I had the honor and privilege of being able to post a blog article on Money Saving Mom! Crystal has a very large platform and a very successful blog, so to be chosen to write for her site was a big deal to me.
Of course I had to write from my heart – and what’s closer to my heart than…ALDI?! 😉
Over on MSM I’m giving 10 items that our family really enjoys and the prices are fantastic!
Stacy
I often talk about our grocery budget and show my weekly haul on Instagram, but I thought it might also be helpful to post it in written form.
At this point, with the six of us and our dietary needs and appetite, we have settled on $1,000/month for our grocery budget.
[Read more…]Because the answer is – it depends.
I’ve been “deal shopping” for groceries and other items since I got married in 2003 – I learned from my mother, who taught me the art of double-coupons.
When I first started, I knew I could get the best deals by hopping from store to store and using their coupons – most of the time, that was my shopping DAY and I was gone most of it. It was almost a job for me. And I taught others to do it.
Fast forward and I started having children. I found that I no longer had the time to hunt deals for hours – so I started doing more frugal things at home and making a lot of our food from scratch. That was how I saved.
[Read more…]When I was a brand new mom, I knew I wanted to keep Christmas simple. I knew the more children we had, the crazier it could get. And our family goal for Christmas was to always keep Jesus as the reason for the season.
When it becomes all about the gifts and the buying, it is easier to lose sight of that.
So, I saw a suggestion in a magazine (remember when we used to get those in the mail?) for implementing a 3-gift-Christmas. We started with our first child on her first Christmas, so it’s all our four kids have ever known. It has really simplified our Christmases as a family, and I’m so glad it’s the way we do things.
Each child gets 3 gifts, just like Baby Jesus. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.
[Read more…]In the fall of 2023, we sat down to do our budget and I saw on paper that the last month we had spent $1400 in groceries for the 6 of us …that was $200 more than my budget for the month and $400 from where I really wanted to be.
I consider myself a frugal person – I used to teach frugal living workshops…it was how I started sharing online. But I didn’t feel like I was spending on unnecessary items – I was TRYING to do a good job and I just really felt overwhelmed at the amount I was spending.
[Read more…]We’re weird. I’m okay with that. No, really, I mean it. I’m glad we’re weird. It is one of the big reasons you check us out every day. But why are we that way? Why do we choose to look at “normal” and go the other way? Why do we drive cars we can actually afford instead of having payments? Why do we do most of our own construction projects? In other words – why do we do things that “normal” people don’t do? Today, I’ll fill you in.
[Read more…]A lot of you are new around here, so I’ve been spending some time recapping some of my favorite content written since Humorous Homemaking was born in May 2010. One of the ways I’m determining which content is best to share with you anew, I consider the most frequently asked questions I get via email, Facebook, etc. By far, the most common set of questions falls under the heading of relationships and money or marriage and money.
I get TONS of questions on how to get husbands and wives to agree on money. Why? Because I firmly believe when you said “I do” you made a commitment for life. Unfortunately, the reason that commitment is most commonly broken is due to money problems. When I started providing financial counsel, I quickly learned I often provided a lot of marriage counseling too.
[Read more…]A common question when someone is trying to get out of debt is how they should balance this goal with the idea of saving and investing for the future. They say something like, “Barry, I really want to be out of debt, but I also really want to be able to have a good retirement.” My response, even though it sounds a little sarcastic is this: who doesn’t want to be out of debt and who doesn’t want to have a good retirement!? So how do you balance those goals? You and I both know there is only so much money to go around each month.
[Read more…]If you’ve been following along for a while you’ve probably heard about our debt-free journey before, but you may not be familiar with our journey with buying a foreclosure and remodeling it. We haven’t always lived where we do now. Barry and I bought our first home about 15 years ago. It was a townhouse that we bought before construction had even begun! It took about 1,100 years for them to build it (not really, but it seemed like it took FOREVER). While we were waiting for it to be built, we lived in a small apartment that Barry’s parents had at their home.
We lived in our townhouse for 8 years, and completely paid it off in after 7 years. That’s when we became debt free! We decided that we didn’t want to get another home mortgage loan EVER.
[Read more…]We’ve made a kind of a name for ourselves as far as living debt free goes – and teaching other people how to make it a real thing in their own lives. Barry does a lot of work with people on the side trying to help them live debt free as well. Our whole debt free story is available both on the Humorous Homemaking and on Facebook under videos. But recently we asked if y’all had any specific questions related to living debt free and decided to answer them today in kind of a speed Q&A round. [Read more…]
