My husband and I recently bought a house, and we’d like to plump up our emergency fund just in case we have a large house expense. (Because, of course, when you have little savings, expensive things start to break. It’s the law of nature, right?)
To inspire myself, I reread America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steve and Annette Economides. One strategy of theirs that I latched onto is once a month shopping. The Economides shop once a month for their family of seven and right after shopping day, they make 15 to 17 freezer meals to help them on nights when they’re too busy to cook.
Alright, I already regularly cook freezer meals, so how hard could it be to shop once a month for my family of five?
As it turns out, very tough, at least the first month.
Breaking Bad Habits
I have a bad habit of making a big shopping trip on the weekend and then running to the store for this or that several times a week.
Do you do this, too? From all of the harried shoppers I see at the store at 5 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone.
The problem is that each time I run to the store, I buy more items than I initially went to the store to buy. The Economides recommend once a month shopping to avoid this kind of impulse buying that blows up the grocery budget.
Making the Big Shopping Trip
This month, eager to change my bad shopping habit, I scouted the deals and made my big, once a month shopping trip. I spent two days afterward cooking up meals to put in the freezer. I was set, or so I thought.
Turns out, limiting the impulse to stop by the store is more difficult than I thought.
There are a number of reasons why we’re struggling:
My husband likes fresh fruit and veggies. Our family wiped these out after a week, so back I went to the store to pick up some more.
I’m an impulse eater. If something sounds good to me, I want to make the recipe and have it for dinner. I don’t want to wait until my next monthly shopping trip to get the ingredients to make it. (The whim would have passed by then, which is the point, I guess.)
Eating up odds and ends at the end of the month is not fun. Sure, trying to make meals out of what food is left is fun, but the last few days, most of it doesn’t taste good.
Taking Baby Steps Moving Forward
While it would be easy to give up on the idea of once a month shopping, I haven’t yet because I know it can be a big money saver. Instead, I’m going to back up and move to twice a month shopping. This will allow me time to plan out our meals for two weeks, making sure we have all the ingredients we need. Many fruits and veggies stay good for nearly two weeks, so my husband will have the fresh fruits and veggies that he wants.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully implement once a month shopping, but if I am successful with twice a month shopping, I will still significantly reduce my impulse shopping trips and improve my grocery budget.
How often do you grocery shop? Are you a multiple trip, impulse buyer like I am (was?), or are you a grocery store ninja?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
Are you on Facebook? Most everyone seems to be. After all, Facebook is a great place to catch up with old friends, share photos of your kids (and see friends’ family photos), and even look up what old flames are doing now.
However, have you ever used Facebook as a tool to help facilitate a move?
Remember that cross country move my husband and I considered but didn’t think would actually happen? Well, it’s going to happen.
This summer, we’ll be moving nearly 2,000 miles from Illinois to Arizona.
In the midst of all of our planning, I’ve been amazed at how Facebook has helped me to both sell stuff and learn about the new city we’re moving to.
Selling Junk Stuff
I love dressing my kids in Gymboree clothes that I buy for a steal when they’re on sale and I have a coupon. A few years ago, I had good luck selling them on eBay after the kids had outgrown them, but now, the market is saturated. After eBay and PayPal fees, selling there is really not worth my time.
I found that there are several Gymboree groups on Facebook. Since I have about three years of my daughters’ outgrown clothes to sell, this was a great find. The first week I listed clothes on the Facebook groups, I earned over $200! I still have about half of the clothes to sell. Thanks, Facebook for giving me cash and reducing the “stuff” I’ll have to move.
Making Connections to the New City
Many Facebook groups let you ask off topic questions, so on one of the homeschooling Facebook groups I belong to, I asked an off topic question about the city we’re planning to move to. Two women who live there responded and told me I could send them private messages about my questions about the area.
These women went above and beyond in answering every question I had. In fact, one of the women, Donna, invited me to visit her when we took a preliminary trip to Arizona before my husband signed his contract. We talked with her for over an hour at her house, and she gave us great information about things to do in the city, what she likes and dislikes, etc.
When we make our final move there, she’ll also be an excellent resource as we search for new doctors, dentists, car repair shops, etc. Plus, it’s nice to have someone that we already know once we get in town.
How to Make Your Own Connections on Facebook
Have you harnessed the power of Facebook? Doing so is easy. If you haven’t done so yet, you may want to join some Facebook groups for activities and hobbies you’re interested in. Finding one group initially is hardest. Then, once you find a group you like, you’ll see on your sidebar other similar groups that you can join.
Many towns have Facebook pages or swap pages where you can sell and buy items from members in your local community. Other groups like the Gymboree ones focus on people who like to buy and sell particular brands of clothes.
If you need to move or just to declutter your house, Facebook can be a great resource.
Do you use Facebook for more than just the basic social connection with friends and family? If so, how?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
Keeping up with the Joneses is bad. We know that. From a financial perspective, we spend a great deal of our time overcoming the green monster called envy in order to keep our lives in some semblance of financial order. We know the Joneses down the street with their big, fancy new SUV. We see them going on long family vacations. And we know the guy that mows their lawn. But, we also know that there’s a pretty high probability that they still owe a ton of money on that SUV. That that family vacation likely was financed through a credit card. Their entire financial life depends on them keeping their well-paying jobs.
Forget the Joneses
I’d like to talk about another family. The Smiths. You don’t know them. We don’t talk about them like we do the Joneses. Why don’t we? Because, outwardly, their lives are nothing to be envious of. They don’t own a big house on a double lot. They don’t drive a brand new Escalade. Their family vacations consist of weekend trips to state parks or trips to visit family a couple of counties over. Outwardly, they may even seem a bit downtrodden. They may seem (GASP!) a bit poor.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes, they are truly victims of their circumstance, or their poor financial choices along the way. But, for every one of those families, there’s at least two that aren’t poor. They have well paying jobs. They have money in the bank. And they occasionally barbeque a steak on the cheap grill they have on their back deck. It’s those Smiths I’d like to talk about.
It’s the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch Out For
Why don’t we know the Smiths? Because we live in a society that is enamored of our celebrity. We hang on every word that that famous athlete, or famous actress says. We try and model our lives after theirs. They live a glamorous life, full of flashing photography, red carpets, and any number of endorsement deals.
Who wouldn’t want to be like that? Short of being famous, we decide that we’ll see how close we can get. The bank doesn’t turn us down for that big house, big car, or vacation to the same beach that the celebrities hang out on. Maybe we’ll even get to see one of them!
But, it’s the Smiths we should know. We should know people who live their lives responsibly within their means. We should know people who live for more than having our fellow neighbors think about how rich we are, and how rich our lives must be. We should be the Smiths. We should be the people who drive the reliable older car without the flashy rims and booming sound system. We should be the people who live in the smaller house that we try and repair ourselves.
Society may push us towards that Joneses sort of lifestyle. After all, what would become of some of the companies if we stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses and stopped buying all their luxury goods? What would the news and tabloids cover if we weren’t constantly buying their rags in order to find out what sort of clothes the princes and princesses of some foreign country were wearing this spring?
Shiny Facades, Crumbling Foundations
All around us, there are Smiths. We don’t notice them, and we rarely get to know them. We’re surrounded by the Joneses, and the shiny facades of businesses and economies that are driven by their reckless spending. But, under those shiny facades is a crumbling foundation. The economy of the world is on shaky ground. We saw just how shaky it really was in 2008. When the housing market crashed, it very nearly brought the entire world economy with it. Luckily, the economy was strong enough at the time to take a beating. It wasn’t strong enough to bounce right back. It’s been a long slog back to where we were. We aren’t even back there yet. There are still parts of the world that are hurting economically.
Imagine, for a moment, if we rebuilt that economy, not on the sands of bailouts and extended unemployment benefits, and instead built it on the bedrock of hard work and frugality that got us where we were in the first place. Imagine if we had seen the folly of our loose spending ways and tightened our belts, stuck to our budgets, and started building an economy that doesn’t shake and quiver at the smallest rise in unemployment, or the slightest miss in an earnings report?
What if, instead of running around willy-nilly chasing the lifestyle of the Joneses, we were calmly working ourselves into the stable economy of the Smiths? What if we all didn’t have wait for our next paycheck to buy gas because our last paycheck went to our mortgage and car payments? What if we were able to fill a tank of gas from the cash in our bank account and know that we still had our emergency funds to help us along should a real emergency come along?
We can. We can bring our spending in line with our earning. We can sell the fancy car that we don’t need. We can downsize our house to something that we can afford. Sure, the dependable used car you buy might not have as much chrome as the fancy one. It might not have the same heated seats. And the house you downsize to might not have a walk-in closet, or a jacuzzi bath tub. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You don’t need them. They’re luxuries. You only think that it’s normal to have those things because the Joneses told you it was.
I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
