Frugal, thrifty, pennywise, sparing…any of these could easily have been my middle name, given the fact that after baby #3, I was known for being the mom that could dig up free things to do with the kids most of the time. This put me in the position of taking a lot of incoming calls regarding our play date outings. This along with having a knack for being creative about how I obtained the things I was able to acquire for a family of 10 that included Mom, Dad and eight kids.
My Jobs
Now that I’m divorced, I have different financial challenges to face like paying for a rental house, (you need a house with my brood), not just an apartment. The rent for this is a monthly struggle for me, but I make it happen by working as many hours as I get offered, and then ask for more if I need to. With an income of approximately 20,000 to 25,000, depending on how much caregiving I do, along with my Outpost Natural Foods clerk job, paying $1000.00 monthly is no easy feat. I a rent room of my house to my young adult daughter for $200.00 a month which helps me with this cost.
Writing
The online writing I do is a huge help in paying my gas consumption for my 2 autos every month, so if I have a month that is particularly eventful regarding driving, you’ll find me typing more. Not to mention my 15 passenger van is expensive to run, so I limit how much I use it by using my Camry for road trips that don’t involve all of my kids. Consolidating road trips helps too.
Domestic Methods
Other domestic ways to help me save money include, baking bread and desserts from scratch including birthday cakes and seasonal treats, hanging out my laundry, hosting rummage/bake sales, shopping at thrift stores/rummage sales, limiting driving/car pooling whenever possible, encourage my kids to be creative about making gifts for birthdays, doing my own haircuts, keeping family members that sew busy with repairs and alterations for us, double coupon by going to the store at midnight to get the sale price for 2 days, ask family to babysit rather than someone I have to pay, and constantly keep my ears and eyes open to conversations about who is getting rid of what. This gives me a heads up on perhaps obtaining some of the things I need for free.