Money + Kids

Our journey to financial freedom started with being inspired by a friend of a friend who raved about Dave Ramsey.  We've been on this journey for a couple years now, and I feel like we've finally developed (or changed) many of our bad habits into good ones.  I've been reading through Dave's book,  The Complete Guide to Money, this past week, and realized that we haven't really been at all intentional about teaching our children about money.  Our children do have piggy banks, and we encourage them to save everything.  

After reading from Dave's book, I realized that we had been placing a huge emphasis on saving, and not enough on spending or giving.  I don't want our children to fear spending their money, or to feel as though there is something "bad" about spending or giving away their money.  We want them to develop good, healthy, balanced habits concerning money.  So the other day, we let our girls pull some money out of their piggy banks for Happy Hour Frappucinos at Starbucks.  

The girls each took turns ordering and paying for their Frappucinos, and then we all sat together and enjoyed them.  We then went to Costco for a few things. The girls were really hoping to find something to buy with their money, but were disappointed when everything at Costco was a bit too expensive for them (you and me both, girls).  As we neared checkout, Ellie expressed her irritation with Tri Tip for dinner (what?).  She wondered if she could buy a pizza from the food court.  This was perfect!  It gave her a chance to not only spend some of her money, but also a chance to solve her dinner problem by "giving" to her family in the form of buying pizza.  She pulled out $10 cash from her cute little purse and handed it over for a pepperoni pizza.  

This is when I realized how poorly we had been teaching our children about money.  It was quite sad, actually.  The way she was talking indicated that she felt as though what she were doing (spending money) was wrong.  Things like, "it's ok that I'm wasting some money, I have more at home."  We quickly explained how it was most definitely NOT a waste of her money, and what a sweet and thoughtful gesture it was of her to buy her family a pizza for dinner.  And with that, she began smiling and giggling and jumping around and saying how "happy" her heart was, and how fun it was to spend her money, and how excited she was that we could eat pizza instead of Tri Tip for dinner, and how big and grown up she felt.  In fact, she didn't stop talking about her excitement for buying a pizza for dinner for us the entire night.  She even erased "Tri Tip" off the menu board and wrote in "Pizza" when we got home.  Leftovers meant she provided lunch for the family the next day, too, which gave her even more opportunity to ask us, "aren't you proud of me that I bought this pizza?!?"

This experience was so good for both Ellie and for us.  Obviously, our approach to teaching our children about money needs a big overhaul.  This reminded me about how fun spending money can be, especially after you've been saving for a while!  I want my kids to develop healthy money habits long before they are ready to leave the house.  This includes healthy habits with spending, saving, and giving.  I have no idea what this will look like yet, but letting our girls spend some of their money this week was a good start.  

I'm curious...what do you do to teach your kids about money?  How has it changed over the years as they have grown?

Our Adventure to Financial Freedom-Part 2: 2013

In early 2012, I wrote an encouraging post about our adventure to financial freedom.  Honestly, I wrote that post as an encouragement for myself, but I am so humbled that it's been an encouragement to so many other people.  Even still, when I'm feeling particularly discouraged about where we are at with our finances vs. where I we would be at this point, I'll occasionally look back at that post and find some encouragement to keep going.  

It's been a little over a year since that post, and we're still not done with our journey (will we ever?).  But, in spite of things still not being where I thought they'd be, we've made tremendous progress.  I'm going to be using real numbers, because real numbers make sense.  They show real, visual progress.  These numbers are a part of our story.  Don't compare your progress to ours.  Compare your progress with your own story!

Here is a snapshot of our Journey to Financial Freedom in 2013:

In February we paid off a small medical bill from one of our children.  It was about  $300.  This was our first financial success in 2013, and it was, of course, exciting!

In March, we paid off a credit card balance of $2,532.  This amount was from Ben's unexpected, no insurance, knee surgery from 2012.  

In July, we settled the final credit card debt from Ben's knee.  We settled for $3,002, all paid in cash, and saved approximately $4000 by working with the credit card company to come to a "deal".  We closed this credit card after paying it off (or rather, they closed it on us since we settled our way out of it).  No big deal...we are so OVER credit cards!

By November, we had paid in advance for the birth of our 4th baby.  We paid approximately $5000 to the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist, labs, and pediatrician.  CASH.  Let me tell you why this one, out of all of the above mentioned things, is such a big deal.  We have NEVER, not once, paid cash up front for something big like that.  The fact that we were able to make this happen was a HUGE step for us.  I really see it as a turning point in how we view and handle our money.  We avoided debt and came up with the money ahead of time.  

In total, we paid off or paid in advance for almost $11,000 this year!

By the time we paid all these debts and paid (cash) for our 4th baby this year, we closed out the year with *maybe* $200 in our savings account.  For the first time, though, I didn't feel defeated.  I felt accomplished.  I knew that the fact we had learned to "save" is what made paying for our baby possible.  THAT'S what our savings is for!  

2014 started with a focus on rebuilding our emergency fund back to at least $1000 (Dave Ramsey's baby step #1), and using any income tax return money to pay for fixing a couple of my teeth.  

It's now March (2014) and baby step #1 is already more than taken care of, and my teeth are paid for, as well.  We are now working our way toward saving for our every-other-year family Disney trip, building our savings even more, and paying off an interest free hospital bill from one of our children.  

Then....just the student loan, and we'll be DEBT FREE!

Wish us luck!

4 Tips for Saving Money on Groceries Without Using Coupons

A couple years ago, I needed to significantly cut our budget.  I later wrote a series of posts on the "15 Changes that Save us Over $13,000 a Year."  One thing that I did really well for a long time was coupons.  The upside was that it helped cut our consumables budget by 70%.  The downside was it took a significant amount of time for a busy mom of 3, and also added a considerable amount of stress when coupon shopping with three kids, which happened a lot.  At some point, I realized that I wanted to stop using coupons; however our financial situation had not changed, so I had to find another way to keep our budget low ($300/month for the then 5 of us).

I started to shop differently.  And over time, I learned to keep our food budget just as low as when I had used coupons, but with no coupons, and much less stress.

Here are my top 4 tips for keeping your food budget low WITHOUT using a single coupon.

1.  Don't be choosy with your stores. 
If you have a very favorite store out there, I get it.  I do, too.  But, if you are trying to save money, being store loyal is not always the best route.  Some of the stores tagged "expensive" often have some of the best sales.  Many store sales, even at "expensive" stores will leave you with lower prices than the prices you'll find at Walmart.

2.  Pay attention to store circulars.
I personally choose one store with the best sales or my preferred menu items on sale each week.  Depending on what I want on my menu, the store that I choose to shop at may be different each week.  Occasionally, I will shop at two stores if there are really great deals at both stores and my kids are in a happy mood.  Watch for your store circulars and browse through them to pick a store (or two) that has great sale items.

3.  Menu plan using sale items.
Using those store circulars, plan your meals.  If ground beef is on sale, plan some meals using ground beef.  If it's chicken, plan for chicken.  If apples and oranges are the fruit on sale, plan to have those for snacks that week.

Menu planning saves us a ton of money.  By having a plan, you can avoid mid-week shopping trips where you might be tempted to pick up "a few extra things."  Stick to a carefully planned menu and avoid deviating from it.

4.  Stock pile foods. 
When you see those really great sale prices, stock up.  Buying even one or two more pounds of ground beef than you need at the moment it's on sale and putting it in your freezer will allow you to eat ground beef in your menu on a week when it is not on sale, and still see the savings.

Another way to do this is to pay attention to "case lot sales."  Kroger brand stores do these regularly (in my area these are the Smith's stores).  One of the items I stocked up on at the last case lot sale was canned corn.  If you bought a case of 12 cans of corn, it was only $4, which is $.33 per can.  Every time these sales come around, I stock up on enough to last me to the next sale.

Stock piling food is something you'll likely need to take slow at first, as you won't see the savings right away.  Once you've gotten into a good groove of stockpiling items to last you to the next sale, you will start to see huge savings since you will rarely need to pay full price for anything!



Using these 4 tips, you will be able to majorly lower your grocery budget over time.  It may take a little bit of time to adjust, learn, and successfully lower your budget, but you can absolutely do it...WITHOUT coupons!  

What are your non-coupon, money-saving tips?

My Job Chart-Free Online Chore Chart for Kids

I saw this My Job Chart program this morning and thought that it was such a cute idea!  I might try it for my almost 6 year old, but I'm not sure if my 4 year year old would be quite old enough...it seems like it's geared towards a little bit older children.  (Again, I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to try it for my oldest.)

Anywho, it's a free online program to help teach children about work and money (it's a job/chore chart type thing), and it also encourages saving, spending, and giving!  I love this idea for helping children learn good money managing at a young age.

If you're interested in it for your kiddos, check it out HERE!  And if you've used this site before, I'd LOVE to hear your feedback about how your kids liked it (or didn't) and how old your children are/were that participated.  Leave a comment below if you've tried it out before!

(The links in this post are my referral/affiliate links.  Read my disclosure policy HERE.  Thank you for supporting the continuation of this blog by using my links!)

The 15 Changes that Save us over $13,000/Year

It's been a while since we started our debt-free journey (over 2 years).  Over time, we have cut our budget slowly but surely.  We've been doing "without" some things for so long, that I've started to forget that they were ever a part of our life.  This short, three part series will detail a few of the things we have cut, and the approximate savings each item cuts from our budget.

In total, I'll be sharing 15 changes and "cuts" that helped our family SAVE over $13,000 per year!!!!

They may not all be applicable or usable for your family, but I'm hoping that there will at least be something that is beneficial to you and your family as you creatively seek to save money and be better steward's of your money.

Here are the first 5...

#1: Haircuts

Ben has been cutting his hair for most of our marriage.  I help him out in the back where he can't always see, but he mostly does it all on his own.  He cuts his hair once a month.  At the price he used to pay (years ago), this works out to a savings of a little over $150/year.

Ben also cuts Aaron's hair.  He has been cutting it every 4-6 weeks (and he's really good at it, too!).  I trim the girls' hair now about every 3 or 4 months.  Between the three kids, cutting their hair ourselves saves us approximately $270 per year.

I just recently stopped getting highlights with my hair cuts.  I only get my hair done twice a year.  Cutting out the color portion of my appointments saves us $160/year.


#2:  No Paper Towels or Napkins

This may have been the hardest on Ben.  I really almost gave up on it, actually.  It was very hard for him to not be able to just grab a paper towel for quick clean ups or drying his hands.  He eventually adapted :)  We stopped using paper towels and began using rags and towels only.  We use cloth napkins instead of paper.  We just throw them all in with our normal load of towels laundry.  They can be used over, and over, and over again.  They are worn and ugly, but we don't care.  We figure that this saves us an average of $60/year.

#3: Make our own Hand Soap

 

I'm not gonna lie.  I love Bath and Body Works hand soap.  But with three littles who like to wash their hands, and guests regularly in our home, we went through a lot of it.  Bath and Body Works soap runs $3 a pop!  While it's certainly my favorite, hand made soap is far more economical.  It will run you about $2 for a little over a half gallon.  This has lasted us over a year so far, and we still have more.  I really don't like the texture of it all that much, and I do wish that it bubbled more (something about bubbling makes me think it's really cleaning), but for $2 a year, I'll keep with it!  Making our own soap saves us about $70/year.

#4: Make our own Granola Bars.

We began making our own granola bars over a year ago.  My entire family loves them.  We change up the ingredients every so often, and always enjoy the different tastes.  My best estimate is that we save around $70-$80/year making our own bars.  We eat more of them, but they are cheaper to make :)

#5:  Make our own Cleaners.

This is our newest change, and so I don't have much feed back yet (though I've heard many a person rave about this exact method, so I'm sure it'll be great).  We bought oranges last week for snacks.  We saved the peels, and stuffed them into jars. Once full of peels, we filled it with vinegar.  You can buy two large jugs (I'm assuming they're gallon sized) from Costco for just $3.49.  Shake every couple days, but let it soak for two weeks.  Pour 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water (or even a little more heavy on the vinegar if you want) into a spray bottle to use.  To use on windows, add a drop or two of dawn dish soap to the mixture.  Seeing as a bottle of all-purpose cleaner will run you about the same price as those two huge jugs of vinegar, and assuming we go through one bottle a month, we will easily save $38 using homemade cleaner.

Total savings from #1-#5: $818/year!

Do you do any of these things?  Do you find a huge savings from them, as well?  Leave a comment below!

Find Part 2 HERE, and Part 3 HERE.

Budgeting When Money is Tight: Part 2

Yesterday I posted about two ways to begin budgeting when your money is tight.  If you missed it, check it out HERE.  Today I will share two more money/budgeting tips that I believe are important and necessary to keeping track of your finances ESPECIALLY when money is tight.  I believe that regardless of our monetary situation, we should do well with managing our money, but when money is tight, we have to be that much more careful & thoughtful when it comes to our money.

#3: Keep a Money Book/Cash Journal

I am not so hard-core as to track every expense flowing from my cash envelopes, (though I'd like to be) but I do keep a "Money Book".  In my money book, I track how much money I had for envelopes, how much got placed into each envelope, the running balance of envelopes, and designated plans for any extra.  Knowing where any "left-over" money will go before you actually have any is important.  Is it going to be applied to debt?  Savings?  A special item?  Christmas?

I also track yearly/bi-yearly/quarterly envelope goals for my "sinking funds" envelopes (car registrations, healthcare premiums, hair cuts, car maintenance, etc.).  You can also use your money book to track "needs" and "wants", and write down plans for how you'll get money for those (Leftover grocery budget?  Selling items?  Babysitting?).

The final thing that I use my money book for is my list of pantry stock-up items.  I keep a master list of pantry items that I like to keep on hand.  When I have a little extra grocery money at the end of the week, it is *usually* assigned to re-stocking some aspect of my pantry (bulk flour, bulk oats, etc.).  Why do I believe my pantry items are important?  Well, when money is tight, you can always use those pantry items to home-make lots of homemade foods & meals!

You money book is just that- yours!  Use it to write down anything that may be helpful for you when it comes to money.

Try keeping a journal for a month as you try out envelope budgeting!  

#4: Define "Necessity"

I used to have a problem.  I "needed" an extra set of bed sheets.  I "needed" a new mixing bowl.  I "needed" new, better fitting, expensive jeans.  One day I realized that I didn't actually "need" any of those things.  Sure, it would have made my life more convenient to have two sets of bed sheets.  In reality, though, I learned that I could just do laundry promptly and have my sheets back on my bed within two hours.  It would just take discipline.

The items we declare to be on our "need" list, are often just wants.  Make a list of your needs, and sort through them, figuring out which needs are real, and which are just perceived.  I bet most of your "needs" will make their way to the "wants" list.  At least in my case, that proved true.

Here are some helpful questions in deciding if something is a need or want:

• Can I function without it?  
• Is it something to be used for health, safety, or other wellness necessity? 
• Is there another item that I already own that can be used in it's place? (i.e. if your cookie sheet is too old to use, do you have a pizza stone you can bake cookies on instead?) 
• Do I need this item for work, business, or another money making venture? 
• How often would I use it?  
• Does a friend or family member have something similar I could have or borrow?  
• Do I have money in the budget for it?

Many people live with far less than us.  Deciphering between our true needs and wants will help to avoid needless spending.  And when our budgets are tight, needless spending must go.  

Here's and added challenge: For one week, keep tally of every time you use the word "need" in relation to stuff.  This will surely bring your attention to the amount of things that our flesh feels the "need" to have, and hopefully this challenge will encourage a change of thought in this department!

Head here to read part 3 in this series and to learn more about budgeting when money is tight!

Free eBook: Little Kids, Big Money

Here's another great FREE eBook today:  Little Kids Big Money: Tools for Teaching Kid Friendly Finance.

Note: This book is currently FREE on Amazon, but this can always change, so be sure to check the price before purchasing!