I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but kids can be expensive! Some surveys (apparently written by people who buy their kids EVERYTHING) tell you it costs $11,000 per year to raise a child. Unless you have a child with LOTS of special needs, I just can’t understand that. Anyway, that’s not what this article is about – since we’re expecting baby number 2, I want to piggyback off of an article Stacy recently published about how to be ready to take home a baby from the hospital without having payments in tow. She gave many good points (a few I’ll reiterate) and there’s a few I want to put out there as well. Two things let’s get out of the way first: 1) having a baby is NOT a financial emergency. Unless I’m missing something, you’ve got at least a few months to plan for things. 2) having a baby IS something you can plan for (financially) and should. Trust me, you’ll already have enough “stuff” to haul around with a new baby. It is amazing the quantity of stuff out there you use to care for something so little! Let’s not add a payment book to it too. So how do you plan for that baby’s impact on your pocketbook? Here are 5 tips: [Read more…]
Archives for April 2012
Crock Pot Hoppin’ John
This recipe is a guest post by Bobbie Bushman. The Bushmans are a family of four who live ultra-frugally and debt free on one part-time income.
We four Bushmans eat on less than $300/month without couponing. We eat vegetarian, whole foods which are probably about 70-80% organic. One way we do that is by buying in bulk. Buying in bulk usually goes pretty smoothly for me, but in my last order I made a costly boo-boo. I accidently ordered my black-eyed peas as a flat of cans instead of in a 25 pound bag. I tell you this to let you know that in this recipe I will be using canned beans, but that is WAY out of the ordinary for us since we (except for this ordering mistake) normally eat bulk dried beans because they are SO much cheaper. [Read more…]
Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs
I KNOW these are my favorite Easter treat. When I start seeing the Cadbury Bunny commercial on television, I know it’s getting close to time to make these. This year, I decided to see if I could change my usual recipe over to fit our more natural diet. I haven’t made these since Annie was born, and boy have I missed them. I’m chowing down on one right now…..
Sure the Reece eggs in the store are awesome…but for me, there is just something about homemade peanut butter eggs. They’re special. They taste different. They make you do crazy things, like hide them in the fridge and only eat them when Annie is asleep. [Read more…]
The 6 Funniest Blog Posts of ALL TIME
I love to laugh. In fact, I spend most of the day laughing at standup comedy videos from newstandupcomedy.com…or at Barry. He is still making fun of me for the time that I actually believed that Affordable Dentures was “affordable” because they sold used dentures…yeah, here’s my sign.
So, I thought it would be a blast to give y’all a list of the six funniest blog posts I’ve ever read…be ready to giggle. You might not be able to cover them all today – but when you need a laugh, make sure you come back to read these. 😀 [Read more…]