WayfaringStrangers

Several years ago, I was driving home from my part time tutoring job and listening to NPR. I always seemed to catch the Marketplace segment and began to really enjoy it. I've never been a numbers person, but I am interested in economy and society. They had a segment inviting young adults (millennials) to share their stories of how difficult it can be to get by in middle class America. The economy was slowly recovering from the Recession, and I had the perfect anecdote. I went home and typed up my story in the comments section of the Marketplace page. How my husband and I had graduated college with student loan debt...how expensive health insurance plans were....how every paycheck was spent with bills as soon as we had it...how getting married during a recession was basically no fun...how we had to sell our vehicle and buy a crappier one that we could afford. We did not take fancy vacations or eat out much. I stayed home with our kids but had to tutor in the evenings for extra cas...

I guess blogging wasn't among my resolutions, huh? We've just been reallllly busy! Sitting down for a minute to reflect on January, the longest month of winter. The world is looking so gray. BUT we did have a lovely sunny and warmish day yesterday! I don't really mind winter, but it does seem to drag on. The kids and I get bored and antsy. We have been blessed with very good health so far. Winter can be cozy, too. It feels right to light more candles and brew another pot of fresh coffee. We make popcorn and cuddle under blankets and read more. And Behn and I have a tradition of every January, on cold winter nights, watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I LOVE this tradition and look forward to it every year. Anyway, I wanted to elaborate more on one of my goals. We are really trying to rein in our food spending by planning, eating all our leftovers, and shopping wisely. It is hard.  I have read blogs of women whose food budgets are like $200 a month for a family of ...

Well, this is how it worked for us at least: 1. Have Husband research the best deals.  Behn's a great researcher...almost to the point of indecisiveness. He spent a lot of time wisely reading reviews, checking stats, etc. He had 2 cars in mind and I helped him make a final decision (as well as gave him that last nudge to pleeeeease just make a decision and go with it!). 2. Go on a rainy Tuesday when the dealer hasn't made any sales. 3. Pick the cheapest car on the lot (happened to be the car we wanted). They wanted to get that ol' thing away from all the Mercedes and Lexus and BMW's. 4. Don't shower and wear grubby clothes. This was me, not Behn. He'd been at work and looked spiffy. I looked homeless, and as if we were really poor and didn't have hardly any money to spend (true). 5. Bring the baby. Since he's a nursling, Patrick usually goes where I go. We left Toddler with my Dad. The baby attracted lots of attention and gave us the appeal of ...

Ahhhh naptime. I should be digging a flower bed, cleaning my kitchen, and writing a grocery list. Instead I will blog. Recently someone saw G's cloth diaper peaking out from his pants and skeptically asked if we cloth diaper. My response, with a smile, is of course yes. We've been cloth diapering Graham for more than a year now. When I was pregnant with him, I was brainstorming ways to save money and decided that if I was going to be home with him, I may as well take the plunge and cloth diaper. When I first heard about the cloth diaper trend, I laughed. That was years ago, before I was pregnant or had kids. I just thought it was a hippy trend and lots of extra work. And here I am doing it! Cloth diapering works for us. I know it's not for everyone, and I don't push it on my mom friends (very few of whom are CD'ing). When my friend asked me about it recently she immediately went into full-on defensive 'why we don't cloth diaper and I'm not c...

Let's be honest, food is necessary but expensive . Here are my favorite ways to save some bucks: 1. Go vegetarian when possible. Rice and beans can be dressed up in so many delicious ways! Vegetable stew with beef gravy is just as good as beef stew. 2. Coupons. Obviously. Some stores even offer digital coupons you can download onto your store discount card. And along with that, look for sales and buy the store brand instead of name brand. 3. Take cash only. It's way less tempting to throw extra stuff in your cart when you think about how humiliating it'll be at check-out when you don't have enough money... 4. Make you own bread. Ok, this isn't a huge money saver once you buy the flour, yeast, butter, sugar, etc. But it tastes (and smells) WAY better. And it's EASY! 5. Eat up your leftovers. And if you buy an odd ingredient for a meal and don't use all of it, find another recipe to utilize that ingredient. 6. Take 2 little boys with you to the store. Because ...