Our Financial Story continued..

Things started getting really tight and paying for things was becoming hard. We finally got our 4th son out of diapers and I felt like we were saving quite a bit by not buying those, but it still was hard to feed everyone and keep up with the montly expenses. When our youngest was 3 we decided we had one more child coming to us. We shortly found out we were pregnant again. I didn't know how I was going to start all over again. There would be 4 years between our youngest and the newer child. Diapers seemed like such a huge expense and then to think about all the baby food again and everything that comes with babies. It was a bit overwhelming. Not to mention the medical bills, again.

This pregnancy was much different than the others. I didn't get sick a whole lot, but I did have nausea everyday all day and would have rather thrown up than deal with that. We also wanted to avoid going into preterm labor again this time and the midwife that I was seeing at the time suggested progesterone shots. We decided this would be good, so I started having them once a week for 18 weeks. It was not the highlight of my week to say the least since they had to put it in my hip, which is painful. They seemed to work since at 37 weeks I ready to be done and she wasn't ready to come. Yes we were having a girl! Very exciting for us.

We knew this year would be the year for medical bills where I was having these shots each week at about $75/shot and then the birth and hospital bills, we knew we had to scrimp. We did plan ahead for this and had money each month taken from Mike's check and put into a flexible spending account. We put the amount we would need to cover the deductible and most of the out of pocket expenses for the year. So we knew that we would be ok on medical expenses there wouldn't be to much left over to pay in the end.

At this same time we had our oldest son who was diagnosed with ADHD and was seeing a counselor, psychiatrist and also on meds that were very expensive. It was a crazy start to a much more crazy year.

Our little princess was born the end of April. I wanted to so much to have a "vacation" in the hospital and just enjoy a few days alone. She was born on a Friday afternoon. It was nice since we had Mike's mom there that day so she was able to get the kids off to school and home and spend time with them. Mike was able to spend some time with me at the hospital. That night Mike left to spend time with the boys and to let his mom go home. They came that night to visit me. That night in the hospital was very lonely and hard to sleep. I had to get used to a new baby again. The next day Mike was with the kids alone so wasn't able to come visit me. I didn't know how much a hospital room could be so lonely. I got very lonely and kind of depressed and all I wanted was my family. What happened to wanting my vacation? I told the nurse I wanted to go home and after many reminders they finally released me after 24 hours. We came home and just enjoyed being together as a family and taking in this new baby girl that we now had.

We are so fortunate to have such wonderful family. For the first couple months, Mike's mom would come to help and each time she would bring me a box of diapers, which helped out so much! When I finally had to start buying diapers for myself, I realized again just how expensive they are. I would try to find them when they were on sale, but even then it wasn't much of a discount. I also found that some of the generic diapers gave little one a rash. This went on until she was about 5 months or so and then we had a coupon class for Relief Society one night. I had done this before and was excited. I had recently been thinking that I wanted to start couponing again, since I was paying full price for toothpaste again.

I went home and told Mike I wanted to do this again and he protested a little asking how much we really saved by using coupons. I told him that things would be different this time and that I would be choosy about I bought with them. I called the paper the next day and signed up (I should have ordered through the gal that did the class, I didn't know she got paid for my subscription). I was excited and ready to start. I got my binder file system out and started clipping. A few weeks later I hosted a class for the Coupon Gal and she showed us a much easier way to file our coupons and showed us the free website to help us organize our shopping list. I was excited and found out that the best place to buy diapers was Rite Aid.

This was about 6 months ago and I have been using coupons since and have been able to drop our monthly grocery budget to $400. Some months we have gone over but I try so hard each month to use only that money. I babysit on the side now so I get a little extra money, which is my extra money for groceries, when needed, or it buys clothes and things that we might need otherwise.

Thanks to coupons we thrive on $400/month for all food, diapers and household items. We have also been able to consistantly give our children each an allowance, as well as Mike and I each an allowance of $50/month to use for whatever we want. We finally feel like we are "financially stable" and have the money to live and do the things we need to. We do still have debt, most of which is medical expenses from our daughters birth and also the broken leg that one of boys received that summer. We have been more choosy on what we buy and the majority of our food expenses goes to fruits and veggies, so we eat much better than we used to as well. But we are much better off now and actually savings, unlike when we were first married over 10 years ago.

I now also work for Grocery Smarts, the free website that helps with coupon shopping. I teach other moms and families how to save money and thrive on little and stock up on food storage. Let me know if you would like to learn. I service Utah from Logan to Salt Lake. I hope now you understand how much coupons can save you and how much they can change your budget and your life. Please share this blog with your friends and family and hopefully we can inspire others together.