Finance Reduction 101
Though some would think that a quest to reduce your family stress may be stressful in itself, I have set out on a mission. Taking on the challenge to reduce the overall stress in our home has brought many things to light in a very short period of time. During family meetings individual stress causing factors have been addressed and dealt with, but we have revealed that the largest stress factor we have as a family is money. What family is not having stress dealing with their finances these days?
As a family we have decided to find ways of reducing our finances in order to lower the amount of stress we feel on a day to day basis. Though we do not have very much debt other than our home, we still need to be saving money for those unforeseen circumstances that come up from time to time. This is something we have not been able to do but have been determined to accomplish for our future. When it came time for school clothes this year there was no money for it. The older children were disappointed and it made this quest much easier to put into motion. Family involvement is the key to success in this quest.
Raising a large family on a limited income can be quite challenging. I have worked hard to keep us from going into heavy debt but there comes a time that if you want more, the family is going to have to get involved. This project will not only decrease the stress in our home but it will become a life lesson for my children. We need to revert back to the days when a family was more self sufficient, not so convenience reliant.
There are many books available to help in this quest as well as websites, magazines, and blogs. We began to search out ideas to help us stretch every dollar. One very good author is Mary Hunt; she wrote a monthly newsletter for many years then published books about living lean. We learned to do things like weighing our produce such as heads of lettuce and bags of potatoes at the supermarket to get the most for our money (Hunt 82). As well as reminders of things we already knew but don’t think about like only running the dishwasher when it is full and turning off the heated dry cycle, or using the slow cooker instead of your oven (Hunt 93-94). Hunt offers a multitude of uses for household items such as salt, white vinegar, baking soda, and rubbing alcohol, all of which can save you money in one way or another.
Jonni McCoy is a very good source of inspiration for anyone who wants to save money. She authored several books about living frugal from her own life experience. McCoy suggested many things to do together as a family that are free instead of spending money, for example check out a movie at the library instead of renting at the movie store, make card houses, or take a virtual tour of world famous museums online (36-37). Christmas does not have to be stressful when homemade gifts can help to ease the financial crunch of the upcoming holidays. “Save seeds from your garden, fold paper into a seed packet, and give with a garden tool attached” (McCoy 46). This is something that I can easily do if the dollar store still has any of the garden tools left or if I find them on clearance somewhere.
The book Moms Saving Money is packed full of great ideas we found to be quite useful. After reading “To make your own flavored tea, add lemonade, orange juice, or a cheap punch mixture” (Fox Chodakowski and Fox Wood 63) I decided to make the kids two quarts of sweet tea and mix it with two quarts of the Schwan’s drink concentrate that I bought a few weeks ago. My children absolutely loved it and we are saving quite a bit of money. The authors of this book are best known as the Tightwad Twins. They offer many tips as well as recipes for, as stated in the book subtitle, “surviving and thriving on a shoestring budget”. After reading their tip that three percent is added to your heating bill for every degree your thermostat is set above sixty-five degrees, I have started pay much more attention to our thermostat settings (Fox Chodakowski and Fox Wood 117).
When I decided to research the use of coupons for saving money, I looked to an expert, Stephanie Nelson. She has been very well known for quite some time as the Coupon Mom, writing books, running a website, and the founder of Cut Out Hunger, a nationwide effort to use coupons to fill food banks. According to Nelson, a family can pay at least 50% less on groceries by knowing grocery prices, knowing your store savings programs, and knowing where to get coupons (6-7). With this type of saving, it is very important to be flexible about brands that your family is willing to use and that stocking up can be the key to success. But, just by being willing to shop at several different stores a shopper can save approximately twenty percent just by purchasing items at their lowest regular store price. Nelson reveals many online ways to get, organize, and use coupons in her book.
The Tightwad Gazette is a book that was compiled from the author’s ideas as well as the ideas that her readers had sent in to her monthly newsletter. This book is so packed with ideas from cover to cover that I actually bought Tightwad Gazette II & III to read as well. A great idea from the author: “I mix 1/3 cup of dry milk with 1 teaspoon of cocoa and sugar each. Add 1 cup of hot water. Or mix with cold water and prepare in the microwave” (Dacyczyn 79). “To form new, frugal habits, develop an awareness about all the small actions you do every day. Explore new ways to do things…seek the minimum level” (Dacyczyn 85). She suggests asking yourself about different aspects of your life and re-evaluate what you do. A good start is your laundry, such as how much laundry products you are using, are they are really needed and could you be using more than you need to each load? Then look at personal hygiene, do you use more toothpaste, shampoo, etc. than needed to get the job done? Dacyczyn points out money saving tips in this book that should be obvious to all of us but aren’t as well as many that you probably would have never thought of.
The sources of information on this topic are endless. I enjoy reading and sharing all of this information with my family at our meetings has been very beneficial to completing our quest successfully. By introducing a few new ideas at each meeting, they are worked into our daily routine with ease, not stress. Stress is the one thing we are trying to eliminate, not promote. Though this journey was started as a thirty day quest, it has become much more than that to my family. We have been somewhat frugal in the last few years but we are now moving to a new, more frugal way of life.
Works Cited:
Dacyczyn, Amy. The Tighwad Gazette. New York: Villard Books, 1993.
Fox Chodakowski, Ann and Susan Fox Wood. Moms Saving Money. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2000.
Hunt, Mary. The Best of the Cheapskate Monthly. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
McCoy, Jonni. Frugal Families. Bloomington: Bethany House Publishers, 2003.
Nelson, Stephanie. Greatest Secrets of the Coupon Mom. Los Angeles: DPL Press, 2005.
