Affording Such A Large Family: Baby Edition

So recently in a budgeting accountability group I asked how much money we should put away before having our "ours" baby. There was a unanimous decision that babies are only as expensive as you make them. From my experience this is true. As I have said before, we believe that babies are a gift from God and that He will bless us for having them and He will provide for them. Here are a few things that are helpful to know when having a baby:

1. A crib is not a necessity. We bed share with our babies. No, I am not up for debating this issue.

2. Buy a good car seat. Car seat safety is everything! I prefer to buy new, just because you never know if they have been in a wreck.

3. Breastfeeding is free. I know that not everyone can breast feed, but local mom groups are great to donate milk as well as WIC will help supply formula.

4. Babywearing is a lifesaver. I don't buy strollers. They just get in the way. I can throw a baby on my back and do chores or go for stroll and have hands free for the other kids. I have never needed a swing either, however, we have always been gifted one.

5. Even if you don't have a shower, people will gift you items. Being a parent is like a fraternity. We are all in this together and know the struggles. You will get hand-me-down everything from half packs of diapers to I only used on scoop out of this formula or she doesn't like the peaches and we have 20.

6. Cloth diapers are cheaper.

Affording Such A Large Family Fun Edition

Feeding ducks at the duck pond.

I actually got them in order by age too!

That NEVER happens.

What do we do for fun? You name it! No, we don't have a lot of money but we are super creative. I love researching and finding free events in our area. Facebook has made this much easier.

We attend a bunch of free activities. Barnes and Nobel does story and craft times on Saturdays. Lowes and Home Depot offers building workshops. The gyms sometimes do family swim and movie night. There is always some kind of free festival going on downtown.

We go into nature. We live near the lake so we love to go swimming. We will go hiking and do a picnic. We feed the ducks (PSA: Bread is bad for them). We go on bike rides. Shaving cream fights out side. Side walk chalk. Bubbles. Races. Trampoline. We have even done backyard Olympics. Camping. Bon fires.

Family Movie Night. We have Netflix movie night with popcorn or we will go to the drive-in ($30) when they are having a double or triple feature. We look for Redbox codes. Our will just pull out an old favorite or a movie from our extensive collection. We buy movies by the box at yard sales. Unfortunately, we get a lot of scratched movies due to little hands.

Family cooking night. We will do ice cream sundae bars. We will do build your own taco bars or make your own pizza.

Game Night. We will do this as a family or with friends. We have even found an organization that will allow you to do a game (video, board or card) as a marathon fundraiser. You get donations just like you would if you were running a 5K and that money goes to our local children's hospital. We taught the kids chess, which is actually apart of their third grade curriculum, and they have excelled and kick our hind ends.

We are even go on vacations. We are currently planning a trip across country. We will travel the upper US to the west coast to visit family. Go down through California to Disneyland. Come home via the lower half of the US and visit the Grand Canyon, The Alamo and New Orleans and end with a weekend at the beach. We are saving for this trip and couponing. We will be tent camping at KOAs across the country to save on lodging. We will cook our own food, except at Disney, well because DISNEY (everyone needs a Dole Whip in their life). We are actually looking at taking a train from east to west and then renting a car to drive back (but I feel like we will miss out on stuff that way)!

In February, I took the three younger guys to the beach. Though it was to visit a dying family member, so not really a vacation or happy time, but we still made some great memories.

Check out more from this series:
Affording so many kids: school edition

Affording Such A Large Family: School Edition

Yes, we have thought about college but first we have to get through primary school. DS1 and DS2 go to public school as they live with Baby Mama during the school year. She does send them to one of the best public schools in our area. DS3, DS4, and DS5 are home school. There are costs to both public and home school. But I am only going to touch on the home school part because that is what I am most knowledgeable about.

We do have cost for school supplies, umbrella school, co-op and curriculum. We try to make it as cost efficient as possible for us. We don't have the Internet, but my parents do. They let me use their Internet, printer and computer to print school work as needed. The boys use Easy Peasy All-In-One curriculum and we love it! It is free and very interesting to the kids. Pretty excited because their science and history is going to line up with co-op this year. We buy our supplies when everything is tax free. Yes, I am a hoarder when it comes to TP rolls and scratch paper. Why throw stuff away when you can reuse it.

But in addition to reading and math, I enjoy teaching the kids life skills. We learn how to budget and coupon and how to use these skills how to help others. We are currently couponing for Operation Christmas Child. Learning these skills don't cost a thing. But it instills values we want them to have. We also let them do community activities. As they get older, they will build a community service portfolio for colleges.

We utilize the library. Most library have a large movie, cd and audiobook selection. So we can find lots of cool things here and the boys think it is a field trip so win-win.

Craiglist often you can find craft things like paper rolls and pipe cleaners. That is great! I also contact our local paper and get newspaper roll ends for free. It's great to draw on and to trace their bodies to make a skeleton.

We also can find supplement curriculum at yard sales, used book stores and the local private school hosts a yard sale and they are a dual school (both private and home school) and we find amazing things there!

As for college, our state offers free tuition for the first two years at a community college. There are also grants for home schooled kids. DS3,4&5 will have their dad's GI Bill as well. They can do work study programs while in college. They all have savings account, which don't have a lot of money, but we ask for CDs for them instead of gifts (or experiences if people insist on getting them gifts). They will have jobs as soon as they are able to work. We want them to have a work ethic and we will be teaching them how to save their money instead of just blowing it. We also hope for scholarships. There is always the FAFSA as they will probably qualify for the Pell Grant. There is always job corp too. Which we encourage all of the kids to go to.

Affording Such A Large Family: Clothing Edition

Our kids must all be wearing clothes with holes in them and ratty shoes. There seems to be an idea that clothing children is expensive. And, yes, I guess it could be. That depends on you. We chose to shop yard sales, thrift store, clearance aisle and totally accept hand-me-downs.

Yard sales are great to find mostly springs and summer clothes. At least around here, you don't find a lot of pants and long sleeves a lot. But you can find crazy amounts of shorts and t-shirts and the occasional new with tags shoes. I buy our clothes here as well. Two of our kids are in "teenage sizes." I do have trouble finding trendy young men clothes at yard sales but that's where thrift store come in.

Thrift stores are awesome for finding non clothing items as well, but that's not what we are talking about. I find handbags, shoes with tags, teenage boy clothes, junior miss clothes for me (too young to wear misses and too old to wear juniors... the struggle is real!), I have even found make up that is still seal and in date.

Clearance items are amazing. I don't have a lot to say about this but use coupons and store rewards to make it last.

Hand-me-downs. I am very lucky to have some amazing friends who pass their kids out grown clothes on to us. We do the same in return. We hold the outgrown clothes out until the next kid can wear them and when DS4/5 out grow them. We see if we have any friends who need them. After our friends pick through them the rest we put in a yard sale and what doesn't sale goes to Goodwill.

Gifts. We ask family and friends for Christmas and birthdays to please not get the younger guys clothes because they honestly have so many. For the bigger guys we ask for gift cards so they can buy their own clothes (they are at that age).

On average we spend about $200 clothing and shoes.
Here are a few of my tips:

• Find a good stain remover!
• If stains don't come out or the idem cant be fixed, throw out, repurpose or compost if you can.
• Fix small things like missing buttons.
• Vacuum bags are amazing.
• Repurpose clothes into cloth grocery bags, cleaning rags or even family cloths.
• Look for events at local thrift stores... a couple times a year our thrift stores will do free or donation "fill-a-bag" events. We each get a bag to fill so we often end up with more than we can use so we donate it.

Affording Such a Large Family

Aside from the glances and sheer curiosity that having a large family causes, large families are often questioned as to how we can afford our kids. You stay at home with the kids while your husband (soon to be for me) works? How do you contribute to the family? Kids are expensive how do you afford all of them? I can only imagine how much food you'll go through when they are teenagers?

I like to think that these people are well meaning and not just being jerks. Are we wealthy? Hardly! Do we struggle? Sure who doesn't. We believe that children are blessing from God. In fact, in the Bible, we are instructed to multiple and are told that our children are blessings:

Psalm 127:3-5 New International Version (NIV)

³ Children are a heritage from the Lord,
    offspring a reward from him.
⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
    are children born in one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man
    whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
    when they contend with their opponents in court.

 

Now, I know that this scripture has been linked to a famous large family and the quiver full movement. Let me make this super clear that we are not associated with that movement and do not tolerate the structure of this movement. I personally feel that the husbands role is abusive and controlling. Brad would laugh at the thought of me controlled. Also, blanket training is cruel and leads to robot children who have no sense of trust and to me is abusive. Who hits a child let alone a baby!? But I digress...

 

We believe that by following the Bibles teaching that we will in deed be blessed by our children. Every time that we face a financial struggle, God ALWAYS comes through and we receive an unexpected check or are gifted something that we need.

 

We believe that if we use our money (God's money) wisely that we will benefit from that. We also use our time and resources to bless others and in return we are blessed beyond measure.

 

Over the next few weeks we will talk about my tips for affording our children and how we plan to afford future children.

EveryDollar App

I am beyond in love with the EveryDollar budgeting app. It is really helping us with our baby steps to get out of debt. Now I have to admit that we are not following Dave Ramsey to a T.  But his baby steps are wonderful. This app is an accompanying app to FPU. I love that it does the math for me because I am absolutely terrible with math and when it comes to the budget there is not any room for errors.

This app is being a lifesaver for us. We are saving money by not only missing late fees but we are keeping our budget at 100% accuracy and putting any spare money in the vacation fund. We are planning a few "lavish" vacations for the next few years. We are also putting money back for a down payment on a new home. We are so excited to be doing this and we will keep you updated on the process.

Feeding Large Family on a Budget

I am often asked how we keep all our boys fed, because they eat like horses! I have been a penny pincher since I was 10 years old so I have learned a few tricks. I decided to share my nonconventional tips as well because they really do help!

1. We don't eat out... hardly ever. As we approach our 1 year anniversary, we have eaten out with kids in toll maybe 3 times. We always eat at home. It's much more healthy for us and saves so much money.

2. We don't do boxed meals. Everything we make is from scratch. This is not only due to cost, but also due to dietary restrictions that we have. We were dairy free though DS3 has outgrown his allergy now and we are less restricted. We are completely nut free and limit gluten intake as I have Celiac disease and DS4 is autistic and DS5 is severe ADHD. We also avoid red food coloring like the plague except on special occasions.

3. We shop multiple stores. We shop according to our meal plan for the week and we stock up when what we need is at the lowest cost. For me this means keeping a notebook with a list of local stores and staples and the average price I have seen those items at. Then when we are preparing our shopping list we cross check sales ads and adjust as needed.

4. We coupon. Yes, I am that annoying lady who has a huge pile of coupons that she treats like her children. We will buy a ton of items when they are an amazing price. I haven't bought deodorant in 6 years and no we don't stink. I found a deal on deodorant where I was paid $.10 a stick to buy it and I hit up all the local store buying as many as I could. A few tips to couponing: be courteous and don't clear the shelf, let people go ahead of you, if you are planning on making a major haul ask to speak to the store manager when you arrive and tell them the crazy amount you plan on purchasing... they typically open up a register just for me so that way you are not holding up other shoppers or frustrating the cashier.

5. Buy in bulk when possible. Shelf stable items that can be bought cheaper in a big box store or online are lifesavers.

6. Grow/Raise your own. Our current rental doesn't allow for a big garden but we have some planters with herbs and tomatoes. When we move next year, we will be finding a place with room for a garden and chickens and possibly meat rabbits.

7. Go meatless. Many of our meals are meatless. Meat is pricy and too much is not good for you. Fresh veggies and grains are filling and good for you and much much cheaper.

8. Waste not want not. We save all of our scraps. I have freezer containers and I put left over veggies, broths, bones, fruits and grains into their own containers. We use the left overs for soup. We will make a huge pot of vegetable soup and the fruit for smoothies and the bones to make bone broth.

9. Crop share. Barter when you can. We have herbs that some of our friends don't and we trade. Our church offers a crop trade too which is excellent. We trade our herbs for squash and peppers mostly. Every penny counts.

10. Meal plan. I am the enforcer when it comes to meal plans. I have four meal plans that I rotate based on season. More salads in the warmer months and more soups in the cooler months. We stick to these.

11. Attend free food events. This not only helps our grocery budget but provides for a change in meals and free entertainment. Plus, who doesn't love free stuff.

Inbox Dollars

Inbox Dollars has been one of the coolest discoveries of my life! Get paid to read emails, take surveys and watch videos. You get paid out at $30 and it's the greatest thing to help out with our debt free journey. It only takes a few seconds of my time each day and in a weeks time I am a third of the way to cashing out.

*Disclosure: clicking link above will lead to sign up page under my referral code. I am not a paid endorser for Inbox Dollars and the opinion stated is my own.

April Financial Checkup

We are in Gazelle Intensity Mode for getting out of debt. We have started using our money envelope system. We are picking up every bit of overtime that we can get. I am babysitting three wonderful little girls three days a week for a friend. I am also doing some online surveys and side gigs to earn a few dollars here and there. Brad has been donating plasma twice a week and will be receiving a bonus at the end of the month. We are also doing the surveys for the plasma center and we can save for gas cards and extra bonuses.

This month we have finished paying off the dog deposit on our rental. We have also paid off our credit card debt!!! We have came up with a game plan and budget for the next year. We should be able to pay off $20000 in debt over the next 12 months if we are able to follow the plan.

January 2017 Financial Checkup

We are starting to get settle down into getting ourselves out of debt. We are working our butts off to get ourselves to where our family has everything they need. We had to jump around baby step 1 this month to get ready to move. But on a side note we did pay off some debts. We did our first of the month money meeting... Yup, we are that couple...and came up with our game plan. Here are a few things that helped our budget this month: 

We discovered that our cellphone company was over changing us for over 8 months! We definitely will be paying more attention to the bills. I called fussing and begging them to fix it. They credited my account $197 dollars. So that paid this months phone bills. That helped. We quit smoking. This saves us over $320 a month and almost $3900 a year. That really increases our monthly budget. That could be a car payment. I've learned to do my nails myself. Thank goodness for Pinterest and YouTube. This saved me $60 this month. I also learned to cut the boys hair at home. This saves my $45 a month. That is $425 a month savings and with the cellphone $622 this month. That all went to closing costs, but starting next month we can put that back into our emergency fund and it will be fully funded in just over two months. Next month we will get our taxes back and have our two big bills paid off and have a lot extra in savings.

Every Dollar App is most definitely a life saver for me. I can just type in our budget and it does the math for me. It lets me know what I am over or under budgeting on. I really love it. As I am saving money, I am going to be able to lower our bills and put more back in savings.

It's tax season. While we are not able to get our refund back until next month. The place that does it for us, will advance us $1500

With mile up I have been able to earn a little money toward Christmas so yay for saving for Christmas!

Money Matters:

Pest and Home Inspection: $397 we have to start paying on it next month

Savings: $27
Christmas: $6.75

Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool

I love that I am able to homeschool our babies. I am very thankful for the Easy Peasy curriculum. It is what I used when first starting out homeschooling and working full time. Then I switched to an expensive curriculum. The kids hated it and now we are back to EP.

It is free. It is computer based which my kids love. I love that it includes Bible lessons. It goes all the way to high school. We do supplement because they lessons are a bit short for my kids. But Pinterest has some great ideas for that.

What are some fugal homeschooling sites you use?

My Coke Rewards

I love my soda, but I am way to cheap to pay full price for it if I can avoid it. I use my coke rewards to help get some discounts. My whole family is coke people not Pepsi people. They do not use my coke rewards however. They save their codes for me and I go pick them up and enter them in as much as I can in a week. We enter codes religiously. We save up and order coupons. I like to order them 4 coupons at a time, because most sales around here are 4 for $# so that gives an even bigger discount.

I advise using my coke rewards even if you don't want to use the discounts or coupons. You can donate your points to your child's school which is wonderful! I love finding ways to give back, especially when it doesn't cost a penny!

MyPoints

Earn points and redeem toward gift cards. I have redeemed for CVS gift cards to coupon with in the past. BzzAgent is a word of mouth marketing sight that will reward in MyPoints points. So it is a win win. You can watch videos, shop online or do searches to earn points. Who doesn't love free money? This website is very similar to Swagbucks. You can print and redeem coupons for points. Of course, redemption of coupons does take a little while to get your points added to your account. You can earn points by participating in sponsored deals or trials. So do cost money, but if you are interested in trying the product anyway, you might as well go through their site and earn points too! You can earn points through referring a friend.

Disclaimer: The links are my referral links and I will receive points for sign ups through my links.

Pinch Me

I love freebies! Who doesn't? It's a great way to stretch your budget and even a great way to give back. If we don't use a product we get a sample of, we will donate it. Local animal shelters take pet food, food banks will take food items, we do blessing bags with hygiene items. This year, we have chosen two organizations we really would like to help... Operation Christmas Child and Standing Rock Water Protectors. So any hygiene items we get will be distributed between the two. But I digress...

I have stumbled upon Pinch Me. I am in love with this site! They often times give full sized samples just for reviewing the product. So far I have received tomato paste, foundation, eyeliner, lipstick, baby butt paste, and two dish cloths. I would recommend this site to anyone. The surveys are quick and painless, as is ordering the samples.

I can't wait to see what I get in my mailbox next!

Selling On Line Fail

So recently, I decided to give selling on Amazon a chance. I found an item that I could flip for a $30 gain. That's awesome, except I did not know what I was doing. It spent every bit of my profit on shipping and then I came to realize that I selected the wrong picture and needed to include a car. I had to buy the car on amazon and have it shipped to the buyer. I actually lost money on the deal. However, I have been talking to people who do this for a living and have learned a few things. Had I known then what I know now, I would have turned a nice profit. I will be trying this again and plan to make money on it this time.

Have you ever tried selling online? What are some of your favorite items to sell?

Dave Ramsey Style

We are going Dave Ramsey style. We are baby stepping our way to a better life. We are just one baby step 1,but are so excited to get started. We are looking at lots of way to save money and make extra money to go through our baby steps faster. Baby step one is to save $1000 emergency fund. Right now, we don't have a bunch of money to put back, but after the holidays and after we start following a zero budget, we will make this goal quickly. To be honest, we have no money put back yet. So follow us along with our journey.

I cannot wait to get our finances on track. I am so excited that we will not be struggling as much. I am learning a few ways to make some extra money from home while we are raising our growing family... No, I am not pregnant right now, but we would like to start a family after the wedding. The wedding is a whole other financial disaster, but we will come up with a game plan. It does not benefit us to put the boys in daycare because I would not make enough to even cover daycare expenses. So I will be working from home on a few various things.