Money...It's a hit

Last night we started the Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey, if you haven't read his book yet I highly recommend it!

He recommends making finacial "baby steps" so that they are manageable, but being the overachiever that I am, I am ready to do all 10 steps tomorrow. And I am pretty sure that selling your stuff and having no place to sleep is not the wisest financial decicion, even if you are debt free. So I will take my time...at least today.

I often get overwhelmed by the debt we have accumulated but when I stop and think all that has finacially happend to us in the last 4.5 years, I think we are doing pretty good....

Got married, first apartment, career change, major car repairs, unexpected no pay for 2 months, moved to Texas for 3 months, got pregnant with twins, moved to England, rented 2 houses, bought six used cars, had our 3rd baby, insane electric/ oil bills, trips to the states, and not to mention clothing and feeding three kids with increasing living costs...All on one income.

And now we moved back to the states 9 months ago and had to buy appliances, two cars, and a house!

Now, I am not telling you these things not so you can feel sorry for me, but to encourage you that you are not alone in trying to live and stay out of debt!

Life happens and it often happens faster than we think it will. And for us we have never had a moment to get prepared! But we are better prepared now with a nice little emergency fund.

Oh,......there are so many things I would have done differently if I could go back in time ( like save the money I got from my wedding! Or just save!).

But we were young and dumb and thought life couldn't touch us, well it did, it grabbed us by the collar and dragged us through the mud!

But thanks to encouragment from my Mom, Dave Ramsey, and Larry Burkett ( another financial genius), we are heading down a road to financial freedom. We are on our way and looking forward to enjoying the fruits of our labor.

I encourage you not to give up on getting out of debt or to even start digging yourself out of debt, it will be so worth it! The path will be hard and there will be set backs but it doesn't need to stop you!

If you have any questions let me know or if you have any getting out of debt tips I would love to hear them!

Definitely checkout these two books because you are going to need a game plan:

 

Fruity I mean Frugal Fridays!

I have always loved saving money, especially when it got me something really nice for next to nothing. ( Like my Coach diaper bag I got for cheap, who says I can't be fashionable and a mom?) So I thought I would share the ways that I cut penny's without cutting corners on Fridays, since everyone is loving my "My life is craziness post's" on the other days.

So tonight I am going to spotlight the insane heat and the toll it is taking on our budgets!!!!!! I don't know about you but I am about ready to knock some ventilation holes in my walls, just so that I can turn off my a/c for 5 minutes! So I don't have to demolish my house, we have come up with some other ways to cut down on our electric bill.

We just bought our first house (YEAH!) and we have begun some minor remodeling, one thing we wanted to do was put a new light in the kitchen. Mainly because as awesome as fluorescent lighting was in the 80's, it's as equally not awesome now. A friend suggested we put a fan up in the kitchen instead of just a light... yeah, I would have never thought of that! The fan has gives us increased circulation throughout the dining room/ kitchen area, and decreases the heat wave in the kitchen that cooking in the summer time creates! Installing ceiling fans in any room is a great way to circulate air throughout your house both during the summer and winter time.

When we bought our house we also had to buy a few appliances, and at the top of the list was a refrigerator, for very obvious reasons. In England we only had a under counter refrigerator ( like those"dorm sized" ones or as I like to call them "not so fun sized"), this forced me to become an excellent refrigerator organizer, really fast. I really liked the smaller refrigerator because it used less electricity, which ultimately means it takes less money to run. Who wants to spend their money on running a refrigerator? Knowing that I already had the skills required to make a small fridge work, we opted to get the smaller, but still reasonably sized fridge. This helped us keep from racking up more debt, save money on electric and save much needed space in our kitchen.

The last thing we do is turn down (or is it up?) the air conditioning. I never set it below 75 and that is only if it is above 105 outside. I feel the summer is for less clothing ( and more shaving, ugh), so I don't have a problem not wearing a lot around the house to keep the thermostat at a money saving temperature. Plus letting the kids run around in their diapers saves me a laundry pile!

These are not huge things but they do help out, and for us when every penny counts it's worth it!

I want to break free, from my groceries!

Alright all my peoples out there, listen up! If you are spending money on grocery's STOP! You don't need to be throwing your hard earned money away on the necessity's of life! Well, I guess you are keeping yourselves alive, so that's not really throwing away your money........Anyways back to my point: Your grocery bill should not be eating into your life savings, You should be clipping your coupons.

I know what your thinking, "that's too much work, I don't have time to sit around cut coupons out." Let me tell, you need to make time! I save any average of 50% on my grocery bill a week, and with really good planning I have saved 75%! Between the rising gas and food prices, a mortgage, and a car payment, every penny counts in my house. So instead of taking on another job I clip coupons!

With the birth of the Internet a re-birth of couponing has happened, no longer do you have to round up weekly ads, searching for the sales that match your coupons or even try to remember what coupons you have. They have websites that give you your weekly "Coupon Match-ups." A couple of my personal favorites are :

• Couponing 101 
• Totally Target 

• Consumer Queen  

You can do a search for your local store also by searching " grocery store name + coupon match up." These sites list the current deals and the corresponding coupons (if there is one). Some of the coupons are printable online and some will come in your Sunday paper. These sites often have many tutorials on couponing so if this is your first time, check them out!

Some Quick Tips:

• Did you know Target and many other stores will let you use a store and a manufacturers coupon on one item.
• Many local grocery stores double coupons.
• Check up on the stores current coupon policy, so your not embarrassed at the checkout.

• Plan! Plan your meals and your grocery store trips, this will cut down on impulse buys!
• Stockpile! If something is free or cheap, buy what you will need for the next month or even year!
• Shop weekly or at least check the match ups for the week, you never know when a deal for your favorite deodorant might pop-up!
• Don't buy things you are not going to use, no matter how the good deal!

An example of a Target store coupon + Manufacturers coupon deal:

 Tonight I used a Target $1 off coupon on a bottle of shampoo and Manf. coupon for $3.00 off a styling product when you buy a shampoo. 

So my deal looked like this: $2.84 shampoo - $1 cp. + $2.84 styling product - $3.00 cp.= $1.68 for 2 bottles or $.84 each! 

I know at first it can seem overwhelming and complicated but, once you get going you will catch on quick! And soon you will have a nice stockpile! 

This is my stockpile after 4 months, I have enough body wash to last at least 9 months and most of it I only payed tax on!

I hope you learned something new tonight or at least sparked your interest!