Let's Talk About Debt

Now, here's a post I feel a little strange about writing. Not because it's too tremendously personal, or because I'm embarrassed to share it. I feel a little odd posting this because I have read similar posts in the past and, depending on my state of mind at the time, I've sometimes felt sheer jealousy and bitterness in response to someone else's great news. And that's the last thing I want to make anyone feel. But the thing about blogging your life is that you can't skip over the big stuff. And this, today? Big stuff.

So I'm sharing this post today because this has been a HUGE part of our lives for the past 7 years, and a dominating force in the decisions we've made, both large and small.

I am thrilled to be able to say it: we are debt free. 

Can I get a hallelujah?!

Let me back up and give you the background:

Jeff and I met and got married as undergraduate students at BYU. We were both very lucky and blessed to be able to graduate without any debt. Compared to many universities, BYU has crazy low tuition costs. Jeff and I both had jobs, we had help from our parents, and I had a full-tuition scholarship.

Then came chiropractic school. And that debt-free life vanished. Student loans were just an immutable fact, and while we would have loved to be able to avoid them, we couldn't find a way to make that happen. So we accepted our fate and just planned to take on as little debt as we could, and pay it off as fast as possible after graduation.

With the exception of his first year of chiropractic school, Jeff always had a job and worked as many hours as he realistically could while still getting by in his classes. And with the exception of the last year of school when Forrest was born, I always worked, too. (And after Forrest was born, I was able to make some money from home with my Etsy shop.)

We graduated from chiropractic school in 2011 with $141,000 in debt. We immediately started paying with an income-based repayment plan, and our required payments were low enough to barely scratch the surface. We were gaining far more in interest than we were paying off each month. This went on for about 3 1/2 years, and even with our monthly payments, the interest pushed our debt up to $163,928 (and 24 cents--you can see how disturbing this debtwas to Jeff, because I asked him for the final number and he recited it to the penny).

That was awfully discouraging, to watch the debt grow and grow even as we faithfully paid on it every month. It was starting to feel like the debt would just be a part of our lives forever. We felt held back from doing things we would love to do as a couple and as a family, because how could we justify spending money on anything fun when we owed so much money to someone else?

Somewhere during those 3 1/2 years after graduation, we bought our first house (it was a short sale, and we got it for a very low price, right after the market crashed) and then started our own business (without taking out a business loan). We never made oodles of money, but we were certainly comfortable, and our income was slowly but steadily growing.

We kept up our frugal student lifestyle, worked hard, and saved every penny we could. We started to notice that real estate prices were climbing significantly. At the suggestion of a chiropractic school buddy who is also pouring his heart and soul into crushing his student loan debts, we talked to a realtor about our house. We loved our house, of course . . . but we loved the idea of making some money on it more. We were pretty surprised at the price the realtor wanted to list our house at--it was more than we would have guessed. We realized that between the money we had saved over the past few years and the money we could potentially make on the sale of our house, we could come within a few thousand dollars of wiping out our loans entirely.

It was a no-brainer: we listed the house. Initially, we planned to use a chunk of the money we'd make on the house as a down payment on another house, and pay the remainder toward our debt. But after a few discouraging house hunting trips with the realtor that didn't turn up anything we were excited about buying, we started to wonder if buying another house wasn't the right idea at all.

Instead, why wouldn't we put all the money from the sale of our house into the loans? We'd be able to come so much closer to paying them off completely, and we could rent while we saved up for another down payment.

So that's exactly what we did.  We dumped the majority of our savings into the loans, which knocked them down to about $100K. We continued pumping money into the debt whenever we could while we waited for our house to sell, and brought it down by a few thousand more. Then our house sold, and we put every last penny from the sale straight into our debt. That left us with only a few thousand left in debt, which we paid off 100% in the first few weeks after moving.

It feels liberating to know we don't owe anyone a dime right now. Nobody else has a claim on any money we make. We're so, so glad to have lifted the burden of debt off our family, especially since we know this is something we could have easily dragged around with us for decades to come.

But I have to admit, it's actually a bit anticlimactic. That debt was our dominating decision-making force for years--we talked about it constantly, scrimped and saved and sacrificed for it, budgeted and planned around it. Then we made that final transfer and watched the balance tick down to zero and . . . nothing. We're proud, we're so glad it's over, and that we can get on with our lives without having to stress and worry about those loans, but no choir of angels descended from the heavens to sing some hallelujahs, a community-wide dance party didn't spontaneously break out in our honor, and not a single confetti cannon was shot off for the occasion. Can you believe it? Getting out of debt is a quiet triumph, I suppose.

This is the part in 'the debt-free post' where I've seen other bloggers make some sort of list of tips or advice. I'm not sure I have anything profound to share. For us, paying off those loans was a healthy mix of common sense and great timing and good fortune.

Jeff and I were both raised in families that emphasized hard work and thriftiness. It's in our blood. We have always seen eye-to-eye on financial matters, and I can't recall us ever fighting over money. (Don't read a perfect marriage into that statement--we simply fight over other things instead.)

We've lived cheap and worked hard. We never went out to eat often, or bought expensive clothes, or nice cars. So much of our stuff is secondhand--furniture, kids' clothes, household stuff, etc. Gosh, we didn't even have internet during chiropractic school because we didn't want to spend an extra $50 a month on it. To this day, 8 years into our marriage, we have not yet been on a vacation (unless you count visits to Jeff's family in PA!). We still haven't taken our honeymoon. Jeff puts every minute of his time into building his clinic. Of course we haven't been perfect budgeters, but we've always tried to spend as little as we possibly could, while saving as much as possible.

And of course, there has been some great luck, or blessings, or whatever you'd like to call it. Our parents helped us through our undergrad degrees. When we got married, their gift to us was a sensible, reliable car (which I still drive today!). We happened to be looking to buy a house when prices were at their lowest, and we happened to be thinking of selling just as they were climbing back up.

We are so, so grateful to our parents, both for the good money sense they taught us when we were kids, and for the help they've continued to give us. Now that we are out of debt, one of our biggest financial goals is to be ready and able to help Forrest and Darcy when they are struggling to pay for college, or are thinking of getting married, or are ready to buy their first house. We want to be able to help our kids financially like our parents helped us--both by teaching them to be financially savvy, and by having the means to help them when they're setting out on their own.

We'll spend the next year saving up for a down payment for our next house. We opened educational savings plans for each of the kids, as well as retirement accounts that we'll pay into each month. And we're enjoying the feeling of not owing anyone a dime.

And if you have a confetti cannon at your disposal, may I borrow it? An occasion this big absolutely demands confetti.

When I Buy Books

I have no idea whether this will come as a surprise or not, but I don’t buy books very often. I love reading, and I love owning great books, but I also love not spending money. It’s an interesting balance.

I had a friend who told me years ago that she never reads books from the library. She said that if she wants to read a book, she just buys a copy, because all she can think about when flipping through a library book is the germy hands that have touched those pages in the past, and what if someone had brought the book into the bathroom with them?

These thoughts had never, ever crossed my mind . . . but I guess she’s not the first one to be concerned about toilet books.

Almost everything I read comes from the library, and luckily the thought of other readers doesn’t bother me. But I thought I’d write a post today on how I decide which books earn a permanent spot on my shelves. I don’t buy books terribly often, but I try to be thoughtful in choosing which books to purchase.

^ life with children—those aren’t calendar blocks, they’re building blocks.

I narrowed my book-buying criteria to 3 main questions I ask myself before buying:

1) Will I reread it? My main consideration in whether to buy a book is if I think it is a book I’ll read more than once. There are plenty of books out there that I read once, and feel pretty sure I won’t read again. But then there are books that I read and enjoy so much that I can easily picture myself wanting to read them again at some point. If I think I might reread a book, that’s a good sign to me that I ought to buy a copy.

2) Would I want my kids to read it? This has nothing to do with content or maturity (I own plenty of books I wouldn’t be comfortable handing to a kid), but everything to do with providing quality reading material for my kids. When I read a children’s or young adult book that I think is great, I like to buy it for my kids to read someday. My theory is that they’ll grow up loving to read if they have easy access to great books. Time will tell if this theory pans out, I suppose.

3) Is it a book I might loan out? If I read a book, enjoy it, and immediately think of a few friends or family members who I know would love it too, I might buy it to have ready if I’m asked for a recommendation.

I buy most of my books used from Thriftbooks (they don’t know me except as a customer—this isn’t sponsored in any way). My only complaint is that they come with a Thriftbooks sticker on the spine (see photo below), and I have ripped the covers more than once trying to remove the stickers (as is the case with the 3rd book in the stack below). I order probably 1-3 books per month from that site, and occasionally pop in to library book sales (although I rarely buy books I haven’t already read, unless the price is really low and it’s a book or author I’m interested in).

My most recent book purchases:
84, Charing Cross Road – I always get nervous when a book is billed as “a book for book-lovers,” but this one is perfection.
Ella Minnow Pea – Quick and funny and so lovable.
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had – Perfect example of a book I bought because I hope with all my heart that my kids will read and love it someday.
Rebecca – An English teacher recommended this to me in high school, and I grouchily reported back to her a few weeks later that I hated it. After rereading it as an adult, I am embarrassed for my high school self.
Bloodroot – After reading and loving this in February, I knew I needed to get a copy to keep. Very good stuff, and I can definitely imagine reading it again as well as letting friends borrow it.
On my book wishlist:
Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy
Bread and Wine
Anne of Green Gables (the Rifle Paper Co. edition—I already own it in paperback but I want a pretty copy)

A quick thought on ebooks:

I love reading ebooks, but I rarely buy them. I figure that if I’m spending money on a book, I want to actually have that book, and see it on my shelves where I’ll be way more likely to pick it up and read it again. More than once, I’ve thumbed through my kindle and been surprised to see a book there—I’d purchased it and completely forgotten about it, since there wasn’t anything physical to remind me I’d bought it. I own maybe half a dozen ebooks, but I vastly prefer buying hard copies.

I’m really hoping that someday, hard copies of books will come with a free digital edition—wouldn’t it be nice to have both? The ebook exception for me is books that are hard to read (for instance, my copy of Gone With the Wind has such tiny print packed into such a short, squat book that it’s tough on the eyes and difficult to open wide enough to read along the inner edges of the pages), and non-fiction (I love being able to highlight interesting passages to return to easily on my kindle).

Do you buy books? How do you decide which books to buy and which to borrow?

Friday Lists: Running Clothes on the Cheap

People always point to running as the perfect budget exercise—as long as you’ve got a decent pair of shoes, you don’t really have to spend much money on anything else to get started. Which is true . . . except that you could easily spend a small fortune on your running wardrobe. $50 for a tank top? Yeah . . . not gonna happen.

I have the same general attitude toward running clothes as I do toward beauty products (and, I suppose, toward almost everything): as long as I don’t know what I’m missing out on, I’ll be content with my budget stuff. Maybe someday, if I’ve got money just burning a hole in my pocket, I’ll be more willing to dish out for higher quality, pricier stuff. I don’t doubt that it’s better.

But for now, my budget-friendly running clothes suit me just fine. Almost all of my running wardrobe is from Walmart and Ross, and I’ve been perfectly happy with it so far.

Here are 5 of my favorite affordable running items (I own and regularly use all but #3, which I tossed in because I’m hoping to buy it soon):

1. Avia Scrunch Back Tank – It is breaking my heart that I can’t find my #1 favorite running tank anywhere online(also made by Avia), but this one comes in at a very close second. I learned quickly that I hate running in snug-fitting tops (especially tanks with a built-in bra—the worst!), and I prefer my tops to be loose-fitting and very lightweight. This tank fits the bill perfectly, and comes in plenty of cute colors (I own it in lime green). The only reason it is my second favorite running top is because after months of runs and trips through the washing machine, the hem is just barely starting to bunch up a bit. Not a big deal at all and it has absolutely been worth the (very low!) price, but my other Avia tank hasn’t had that issue, so it’s my #1.

2. Danskin Now Running Shorts – These give me everything I want from a running short. At under $8, the price is absolutely right. They are super comfortable, I’ve never had any chafing issues while wearing them on runs, they’re lightweight and breathable, and come in a great variety of colors. I own two pairs.

3. Free Spirit Tie Dye Capri – This item is the only one I don’t currently own. I’d like to get a second pair of capris soon—I love the fun print on this one, and it could be paired with any color top so I know it would get a lot of use. I may need to swing by TJ Maxx this week to see if I can find this pair.

4.  Danskin Now Textured Jacket – Jeff bought this jacket for me, and I’ll admit, it took a few runs for me to warm up to it. I already owned a different jacket which I liked, and I didn’t think I would use this one as much. But after a few runs in it, it easily won me over. I love that it’s a bit looser-fitting than my previous jacket, and the double layer of mesh material makes it warm but breathable. My only complaint is that the thumb holes (which I think are an awesome feature!) aren’t usable at all, since the sleeve hasn’t been lengthened to allow it to comfortably reach my thumbs.

5. Betsey Johnson Floral Leggings – I’m including these on this list with reservations. If you click that link to purchase them, you’ll see that they are $54, which I would not consider a budget-friendly price. But since I bought my pair at Ross for $20, I suppose they make the budget-friendly cut. I own another pair of running leggings that I thought were great until I bought this pair, which blow pair #1 out of the water. The fit is fantastic, the material is the perfect blend of firm/supportive without being constricting, and the print—my gosh. Polka dot AND floral?! Be still, my pattern-loving heart. If you have $54 to toss at a pair of leggings, by all means, go for it! But if you’re more in my budget range, maybe keep an eye out on ebay and at places like Ross or Marshalls or TJ Maxx for something similar.

5 1/2 Little Ways We’re Paying Down our Student Debt

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Capital One 360.

(^the dude on the right belongs to me.)

Sending Jeff to chiropractic school did quite a number on our finances. In the debt department, if we want to get specific. I mean, it was what we wanted to do, it fit into our long-term goals, and I think it was a necessary evil, but that debt—ouch. We actually feel like we escaped school with the smallest amount of debt that was possible for us—we only ever took out the bare minimum needed for tuition, and neither of us had any debt from our undergrads, or consumer debt. But the amount of student debt we did end up with, even though it’s about as low as could be hoped for in the circumstances, it still pretty horrifying. I don’t know if anyone in Hollywood has considered filming a horror show about the student debt experience but I’m calling it, right here, right now. It would strike fear into even the most brave and stalwart of hearts. Mark my words.

Just look at us back then, about to head into the biggest money pit of our lives. So young. So awkward looking. So clueless about the mountain of debt we were about to dive headlong into. Poor little things.

If I’m careful, I can sometimes go days at a time without thinking about the mind-boggling amount of student loans we need to pay off. Those are always a nice series of days. But now that we’ve got our practice off the ground and growing steadily, we’ve gotten serious about getting these loans out of our lives for good. Our goal is to have them paid off in 5 years. It’s kind of a lofty goal, but we’re optimistic about it. We want them gone for good, and the sooner, the better.

I thought I’d share a few of the small ways that seem insignificant but really add up to make progress toward our goal of financial independence. I doubt any of these will be ground-breaking or revolutionary, but they’re simple, no-brainer everyday things that are making a big difference toward paying off those horrible, terrible, no good very bad loans.

1) Plan ahead when shopping. Before grocery shopping, I always plan out a menu for the week and only buy the items needed to restock pantry staples and get what I need for the recipes on the menu (I wrote more about how we save money on groceries HERE). Having a list and a plan for the week’s food means less food waste and less money rotting in the fridge or pantry (metaphorically). If we need to go clothes shopping, we decide what we need ahead of time and take our time finding it at the best price we can. ‘Just browsing’ is a pretty solid way for me to end up buying things I don’t really need, so I always try to plan out specific items we need/want and search for them instead of just wandering through stores, picking up whatever looks good—when that happens, I inevitably end up shopping again way sooner than necessary, because although I may have found things I liked, they aren’t the things I needed.

2) Cut down on impulse purchases. So obvious, but so easy to forget. Because seriously, how big of a deal is that $5 lip gloss that caught my eye in the makeup aisle? or that $10 scarf? or the $7 toy that Forrest will throw a tantrum over when I try to convince him to put it back on the shelf? Individually, they don’t seem like problems, but it only takes a few impulse purchases every month/week to really add up and land a solid blow on our budget. I used to take Forrest out to eat pretty dang often . . . partly for the ease and convenience of getting a cheap meal he would actually eat (dang picky child), and partly just to get him out of the house and get some of his energy out in a fast food play place. This sort of sight here? It’s become much more of a rarity as we’ve gotten serious about our budget. One visit may be cheap, but once we add up all those visits over the course of a few months, or even a year? That little impulse lunch isn’t nearly so little anymore.

3) Secondhand all the way. There are definitely some items that don’t make for great thrift store purchases, but there are plenty of things that are just dandy when they’ve been previously owned (such a nice way of putting it, right?). I often joke that the only things in the kids’ closets that haven’t been owned by another kid first are gifts from grandparents. Almost everything my kids wear—honestly, probably 95% of their closets—came from the thrift store, or was given to us when friends’ kids outgrew their clothes, or was purchased on mega-clearance from Kid to Kid (and I recently discovered the budgetary thrill of selling back their used clothes to Kid to Kid and putting that money towards their next season’s wardrobe). Quite a bit of our home décor and furniture is either from thrift stores or hand-me-downs from relatives. But thrift shopping only helps if it goes along with point #1 on my little list here—unnecessary purchases, even from the thrift store, will still mean wasted money, so I generally go thrifting or garage sale-ing or to Kid to Kid with an idea of what I’m hoping to find, and try to avoid getting things that I wasn’t planning on (even if they’re cheap). It’s not a bargain if you didn’t need it in the first place, no matter how cheap it is.

4) Trade services. We’ve been able to save quite a bit of money over the years by trading services when we need/want something done. Back when I worked as a massage therapist, I’d sometimes trade massages for haircuts (and even fun stuff like pedicures or facials). When Forrest was in the midst of his terrible twos and driving me up the wall, he ended up in day care 2 mornings a week so I could have a little time to try and recover my sanity. The teacher was struggling to figure out how to get her son to school everyday since riding the bus wasn’t an option, so I drove him to school every day and Forrest went to daycare for free. Right now, we’re toying with the idea of having a buddy of Jeff’s build us a deck in exchange for chiropractic care. And prep yourself for an oooold picture of me, but it goes without saying that I have been known to swap crochet goodies for all sorts of things (both locally and online, which is always a giant leap of faith but hasn’t bit me in the rear yet), from jewelry to gifts for friends to services (like getting family pictures taken). And of course, my etsy shop has been a great way to earn a little extra cash as well as provide an easy platform to show people what I can offer if they’re interested in trading something for my crochet. An armful of crochet orders on their way to the post office means a fuller wallet and a little more freedom in the budget for me. Win.

5) Remind yourself of the budget. It’s a lot easier to stick to a budget if you’ve got visual reminders handy. We have a budget printout posted on our fridge where we’ll see it every day to remind us to stay on track, and we sit down together each week (ideally) (it doesn’t always happen) to review our spending and saving for the week. And, hand-in-hand with this little tip, is . . .

5 1/2) Remember why you’re doing it. It would be a lot harder to stick to a budget and scrimp and save and say no to things you’d really like to buy/do if there wasn’t a clear end goal in sight. Our main financial goal is to pay off our student debt in 5 years. Just remembering that goal and thinking of the freedom and peace we’ll enjoy once we reach it makes it easier to stick to the plan.

How do YOU save time and money? Capital One 360 is celebrating the everyday ways you save in order to reach financial independence. And by entering the #my360independence sweepstakes and sharing the ways you’re headed toward financial freedom, you’ll be entered to win one of sixty-one $1,776 prizes (see what they did there? clever, very clever). Visit Capital One 360 and submit a photo or post that shares how you reach financial independence, and be entered to win cash prizes!

What’s your biggest financial goal? And what are some things you are doing to reach it?

 

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Capital One 360.

How I Keep My Grocery Bill Under Control

I’m taking a momentary pause from home renovations for a grocery post. HOW THRILLING! I mentioned recently that I try to keep my weekly grocery bill under $60, and got a few questions (okay, fine, just one question, geez) about how I keep that number low. And I am nothing if not a giver-slash-overtalker, so I thought about it and identified a few things I do that help out with our grocery budget.

First of all, I’ll eliminate the obvious answer: I have absolutely zero interest in couponing and sale-shopping at the grocery store. I hate the idea of planning my meals around what happens to be on sale that week and driving from one store to another to pick up just 4 sale items at each location and spending hours clipping and organizing coupons. And I know someone is going to comment and tell me how simple and easy and fun!fun!fun! couponing/sale-shopping can be, but I’m sorry. No interest whatsoever. Maybe someday I’ll try that route, but for now, here is my coupon-less, sale-less grocery shopping method. There are probably a zillion other, better tips/tricks out there; this is just what I do and have had success with.

• I always make a menu. For me, not making a menu = spending my life savings at the store as I just pick up whatever looks good and might work for a meal. I spend about 30 minutes a week and plan out 5 days’ worth of dinners (we usually end up with leftovers for a night or two, and/or grab a pizza or fast food on occasion for dinner; I don’t plan out breakfasts [they are always the same] or lunches [always leftovers or sandwiches]). Just as an example, this was my menu from last week:

1. Cajun Chicken Pasta with Candied Carrots

2. Thai Curry with Naan

3. BLT Soup with Baked Mozzarella Sticks

4. Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake with scrambled eggs and fruit

5. Chipotle Chicken Salad

I don’t plan my menu around sales/coupons—I just choose whatever I think looks tasty and fun to make and budget-friendly. That means trying to use up items I already have in my fridge/freezer before they go bad (for instance, half a bag of spinach about to wilt might mean veggie lasagna for dinner one night), sticking to seasonal produce, and only including one or two ‘splurge’ dishes in the menu (splurge dishes meaning something with a pricey meat, or an unusually long ingredient list, or an ingredient that I expect to be hard to find and/or expensive).

• I always make a shopping list. Heading to the store sans shopping list is a surefire way for me to overspend on food. As I’m making my menu for the week, I just jot down a list of what I need to buy for each recipe and bring it with me to the store the next day. But the whole point of making the list is sticking to what’s on the list and only what’s on the list. I like to organize my shopping list by aisle/section of the store so I don’t skip anything:

(image/grocery list printable from The Letter 4)

Sticking to the list, for me, includes not shopping while I (or Forrest) am hungry—that’s just begging for disaster to strike. And I’ve learned that I can’t shop with my husband, either . . . he always talks me into all sorts of extra items (frozen egg rolls! pop tarts! fish sticks!) that we don’t need, so he is no longer allowed to come shopping with me. I doubt he misses it.

• I identified the most expensive items on my receipts and tried to get rid of them. Simple enough, right? I noticed over weeks and months and years of grocery shopping that the same items were consistently pushing the bill higher than it needed to be: meat, cereal, and snacks. So I stopped buying most of them.

 

• I don’t buy much meat. Not really because of health/ethical reasons, but because I was spending way too much money on it. And I don’t love meat-based dishes, either—I’d much rather eat a pasta dish with a few chicken strips mixed in than just a straight chicken breast, for instance—so I tend to choose recipes for my menu that have meat as a component of the whole dish and not the main attraction. I haven’t cut out meat—I just choose recipes that use meat and don’t consist entirely of meat. We never have steak for dinner, for example, but we might have a stir-fry that includes steak. And this will probably get stickler cooks’ panties in a bunch, but I often use only half the amount of meat my recipes call for, and no one has seemed to notice or care so far (for instance, in my beef stir-fry example, I would use 1/2 pound steak if the recipe called for 1 pound, and add extra veggies to make up the difference). This really saves us a lot of money, and the meat that I do buy lasts so much longer when it isn’t the star of every meal.

 

• I don’t buy cereal. At all. Jeff and I used to eat cereal for breakfast, as an afternoon snack, as a pre-bedtime snack, for dinner when I didn’t feel like cooking . . . we bought probably 3+ boxes of cereal each week, and cereal isn’t cheap. So I just stopped buying it altogether—it’s probably been 2 years since I bought cereal--and we haven’t missed it. I used to spend probably $10/week on cereal, if not more, so that’s at least $40/month that is staying in my pocket now. For breakfast, Forrest and I usually have toast with eggs or yogurt, and Jeff has protein smoothies (Big Mister Muscle Man). It was rather shocking for us to discover there are other breakfast options besides cereal. Who knew?

 

• I rarely buy snack foods. Forrest would probably complain about this—he loves Teddy Grahams and crackers and granola bars—but that snack aisle is SO expensive, I don’t even walk down it anymore. Even just 2 or 3 items from the snack aisle will tack on another $10-ish to our bill. For snacks, we always have yogurt and fruit and raisins in the house, and I like baking so we almost always have something homemade to snack on (homemade muffins, cookies, quick bread, etc.) and there is nothing in the world Forrest loves more than homemade baked goods, so I think he’s doing just fine without the toddler requisites of Goldfish and Cheerios. When I do buy snacks, I buy the cheapest store-brand ones (graham crackers, saltines, etc.). Everyone seems to be coping all right and I’m sure that with time and some therapy, we’ll all be able to deal with the loss of our precious snack foods.
• If I can make something myself, I do. This is a tip that might not be very practical if you are extremely busy and don’t have much extra time to spend cooking/baking (or if you just plain dislike cooking/baking!), but I save a good amount of money by making most things myself. And since I’m a stay-at-home mom of only one child who is pretty good at entertaining himself while I’m cooking, it’s not a big deal for me to make most things instead of buying them. If we’re having pizza for dinner, I make it myself instead of buying one frozen or ordering it. And since we’re having pizza, I make the crust (which costs something like 20 cents instead of $3 to buy a refrigerated premade package  of dough at the store). If I want muffins/cookies/brownies/cake/whatever, I make it instead of buying a box mix or picking it up premade at the store. In my opinion, just about everything tastes better homemade, plus it’s usually healthier and less expensive. I don’t make everything myself, but if it seems reasonable and easy and less expensive to make my own version rather than buying it, that’s what I do.

One of my favorite homemade items is fresh bread. If you had asked me even just a year ago if I would ever consistently make homemade bread instead of purchasing it, I would have laughed long and hard. It just seems so pioneer-ish, and like way too much work for a few dollars of savings each week. But I’ve been making all of our bread for about 6 months, and we all love it. Thanks to the Kitchenaid I got for Christmas, the whole mixing/kneading process couldn’t be easier/faster, so it really doesn’t take much effort for me to make it. I love this recipe for wheat bread and have been making it weekly for months—it doesn’t have the dry, crumbly texture that a lot of wheat breads tend to have, so it’s perfect for sandwiches and toast and whatever other spreading needs you might have that many wheat breads can’t stand up to. I have never been able to find white wheat flour, which the recipe calls for, so I just use 3 cups wheat flour and 3 cups white flour instead. And I ran out of vital wheat gluten a few weeks ago and have been making it without it and getting identical results, so you probably don’t need to panic if you can’t find that, either. The recipe makes 2 loaves, so I just slice them both up and stick one in the freezer, so there’s always a backup. Making my own bread probably isn’t a huge money-saver—maybe $3 per week?—but even $3 per week adds up over time, and we all really prefer the taste of homemade bread, so it’s a win-win.

So, there you have it. For me, it boils down to planning in advance (knowing what I’ll be cooking that week and what I’ll need for it) and eliminating any extras (we don’t need ice cream and Oreos and potato chips, so I [usually] don’t buy them). I can’t say it always works—of course I have weeks when I spend more than I intended, or can’t imagine my life going on without a bag of Red Vines in my future, or I cave and buy a box of Teddy Grahams to keep Forrest happy in the shopping cart—but for the majority of the time, I manage to spend something like $50-60 per week on groceries and I would say we all really enjoy what we’re eating.

Do you have any money-saving grocery tips to add?