We moved to California from the midwest when I was just a young child. At the same time, my dad was busy starting a new business. To say that the money was sparse in our family at that time, would be an understatement. My parents though, loved to be out and about. Maybe it was …
I am a huge meal planner. I have been for years. This really started out of a need to survive the evening hours – with kids in after-school activities and too many sports to count, working all day, and facing a hungry family – I needed to come up with a plan that did not …
I was recently asked by a young adult that is working and living on her own, how could she stretch her food budget all while making healthy and delicious meals? Hmmm… I had a lot of ideas to share with her. Maybe too many, I think I overwhelmed her a bit 🙂 I decided to focus …
“Turn off the lights!” How many times a day do you say that to your kids? If you are like me, the answer is a lot! Saving money on my energy bill is the main reason that this phrase has become a mantra in our family. With six kids, you can bet that my husband and …
Money. As I have said before, “We all need it. We all work for it. It is the bloodline of our economy and it is necessary to keep our households running. So why do we not spend more time talking about it? It is a necessity, yet we tend to keep money conversations hush-hush. Sometimes we …
I love our home, but one thing about buying a 30 year-old home is that it is dated. Which just means that I constantly have home projects to work on. I am busy re-organizing my home. I am always painting a wall here or there, and we have done some amazing work in our backyard. I …
I drove well over 5,000 miles this summer. The majority of that was my road trip to North Dakota through the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park with a return trip through Glacier National Park. That trip in of itself was over 4,400 miles. A day after I returned from that trip I was back in …
I am always on the hunt for a good travel deal. As a teacher and parent that loves to globe-trot, I have to stretch my travel dollars as far as possible. I do this in a multitude of ways working hard to put the pieces of my travel puzzle together to fit our needs and budget. …
Money. We all need it. We all work for it. It is the bloodline of our economy and it is necessary to keep our households running. So why do we not spend more time talking about it? It is a necessity, yet we tend to keep money conversations hush-hush. Sometimes we even sweep financial concerns …
We have just finished our fourth and final week of living on a food budget equal to SNAP equivalent for a family of four. To read more about what prompted this experiment click here. I am happily surprised to see just how successful I think we were. With a budget of $632 I did feed my family …
