I also don’t take care of any of the bill-paying/book-keeping (my husband does this as he’s excellent at it and loves it). We don’t have pets to care for. I’m not in any regular playgroups or Bible Studies. I’m not on any committees. I don’t pack lunches for my husband to take to work. And I only make dinner four to five nights per week (we eat out once a week and we often go to extended family’s homes for one to two dinners each week).
So yes, there’s so much I don’t do right now. And I believe this is one of my biggest keys to efficiency: I say “no” often and I try to carefully choose my activities and commitments so that I don’t overload my plate.
Stay tuned tomorrow when we’ll talk more about streamlining, prioritizing and finding breathing room in your life by creating a Time Budget.
We are in the middle of a kitchen renovation, which, when finished will result in a fantastic update of a 60-year-old tiny city-apartment-sized kitchen. This project, however, has been subject to the inevitable delays and we’ve been without a working kitchen for a month and a half now and we’re expecting to be without one for another month and a half.
My creativity is running out and my food bill rising dramatically with eating out too often. What meals can you brainstorm that can be cooked using just a microwave & stove top? The oven does not work and dishes must be *very* minimal as the sink does not drain properly: we have to use the tiny bathroom sink (or the tub) instead. The disposal is also broken.
One pot/pan dishes are ideal. We do not own a crockpot. -Karyn
Back when I was 11 years old, we lived without a stove for seven months while we were living in a construction trailer and building our house. We only had a microwave, crock pot and electric skillet and we learned to make all sorts of pretty delicious meals sans an oven. So I just wanted to encourage you that it is totally possible to survive without an oven and eat at home.
Do you have a grill? This would be the time to pull it out. You can grill chicken, steak, hamburgers — and even pizza!
Do you have a waffle iron? If so, waffles are a simple dinner. Just fry up some bacon or sausage on the stove and add some fruit and you’ve got a delicious dinner.
There are multitudes of meals which can be made on the stove top. Check out this huge list of Skillet Meals.
If you’re still feeling like you need more ideas, I would heartily suggest you consider investing in a crock pot. You can find one at Walmart for under $30 and it will pay for itself over and over again. Check out the Crock Pot 365 Blog for more crock pot ideas than you could use in, well, a year!
You might also check out a post from a few months ago on Meals You Can Make in a Hotel Room. There are lots of ideas there which you might find inspirational and helpful.
What suggestions do the rest of you have for meals Karyn can make without an oven?
In the past year, I’ve received numerous emails from women begging me for my “secrets” to time management. They ask me to please share how I manage to seemingly “do it all”.
Every time I get an email like that, I wish I could invite the woman to my home. Because seriously, I think it’s easy to make bloggers out to be someone they are not when you’re basing all your conclusions of them upon the little sliver of their life that they share on their blog.
I know, because I’ve been guilty of it myself. I’ll read a woman’s blog, see the pictures and ideas she shares and begin to wonder if really and truly she might be superwoman’s clone. And I feel badly because I don’t measure up in any stretch of the imagination to this blogger. When in reality, I know good and well that every single woman has their strengths and weaknesses and no one has it all together.
I think some people somehow think that I actually do every deal I post about, shop at five stores and save $200 on my grocery bill every week, cook six-course gourmet meals from scratch every single night, spend 10 hours of quality time with each of my children every single day, have my children involved in all sorts of extra-curricular activities, volunteer in our community at least five hours every week, hand-sew our clothes from the fabric I wove from the wool I spun from the sheep I sheared… okay, well, maybe not that last one.
But seriously, folks, I am just one person. I only have 24 hours in my day — just like you. And I don’t have limitless energy or creativity. I often get tired, cranky and irritated. I sometimes go to bed feeling guilty that I’m not spending enough time with my children or feeding them healthfully enough. There are days I want to quit and give up.
Anything good you see in me is not me, but God in me. I’m just an ordinary person but I serve an extraordinary God. He is the One Who gives me strength to keep going when I want to quit. He’s the One Who gives me joy when I’m feeling discouraged. He’s the One Who gives me hope when life feels overwhelming.
I get up early — before my children — and spend time reading the Bible and praying. This quiet time encourages my heart and gives me strength for the day. I also usually pray over my day and ask the Lord to bless my day and multiply my time. It might seem like a strange thing to ask, but when I ask the Lord to bless my day, I’m always amazed at how more peaceful and joyful my days are.
In addition to starting my day with God, one of the biggest things which has helped me to be a better manager of my time is to let go of perfectionism. Once I finally gave up and realized that I can’t do it all so I should just stop trying, my life has been so much more calm and enjoyable.
It’s easy to want to try to “do it all”, but you can’t. The truth is: you’re not gifted in every area and you’re not good at everything.
For instance, I stink at most anything which requires domestic creativity. Ask me a question about starting a business or marketing and I can give you a list of a hundred and one creative ideas. But ask me to decorate your home or plan a party and I’ve pretty much got nothin’ for ya.
I used to wish I could be one of those women who whipped up hand-smocked petticoats for my girl’s dolls on the fly and decorated three-tiered wedding cakes while in the middle of canning forty-two batches of pickles. I wanted to learn to quilt and knit and crochet and tat and make soap and candles. I pictured myself restoring antique furniture, owning a spinning wheel, planting a massive garden and sewing all our bedding.
But the reality is that I’m just not skilled in those areas. Oh sure, I still try on occasion to improve my knitting or sewing skills, but I’ve learned to accept that I’ll likely never be really proficient at most of those things.
Instead of beating myself up over what I can’t do, I’ve been trying to focus on and exercise those areas which I am gifted in. And to appreciate the gifts God has given others which I don’t have, instead of wishing I could “do it all”.
I’m reading a great book right now called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think and one of the key points the author makes in the book is to focus on your core competencies. I really agree with her premise (though not everyone will!) in that it’s pointless to spend a great deal of your life trying to do something which you don’t excel at.
If possible, invest your life in those things which you’re truly passionate about and gifted in. It will cause you to lead a much more productive and fulfilled life. At least, it’s made a world of difference for me!
Once you’ve let go of perfectionism and determined your strengths, then it’s much easier to prioritize and streamline your life. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow (and I’ll share my list of priorities and my promised list of many, many things I don’t do!)
…To be continued
So, I started round two of P90X today. I have to confess something: I thought since I’d already gone through the program once that the second time around would be a piece of cake.
Well, I forgot that I took a two-week break from exercising. And apparently I’m not in quite as good of shape as I thought I was.
Or my body forgot how to exercise. Or something.
At any rate, I could hardly make it through the warm-up (I even ended up lying down for about 30 seconds because I was so winded!). My get up and go had gotten up and gone.
But then, after a pathetic warm-up where I felt like a total exercise failure, it was like my body remembered, “Oh, yes, P90X! I remember this! Bring it!” Because once I started in with the push-ups and pull-ups, I just floated through all of it and then did Ab Ripper X and then I even considered hopping on the elliptical for a little while, too. But I nixed that idea because I was out of time.
I’m pumped! I’ve missed the rush that comes from exercising and I’m ready to knock this second round out of the park. Of course, I might be taking all that back after I puff and pant my way through Plyo tomorrow. 🙂
Download the Phase Two Menu Plan
I got smart this time around and am completely skipping the Phase One Menu Plan as I don’t have fat I need to burn and know that my body needs the extra carbs. So, I put together a menu plan for Phase Two which you can access here.
Please keep in mind that this is my own rendition of the P90X diet. It’s not perfectly in line with everything they say to eat, but it’s what I’ve found seems to be a good balance of carbs and protein for me at this intense level of exercise.
I’m only doing a six-day menu because I take Sundays off from exercising and am not as strict with the diet that day, either. Though I still try to eat pretty balanced and healthfully so as not to completely ruin the efforts from the rest of the week!
If you missed it when I posted it before, you can download the Phase One Menu Plan here.
The children eat somewhat similar meals, with some variation since they don’t particularly care for lots of salads and definitely aren’t consuming the level of protein I am!
My husband is eating very similar to me for breakfasts, snacks and dinners. And then he usually buys his lunch, as he’s often on the road throughout the day (he has his own law firm and does a lot of traffic court work in small-town courts in our state).
Anyone else doing P90X or another intense workout plan right now? I’d love to hear how it’s going for you!
Paper Glitter is offering a number of different cute free Thanksgiving downloads including invitations, place-settings, decorations and more.
Thanks, Moms By Heart!
Have you written (or found) a post sharing fun and frugal Thanksgiving ideas? Email me the link and I’ll consider sharing it this month.
Important Note from Crystal: I thought this guest post was a unique and creative idea which might work in some situations — especially in the case of family members and/or a single person living with a family. However, I’d urge people to proceed with great caution, thought and prayer before setting up an arrangement like this. It’s not worth putting the health of your marriage or family at risk for the sake of saving money.
Guest post by Alexis at Mined Like a Diamond
My husband, daughter and I share a house with my sister-in-law, her husband, and their son. Each family saves several hundred dollars per month (based on what we would pay to rent an apartment) and we get to live in a house, with a yard, in a great neighborhood. Not only do we save quite a bit of money on rent, we also save money through combining resources and sharing some of the load of general home-keeping.
By living in a house rather than an apartment, we enjoy:
While sharing a house, we also share:
Almost every item on this list is a financial benefit!
It’s also fun! We enjoy a lot of built-in socializing and entertainment, while still saving money.
Co-housing by choice is not for everyone (we definitely face some challenges due to this lifestyle!), but in this season of building up our savings and caring for our young families, it works for us. And even though it isn’t a utopian arrangement, we feel that it has really helped us to learn about community and brotherly love on a much deeper level, and has strengthened our relationships for life.
How to Pursue Co-HousingMost people consider roommates to be a feature of their college or single years, but it can work to everyone’s benefit to share housing in less traditional scenarios.
Co-housing or multi-family living situations come in all shapes and sizes. If you are interested in attempting something like this, try to think creatively!
You could:
Interested?
*IMPORTANT: Choosing potentially compatible housemates is something that may take quite a bit of thought, prayer, and wise consideration. Take the time to explore this decision as thoroughly as possible!
Alexis loves being a wife and mom, and writes about her life, family, faith, and the ins, outs, ups and downs of co-housing at Mined Like a Diamond.
Do you have an idea for a guest post? I am always looking for high-quality, original (i.e. not published anywhere else online) content with tips and ideas Money Saving Mom® readers can use. If you would like to submit a guest post, please follow the Guest Posting Guidelines.
photo by dalylab; Caro’s Lines
During the month of November, a group of my blogging friends are banding together to host the 30-Day Giving Challenge. This challenge will run for the month of November and you are encouraged to participate by giving in some way every day during the month of November.
The team of ten bloggers who are hosting this challenge will be sharing ideas and inspiration related to giving for the next 30 days. I know you’ll be blessed by following along.
Truly, “it is more blessed to give than to receive”!
If you missed it, be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Once you have streamlined your life, set goals, gotten your home in order and created a budget, you’re ready to get more intense about looking for ways to cut your budget in order to free up extra money to pay off debt or save money towards your financial goals.
I suggest you start with simple things that will make a significant impact: Do you have memberships or subscriptions you’re currently paying for but not really using? Can you renegotiate some of your bills to get a better monthly rate? Could you cut back on costly regular expenditures or come up with creative alternatives?
After examining your regular expenditures to see if there are things you can cut or renegotiate, if you’re still struggling financially and need to come up with more breathing room, I’d suggest that you consider doing things which might be more extreme (click on that link for a list of 28 things we’ve done to stay out of debt).
I also encourage you to start slowly adopting a “Never Pay Retail” philosophy. Living frugally or on a budget doesn’t mean you never buy nice things or never pay for anything new again (though buying used is definitely a smart choice in many instances), but you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year just by committing to use some coupons for items you’ll already be purchasing, planning ahead and buying items you will need soon when they are at their lowest prices and looking for creative ways to get discounts on items you plan to buy.
For instance, if you have room to include a “Dates and Eating Out” category in your budget, you can stretch your budgeted money farther by watching for restaurant coupons and deals and purchasing restaurant vouchers through Groupon or Restaurant.com to local restaurants you like.
A Word of Caution
Don’t feel like you need to cut your budget down to such a barebones level that you don’t have any wiggle room or that you can never splurge on anything. If you’re planning to live a frugal and simple life for the longhaul, you must give yourself some grace. In fact, I say that you should budget for splurges. It doesn’t have to be anything costly, but choose a few things which you really enjoy and budget for them so that you can enjoy them without guilt.
For instance, we budget for eating out once a week, we budget for vacations and special family outings and we budget for me to get my hair done. Some people might argue that these things are incredibly extravagant of us, but these are things are family has decided we enjoy and choose to spend our money on. So we budget for these expenses and then we splurging guiltlessly!
Living on a budget doesn’t mean you have to eat beans and rice for the rest of your life or be misers. It just means that you are telling your money where to go ahead of time so that it’s not just passing through your fingers like sand!
As you start looking for ways to reduce your outgo and cut costs, it’s easy to get carried away and try learn and do everything at once. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself completely overwhelmed trying to menu-plan, stockpile, print coupons, clip coupons, organize coupons, shop at multiple stores, play the Drugstore Game, sign up for freebies, read great blogs… and on and on it goes.
My advice: take babysteps! Pick one new skill to learn per month and don’t feel guilty over what you haven’t learned or aren’t doing yet.
Sadly, sometimes we can spend a lot of time worrying about what other people are doing or not doing and base what we do or don’t do upon that. If there’s one thing I can not re-iterate enough, it’s this: don’t compare yourself to other people.
We’re all in different families and situations and locations. We all have different goals, different needs and different strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, what works for one family isn’t necessarily going to work for another family.
Maybe your family has food allergies which mean you can’t eat certain things and you need to have twice the grocery budget that your frugal friend without food allergies has. Or maybe you enjoy going out to eat more often so you have a higher “Dates and Eating Out” budget, but you buy your clothes at the thrift store.
Perhaps you like to travel so you budget more for that, but you don’t spend much on food because you grow a lot of it yourself. You might have a really busy schedule due to caring for a disabled family member and working two jobs, so you don’t even bother with using coupons and you hire someone to clean your home but you save money by biking to work and re-purposing everything you can.
Whatever the case, determine what works for your family and what goals and priorities your own family has and then create your financial goals and plan based upon this. If other people don’t understand or possibly even criticize the decisions you’ve made, it’s okay.
Do what works for you and don’t worry about what other people think!
photos from Shutterstock
Testimony from Brandi
Two weeks from today my husband and I will be taking our four children to Disney World!
I am a work-at-home mom of four amazing boys ages 7, 6, 3 and 2. My husband is a sales rep for a wholesale distributing company. We have purposed to live within the means that the Lord provides for us and are so thankful for His blessings. With four boys, it requires creativity, sacrifice and sometimes plain old miracles to make that happen!
By the blessings and grace of God, we are debt-free except for our mortgage. We have six months of living expenses saved and are contributing a very modest amount to my husband’s 401K.
With medical expenses and just “life”, vacation has never made it to the top of our priority list. We decided at the first of the year that we would really love to be able to take our boys on a nice vacation and began to ask the Lord if He would allow us this extra but certainly not necessary blessing.
I’m so happy to say, He has allowed us to save all the cash needed without touching our savings or going into any sort of debt!
What We GainedThis has been an awesome way for us to teach our children about delayed gratification. We explained each time we had to say no to something that even though we were sacrificing now, the blessing of our vacation was going to be much greater.
We actually saved the cash in a bag so the boys could see it and when we sacrificed something they could see us add to the cash. This has been a great character and faith-building experience!
Brandi Johnson is wife to Brandon and mom to Taylor, Luke, Caleb and Zachary.
Have you saved up and paid cash for something — large or small? Submit your story for possible publication here.
Read Part 1 of this series here.
Once you’ve determined to streamline your life and set some goals, now it’s time to crack the whip and make changes in your life. While you might want to jump in and start clipping coupons or chasing bargains — don’t!
If your home isn’t in reasonable order and you already feel like things are spinning out of control, adding more things to your to-do list is only going to create chaos and frustration.
Take a step back and look around your home: what are the biggest areas you are struggling with? Laundry? Piles of clutter? Lack of organization or a plan? Too much to do?
Take inventory of your current time usage: are your priorities in order? Are you spending time enjoying and loving on your family members? Are you getting enough rest? Do you have margin in your life? Are the unimportant things crowding out the important?
If you feel like you are living in complete chaos, you need to do major cutting from your life. Say “no” to outside commitments and responsibilities. Don’t feel obligated to other people. Don’t start anything new.
Instead, stay home, make a simple plan for your days (my upcoming series on Time Management will hopefully be very beneficial in helping you there!) and stick with it. A plan doesn’t work unless you do!
Your home and life didn’t get out of control in one day and they are not going get back under control in one day, but you can make baby steps in the right direction every single day. So, determine what are your biggest problem areas and begin attacking those one at a time.
(There’s much more I could say on this subject, but I’m going to save it for my Time Management series which I’m beginning on Friday.)
Once your home is beginning to start to get in order (and, in most cases, that will take a few weeks), then it’s time to tackle budgeting.
Yes, I said the “B” word. You gotta make a budget.
You know why? Because if you do nothing else when it comes to finances — if you never clip a coupon, never buy used and never eat leftovers — but you devise a simple zero-based budget and you follow it, you’ll benefit a great deal.
A workable zero-based budget is going to take work. It won’t just happen. But if you commit to making it and then following it, it will very likely change your world — and your financial situation!
For more help with creating a zero-based budget, I highly recommend you check out The Total Money Makeover from your library. You can also read Dave’s article on The Truth About Budgeting. And here are some free downloadable budgeting forms to get you started.
If you’ve never had a budget before, expect it to take at least three months to get a workable budget in place. The first few months you’ll likely overfund some categories and underfund others; it’s a work in progress, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first few times. You’ll see headway just by trying, I promise!
I also highly recommend that you use cash envelopes for much of your spending categories. This guarantees that you stay within the budget parameters because, with cash, when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on babysteps towards better financial success!
What would be your top tip or piece of advice for someone who is feeling like their life and home is chaotic and disorderly?
photo by Muffet
Six months ago, I was overwhelmed, overworked and over-committed. I was exhausted, I was stressed, and my family, marriage, health and home were suffering.
I’d been praying about hiring an assistant and God just kept bringing me back to Amy. While she’d never worked as a virtual assistant before, she had the skills and the heart I was looking for. So I offered her the job, she accepted and my life is forever changed.
Not only has Amy taken over a lot of the load of the behind-the-scenes responsibilities which come along with running a blog with a lot of readers, but Amy has helped me get my personal life back in order. And this has brought incredible peace back into our home and family.
I waited four months after implementing these life-changing things before sharing them with you, because I wanted to make sure they were lasting changes, not just something I started and raved about on my blog and then ended up falling off the bandwagon after two weeks.
The changes and calm have stayed… for four whole month!
Just a few of the changes which have come as a result of implementing the things Amy shares in her book:
::I’m spending much less time online.
::I’m spending more time in God’s Word and prayer.
::I’m spending a lot more time loving and enjoying my husband and children at a leisurely pace.
::We’re more involved in our church and community.
::I’ve been reading a book every other week or so.
::I’m exercising for at least 45 minutes to an hour almost every day.
::We’re eating more healthfully.
::We’re reading and praying together as a family on a very regular basis.
::We’re delighting in learning together and exploring more new places, people and concepts in our homeschooling.
::I’m actually keeping up with the laundry and cleaning — most days!
::And believe it or not, I’m getting around 7-8 hours of sleep almost every night.
Now, please don’t get any impression that we’ve got all our ducks in alphabetized rows around here. I’ll be sharing my journey towards becoming a better manager of time beginning on Friday of this week and I have a feeling I’m going to disappoint every one of you because you’re going to learn once and for all that I am not superwoman. I’m actually doing a lot less, so that I can focus on what really matters.
I’ll be fleshing out a lot of the things Amy shares in her book and how we’ve applied the principles in our own lives. But I want to go ahead and encourage you to buy a copy of Amy’s brand-new ebook, Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Fulfilled.
It’s priced at an introductory rate of only $7 through Friday, November 5, 2010 when you use coupon code MoneySavingMom at checkout. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, over-committed or just plain exhausted, I think you’ll find the tips and tricks in this ebook to be revolutionary. At least I know they’ve changed my life!
So, what are you waiting for? Go buy your downloadable copy of Amy’s ebook for only $7! Just use coupon code MoneySavingMom at checkout to get this deal.
