Despite the fact that I still have not figured out how to make this blog type in the font style or color I like, I will ignore that for now and write a post inspired by my wonderful friend who is trying to get out of debt. What does it have to do with creativity? I will tell you. Not spending money takes a lot of creativity.
What is my level of expertise? Well I have lived for 30 years and 4 years ago we bought a house and entered the first and, hopefully, only debt we will ever have. Simultaneously, I quit my job as apartment manager and became part of (what I consider) the elite and endangered position of stay-at-home mom.
My new motto when I stopped earning regular income became: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." The "do without" is often the hardest part, but the "make it do" part can often solve the issue. For example we currently do without cell phones because it costs more than our budget can currently take. We do without a second car and my husband makes it do with the transit system. It is hard, but we save literally thousands of dollars by not spending money maintaining and gassing up a second car. But we can still make do with many little things. We could really use more insulation in our house, but we have been making do with using bubble wrap on the windows in the winter and aluminum foil in the summer until we have enough money to buy the fancy double pane windows.
I know a lot of the cliche answers to saving money: Budget, Budget, Budget.
My budget looks like this: I check the bank account, I pay the bills automatically and what do I have left? That is my budget. Not entirely accurate because we get a nice chunk of tax return each year, and I use it to help pad my budget every month, but how much we have left in December is dependent on how well I avoid spending all the other months.
We have 3 kids and we shop mostly at the grocery store and the thrift store. My husband and I make really delicious food so we don't feel too sad when we don't have money to eat out. But I also do shop at the Nordstrom's rack, Craigslist and Target and red tag sales. When I shop I have a specific list of needs in mind. I pretty much stick to the list and avoid going outside it. I also get very picky about purchases. I try to make sure that when I buy something that I didn't plan to purchase it will be useful and not just clutter.
I also shop for IDEAS on the internet. Like the bubble wrap idea. I wanted to insulate our windows so I did research on the internet and learned that you could put bubble wrap on your windows using soapy water to make it stick. It really works. You can get a roll of bubble wrap at for $20 bucks at an office supply and insulate all your windows twice over or you can spend about $30-$40 dollars per a window getting the fancy transparent material from your hardware supply or you can spend $500-$1,000 per a window and get the double pane windows. I know I can afford the bubble wrap without going into debt so I do that.
I earn some money doing internet surveys through Mindfield online. I also earn money giving voice lessons, but I only have one student right now. I help my son earn money by selling lemonade and cookies on our very busy street. Earning money is easy. Not spending money is difficult.
So here are some creative ideas for the hard times:
Eat in... It can be fun to try new recipes or to experiment with your favorite recipes. I use the internet to find recipes for my favorite restaurant dishes and find that we can make as good or even better to our taste preferences.
Play a game... We entertain often at our house, and we love playing games--board games, card games, video games, table top games etc.
Watch a movie you own or from the internet for free... Obviously we pay to have internet access, but we have saved a lot of money on cable and new movies and even going out to the theater with our Netflix and Hulu account. We use Hulu for free, but with Netflix instant and get one DVD at a time we have saved our date nights out for movies we really, really want to see in the theater. We have bought only DVDs that we absolutely LOVED. If we want to watch a movie that we really liked again we just put it on our queue for the mail in.
Go to the library... The library has helped me to not spend money on books. It also makes a great date night, and a great outing for the kids for free.
Go for a walk on main street or a park or your local farmer's market... Or any place that looks like it would be fun to just walk around. When I was a kid I looked forward to walking around Julian near Christmastime every year. It was just fun to look at all the beautiful crafts and displays and to smell the apple pie and spices in the air.
Look at events your community sponsors for free and attend those... Once again use the internet (the library offers free internet access by the way) and find out what events your community plans. Once you start digging you will find tons. Some of them will be free.
Trade services... This one is the biggest lifesaver. I traded voice lessons for babysitting. I have a friend that traded haircuts for piano lessons. I also trade babysitting for babysitting. Just ask around your friends and find out who needs help with what and ask if they will trade help for help.
Other big money savers:
BUY when it is cheap. I know my major ingredients in my family's favorite foods and when I see a sale on tomato sauce or noodles I buy extra--sometimes 2 or 3 times what I would have bought. But then on the next 2 or 3 months I don't have to buy that item so it evens out on my budget as a savings. For kids' toys and clothes I usually buy second hand if I have to buy at all. Kids grow up so fast a lot of their clothes don't get the same wear and tear that grown up clothes get.
MAINTAIN your needs. Most of the time now a car is a need. If you maintain it in good condition, you won't have to spend extra money on a new car. We had a used Saturn for 10 years and we put about 80,000 miles on it (because I like walking) and when we had to repair it we were willing to spend $2,000 instead of $20,000. That extra zero is a huge difference. This year we NEEDED a van. With 3 kids squished in the backseat--two in car seats a larger car was pushed from the want to the need list. So we added up all our repairs in 10 years and divided it by 12. The total was $100 per a month. That proves that it is much cheaper to maintain what you have than to replace it. It also made it easy to sell our old car.
BUDGET for special occasions. For Christmas, birthdays, and vacations we make a plan for how much spending money we have and we stick to it. Be creative and you can still enjoy your life without spending a lot of money.
APPRECIATE what you have. When I start to wish for more... a cell phone, a second car, bigger house, a video camera or new couch, I just have to stop and appreciate what I do have. It helps to do service for someone who needs help and it reminds me that I have a multitude of luxuries that I just take for granted.
EDIT: About the van. We had that van for 3 years and I was recently hit in the driver's side door. It turned out that repairs for a van can get a lot more expensive because of the labor involved. I did the math again and found we had spent $8,000 on repairs for the van we paid $2,000 for originally. It still had more repairs lined up and we decided it would be better to buy a car from a dealer that we knew would be in better condition. If my husband and I had more time and the knowledge and the tools to do the repairs ourselves then it would have made more sense to keep the damaged van. Instead we sold the damaged van and hopefully our new purchase will not need so many repairs. Sometimes life lessons are expensive.
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