I read this quote on a msn money article. I love this quote so much. It rings to true to our life. We have alot of friends that make 50K++++ more than we do and they have deep financial woes while we have little.
Life has become tougher since last year with some personal events that happened to us including my husbands pay being cut in half. Ways we save money are buying NOTHING new. I mean nothing with the exception of groceries. If I ever find a way around that I'll let you know. I go dumpster diving, reselling our things as we no longer need them, learning to cook, and strict budgets.
It is amazing the good trash people throw away. I have come across tons of new with tags clothes. We've been blessed to find tons of toys and clothes (for our kids and for us) that we can use. We've turned some into rags. We try to salvage what we can and make it usable for us. We found a huge kitchen table that we used to host some events outside. Eventually it got caught in the rain so we posted it for free on Craigslist. It was picked up within the hour (love that site).
Clothing has been a huge stress relief. Mr. Right's cousin and Aunt have been so great. They have passed on clothes that have been outgrown for both Baby A & B. I can't even describe how nice it is to find a big box at the door full of clothes for them. Everyone knows how spendy it can get with two kids under 3. They constantly outgrow clothes. I would say this has saved us a good $1000 or more on each little punk. Big thank you's go out to them.
I resell everything we have that we no longer need. My husband and me used to have a bet about things we were going to trash. We'd post it up for $5 on craigslist, 9 times out of 10 it would sell by the end of the week. If not we post it back for $3. After that we'd trash it or post it up for free. We recently changed out our living room furniture because our sofa was in need of repair we couldn't afford. I sold the set for $600 then bought a leather sofa for $100 of craigslist and later a nice Broyhill chair at a yardsale for $10. Doing things like this really ads up. Our living room looks more gorgeous than ever and I saved big time on redecorating.
Learning to cook has been a huge process and very profitable. I received a huge set of cookbooks from my Mother-in Law that I use all the time. My sister gave me a book on Jewish recipes that is my favorite cookbook out of all the ones I own. I used to believe you had to buy peanut brittle and that it could only be made in a factory. I call that one of my blonde moments. Lately I've started counting calories. I hope to lose 50lbs while Mr. Right is deployed and do it the healthy way. My whole family will benefit from this. I haven't told Mr. Right of my plans, I think it'll make for a great welcome home surprise for him :)
We stay on really strict budgets. We make less than 2k a month and have a mortgage of $894. After you had in bills like electricity, water, trash, and Internet, we're left with the rest of pay for groceries, things we need (not want) and to put some into savings. While it is not reccommended to have a house that costs you so much remember we bought this house well before we had the giant pay cut. We have looked at other houses to save but to find one with the same we have space now is more costly. Renting is our of the question because we have two dogs, a basset and a beagle. Any home that allows pets in our area cost more than we pay on our house including bills. So for not we are stuck, we watch our budget really closely so we have some cushion built it otherwise we'll live pay check to pay check.
