Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

SwapMamas.com: Mother’s Little Helper

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One of the side effects of my wife’s entrepreneurial adventures has been that we have a very unstable income on her side of the balance sheet.  And part of how we’ve dealt with that is to try and save money in as many ways as we can.  Frugality has become the modus operandi in our household.

Anyone with kids will tell you that there are certain things that you cannot go without.  For example, kids need clothes, and lots of them.  They’ll go through several outfits a day depending on the messiness of their meals and the level of dirt outside.  Kids like to have toys too!  And being frugal and buying your kids toys don’t always go together.

But, we found a site that helps us a little with both.  It’s called swapmamas.com and it is pretty darn cool.  In a nutshell, it is a social networking site for moms where they gather together and swap/barter for items.  Say we have  some formula left over after our youngest moves up to real food.  We can list the sealed cans on swapmamas.  Another mama comes along and uses that formula, and has some clothes that will fit one of our kids.  Or some DVD movies that her kids no longer watch.  She offers the trade to us, we accept and all that’s left is the shipping.  We pay for the shipping for  the formula, and the other mama pays for the shipping for whatever it is that she traded us for.  She gets a can of formula that she can use and that would have done absolutely nothing for us except sit on a shelf and we get a new movie or some new(ish) clothes.  Win Win.

Swapmamas.com is worth a look if you’ve got kids and want to try and be frugal as well.  It might even be worthwhile if you don’t have kids.  I can’t attest to that since I would have never known the site existed if it weren’t for having kids. 😉

My Wife Quit Her Job: End of Year Update

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Last update, I told you that the COBRA health insurance plan premium went through the roof and we were deciding whether to continue paying for it, or to switch over to the plan that I get at work.  In the end, we decided to remain on the COBRA plan.  The difference was about $350 a month, but we figured that if we had only one or two medical mishaps, it would easily pay for itself with the 100% coverage.  And, as luck would have it, it turned out to be a good idea.  Both my wife and I ended up having issues that required several weeks of physical therapy.  Hers stems from an accident she had a few years back that seems to have thrown a few things off.  Nothing some pt and a pair of orthotics won’t fix.  Mine is from my football days.  Arguably, not completely necessary, but was something that would need to be fixed one way or the other, so decided to get it taken care of.  Then, to make our decision look even smarter, my wife fell in the ice and snow yesterday and severely sprained her ankle and knee and prompted a visit to the ER.  We got a nice new pair of crutches and what will likely be a very expensive pair of athletic wraps.  Of course, all paid for by our insurance.  The extra money has easily paid for itself.  But, that all ends on the 1st, so we’re switching back to the coverage that I get at work.

The business that my wife and her friends started continues to do well.  They received a very important certification from the state that will allow them to pick up another line of business and expand even further.  My wife continues to be the only one getting a regular paycheck from the company, but with this new certification, that will likely change very soon.  Luckily, the people that she’s working with are both very qualified for the business that they are in and have plenty of experience (my wife does to) so they don’t have much in the way of learning curves for the actual service that they provide.  Their biggest learning curve has been the actual running of the business.  They were smart and got a lawyer and an accountant right away though, so they’ve had excellent guidance along the way.

Also, I did receive a small raise this year which should help.  However, between the insurance and some increases in medical flex and childcare flex, my checks will likely be smaller than they were in 2009.  Most of that should come back through the flex accounts.  Tax free money for the win.  Especially on things like childcare that you’re going to spend money on anyways!

What If Time Wasn’t An Issue?

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You likely remember questions like this one from your high school classes.  Or your college philosophy classes.  Well, here’s another one.

What if time wasn’t an issue.  What if we knew that we would live to be 200 years old?  Would we still act the way that we do?  Would we still work the same way at the same company doing the same job?  Would we run, run, run until we couldn’t anymore?

Or would we, instead, realize that we had that much longer to achieve our goals and slow down a bit.  Would we pursue more of our passions and less of our profits?

I’m not so sure that anything would change.  I think there would still be people who work 80 hour weeks trying to make as much money as they possibly can so they can have that big McMansion and the Lexus.  And there would still be people who embrace their passions and don’t worry about where the next buck is coming from, only that they are doing the things that they love.

What do you think would change?  How would you handle it differently?

I’ll refrain from assigning an 2000 word essay, but I would like to know what you think.  Leave your thoughts in the comments or write an article of your own in response.