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.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Our Financial Story continued..
The fellow student that split the intership with Mike graduated with his masters degree and left to pursue other jobs, leaving Mike open to be hired full time. He was offered a salary position, which we gladly took and in January moved to Brigham City to be closer to work so Mike didn't have to travel the canyon in the winter.
I loved the small town but only had a few options for shopping. We lived across the street from the Walmart there so I did most of my shopping there. There were times though that Smith's had some fairly decent prices, I would just watch the ads. We were doing great getting by on a new salary (a lot more than we were making). It was a sad day for me when I went to the health department and turned in my WIC packet because we didn't qualify anymore, but I new that now we didn't have to rely on government programs to get by we could do things for ourselves. So at the same time I was excited.
Then one day about the time my twins were 8 or 9 months old I had the overwhelming feeling that someone missing. I was such a strange and scary thought that someone wasn't there. I mentioned this to Mike and he said that maybe we needed to try for another child. I thought ok, we can start and have another a year from now. Well, Heavenly Father had other plans. By the next month I was pregnant again. I kind of scared and excited me all at the same time. I was going to have 4 kids under the age of 4. What were we doing? It obviously wasn't our choice, there was a greater power in charge of this that new I would be fine with this.
We decided that we needed to start looking for a home. We knew we could afford a mortgage now because of the new job and pay raise. We started looking for homes with 4 bedrooms so we had space for everyone and everything. I never realized how hard it was giong to be to find something. We found a home that was a twin home (connected to another home by the garage), which was on HOA property with no fences. We liked that the house was pretty much brand new and not that old, so we put an offer on it. There were a few things that we didn't like about it, like the bedrooms we split, two upstairs, two down, we couldn't have half our children downstairs, they were too little. And the fact there was no fence around our property, I couldn't just let the kids go outside and play when they wanted. We decided to back out of that one and keep looking. I was so frustrated thinking that we might never find what we want. I decided to start looking at homes that had 3 bedrooms with unfinished basements that we could add rooms to.
We found a house with a big backyard, all fenced in, with fruit trees, a garden area, sand box, and sprinkling system. There were 3 bedrooms all upstairs with a big family room and unfinished basement. It even had a walking cold storage. We were so excited and moved in as soon as we could. Little did we know that homeownership would cost more than the monthly mortgage.
We moved in when I was about 4 months pregnant. The ward was great and immediately Mike was given a calling. The bishop took pity on me and wouldn't let me have a calling being pregnant and having three other small children. Things were going well until Thanksgiving of that year. I woke Thanksgiving morning excited to spend time with my family. My parents were down from Idaho and we were going to spend time with them. It was quite fortunate that they were here with us, because I started bleeding that morning and called the hospital just for them to tell me to come in and be monitored. My parents were more than happy to stay with the kids.
Mike and I went down to the hopital and they monitored and checked me to see what was going on. I was only 29 weeks along and was in preterm labor. With my history from the last pregnancy they gave me something to stop contractions and got labor to stop. They did some kind of swipe test that determines if you will deliver in the next 2 weeks and it came back positive. They sent me home and said that my doctor would call me the next day but that I needed to take it easy. We went for Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family and came home. It was nice to get away but I knew I needed to take it easy.
The next day my doctor called and said he wanted me to be on bed rest until further notice. I didn't know what to do. I had three small children that needed my help all the time. The oldest could help with some things, but he couldn't put the other two down for naps or feed them. I knew immediately I had to humble myself and ask for help, which is something I have a very hard with. I called the Relief Society president and told her what was going on. She made sure that I had women from the ward here each day to play with the kids and get them down for their naps. These women were such a blessing to me. I don't know what we would have done without them.
I was on bed rest and couldn't go out shopping and enjoy being out of the house, it quite depressing for me. Four weeks before my due date I couldn't lay at home anymore and I decided I needed to go shopping. So we went to Sam's Club where I got one of the motorized carts to go around the store, I was very embarrased, but couldn't do much walking. That was our shopping. Mike went to the store when we needed things, but most things were bought from Sam's in bulk. I don't remember much about what we spent at this time, but we were paying for insurance now and doctor's appointments were getting billed to us, which was a complete eye opener since we had never seen a bill before for our other children.
Our 4th boy was born 3 weeks early. Healthy and happy and was soon to be an important part of our family. We don't know what we would do without him.
When our youngest was about 6 months I felt like our budget was so tight with all the things we were trying to pay for, I felt like I needed to try to contribute where I could. Mike didn't really like the idea of me working and said that we really didn't need the extra money. I made the excuse that I just needed something for me. I decided to start selling Mary Kay cosmetics. I was the only girl at home and wanted some pink around. I wanted this to become a good source of income so bought the $2000 worth of inventory and started selling it. After a while I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere paying things, including my inventory, off. Mike said we could figure out how to work it into the bills and I decided to stop selling it a couple years later.
During that time, we decided we needed to finish the basement to allow our oldest to have his own room and also to provide me with an office to work in. We added two bedrooms to the basement and thankfully we did a lot of the work ourselves with the help of my dad.
After I decided to stop selling Mary Kay and just keep the discount fo myself and friends and family I new we still needed to save money but I didn't know how. Each year when we got a bonus from work we would add about $50 into our grocery budget because it just didn't seem to be going as far as we needed it to. It was around that time the a friend from church was telling me about coupon shopping. One of the other wards was having a class to teach you about it and said I should go with her. I went and got so excited when she had a display of items that only cost her around $2. I got so excited and signed up to get the multiple papers. I found a big zippered binder and bought the baseball card sheet holders. Every week I spend about an hour sorting the like coupons and cut them out and file them in this binder and then I would go to the store with this huge binder and see what deals I could find.
Most of my great deals I found at Albertsons, which is a store I swore I would shop at because they too expensive. Most of the things I was finding for good deals though were cereal, box meals, cake mixes and junk food that I knew we shouldn't eat. I didn't find household items all that often for sale. I did find toothpaste and toothbrushes for about 25 cents, so I was stocked on those, but not much else. I wasn't spending any less than I was before I started using coupons but I was getting more. I did this for about a year until Albertsons went out of business and I thought I wouldn't find as good of deals anywere else. I cancelled the papers and just started shopping at Walmart for almost everything, buying one thing at a time because groceries were so expensive.
We got to the point where we were going to up our monthly budget to $700 just so we could get the things we needed as well as food storage items. I still had a pretty stock up from doing coupons like cereal and toothpaste, so I thought we would be ok to buy things here and there. Then my stock up items started running out and I had to start paying full price for toothpaste. I can't believe how much toothpasts costs. It's rediculous!
To be continued...
I loved the small town but only had a few options for shopping. We lived across the street from the Walmart there so I did most of my shopping there. There were times though that Smith's had some fairly decent prices, I would just watch the ads. We were doing great getting by on a new salary (a lot more than we were making). It was a sad day for me when I went to the health department and turned in my WIC packet because we didn't qualify anymore, but I new that now we didn't have to rely on government programs to get by we could do things for ourselves. So at the same time I was excited.
Then one day about the time my twins were 8 or 9 months old I had the overwhelming feeling that someone missing. I was such a strange and scary thought that someone wasn't there. I mentioned this to Mike and he said that maybe we needed to try for another child. I thought ok, we can start and have another a year from now. Well, Heavenly Father had other plans. By the next month I was pregnant again. I kind of scared and excited me all at the same time. I was going to have 4 kids under the age of 4. What were we doing? It obviously wasn't our choice, there was a greater power in charge of this that new I would be fine with this.
We decided that we needed to start looking for a home. We knew we could afford a mortgage now because of the new job and pay raise. We started looking for homes with 4 bedrooms so we had space for everyone and everything. I never realized how hard it was giong to be to find something. We found a home that was a twin home (connected to another home by the garage), which was on HOA property with no fences. We liked that the house was pretty much brand new and not that old, so we put an offer on it. There were a few things that we didn't like about it, like the bedrooms we split, two upstairs, two down, we couldn't have half our children downstairs, they were too little. And the fact there was no fence around our property, I couldn't just let the kids go outside and play when they wanted. We decided to back out of that one and keep looking. I was so frustrated thinking that we might never find what we want. I decided to start looking at homes that had 3 bedrooms with unfinished basements that we could add rooms to.
We found a house with a big backyard, all fenced in, with fruit trees, a garden area, sand box, and sprinkling system. There were 3 bedrooms all upstairs with a big family room and unfinished basement. It even had a walking cold storage. We were so excited and moved in as soon as we could. Little did we know that homeownership would cost more than the monthly mortgage.
We moved in when I was about 4 months pregnant. The ward was great and immediately Mike was given a calling. The bishop took pity on me and wouldn't let me have a calling being pregnant and having three other small children. Things were going well until Thanksgiving of that year. I woke Thanksgiving morning excited to spend time with my family. My parents were down from Idaho and we were going to spend time with them. It was quite fortunate that they were here with us, because I started bleeding that morning and called the hospital just for them to tell me to come in and be monitored. My parents were more than happy to stay with the kids.
Mike and I went down to the hopital and they monitored and checked me to see what was going on. I was only 29 weeks along and was in preterm labor. With my history from the last pregnancy they gave me something to stop contractions and got labor to stop. They did some kind of swipe test that determines if you will deliver in the next 2 weeks and it came back positive. They sent me home and said that my doctor would call me the next day but that I needed to take it easy. We went for Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family and came home. It was nice to get away but I knew I needed to take it easy.
The next day my doctor called and said he wanted me to be on bed rest until further notice. I didn't know what to do. I had three small children that needed my help all the time. The oldest could help with some things, but he couldn't put the other two down for naps or feed them. I knew immediately I had to humble myself and ask for help, which is something I have a very hard with. I called the Relief Society president and told her what was going on. She made sure that I had women from the ward here each day to play with the kids and get them down for their naps. These women were such a blessing to me. I don't know what we would have done without them.
I was on bed rest and couldn't go out shopping and enjoy being out of the house, it quite depressing for me. Four weeks before my due date I couldn't lay at home anymore and I decided I needed to go shopping. So we went to Sam's Club where I got one of the motorized carts to go around the store, I was very embarrased, but couldn't do much walking. That was our shopping. Mike went to the store when we needed things, but most things were bought from Sam's in bulk. I don't remember much about what we spent at this time, but we were paying for insurance now and doctor's appointments were getting billed to us, which was a complete eye opener since we had never seen a bill before for our other children.
Our 4th boy was born 3 weeks early. Healthy and happy and was soon to be an important part of our family. We don't know what we would do without him.
When our youngest was about 6 months I felt like our budget was so tight with all the things we were trying to pay for, I felt like I needed to try to contribute where I could. Mike didn't really like the idea of me working and said that we really didn't need the extra money. I made the excuse that I just needed something for me. I decided to start selling Mary Kay cosmetics. I was the only girl at home and wanted some pink around. I wanted this to become a good source of income so bought the $2000 worth of inventory and started selling it. After a while I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere paying things, including my inventory, off. Mike said we could figure out how to work it into the bills and I decided to stop selling it a couple years later.
During that time, we decided we needed to finish the basement to allow our oldest to have his own room and also to provide me with an office to work in. We added two bedrooms to the basement and thankfully we did a lot of the work ourselves with the help of my dad.
After I decided to stop selling Mary Kay and just keep the discount fo myself and friends and family I new we still needed to save money but I didn't know how. Each year when we got a bonus from work we would add about $50 into our grocery budget because it just didn't seem to be going as far as we needed it to. It was around that time the a friend from church was telling me about coupon shopping. One of the other wards was having a class to teach you about it and said I should go with her. I went and got so excited when she had a display of items that only cost her around $2. I got so excited and signed up to get the multiple papers. I found a big zippered binder and bought the baseball card sheet holders. Every week I spend about an hour sorting the like coupons and cut them out and file them in this binder and then I would go to the store with this huge binder and see what deals I could find.
Most of my great deals I found at Albertsons, which is a store I swore I would shop at because they too expensive. Most of the things I was finding for good deals though were cereal, box meals, cake mixes and junk food that I knew we shouldn't eat. I didn't find household items all that often for sale. I did find toothpaste and toothbrushes for about 25 cents, so I was stocked on those, but not much else. I wasn't spending any less than I was before I started using coupons but I was getting more. I did this for about a year until Albertsons went out of business and I thought I wouldn't find as good of deals anywere else. I cancelled the papers and just started shopping at Walmart for almost everything, buying one thing at a time because groceries were so expensive.
We got to the point where we were going to up our monthly budget to $700 just so we could get the things we needed as well as food storage items. I still had a pretty stock up from doing coupons like cereal and toothpaste, so I thought we would be ok to buy things here and there. Then my stock up items started running out and I had to start paying full price for toothpaste. I can't believe how much toothpasts costs. It's rediculous!
To be continued...
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Our Financial Story continued..
Working with a baby was hard. Even though we had such a flexible schedule it was still hard and buying the things that we needed was hard to. We kept slipping into debt and couldn't wait to get through school to get a real, good paying job so we could live.
We are so blessed with such wonderful family. During all of this Mike's odest brother was close by. We were able to join them for Sunday dinners and they had older girls that bacame our babysitters on many occassions. This helped out with money not having to worry about one meal a week and not having to pay for sitters. We had a family in our ward that we were really good friends with who would trade babysitting for haircuts and when we didn't need a babysitter, they would give up beef for haircuts, which helped out so much. His parents were beef farmers and had more than they knew what to do with.
When our oldest was around 18 months old I found out I was pregnant again. We were pretty excited, but they were due to be born in Sept. and Mike would be graduating from college that Dec. We had a hard time thinking that we would have two kids at graduation, we weren't planning that, but then again, can you really plan children? Obviously not, because on our first doctor's appointment we found out we were going to be having twins. We were very surprised and didn't know what to think of this.
This second pregnancy wasn't as bad as the first, but I still had sickness. I also got big very quickly, by three months in I was already in maternity clothes. During this time I was still working and taking care of my family as best I could. I knew that I didn't have to much longer to work before Mike would be done with school. He had told me that if I would put him through school, I would never have to work again. I could handle that, there wasn't much time left.
Mike decided to get a temp job to be able to help out a little with bills and food so that when our children came I wouldn't have to worry too much about work. In July I went in for a routine doctor's appointment. I told him of the pains and uncomfortableness I had been having. That day I stayed home and laid on the couch all day having contractions and pain. That afternoon I finally Mike and told him he needed to take me to the hospital that I needed to be checked out. He came home from work and took me up. They monitored me and checked me and I was in preterm labor. I was very scared and so was my husband. We called the leaders in our ward to let them know what was going on and our bishop and his counselor came and gave me a blessing. I was immediately calmed and knew everything would be all right.
The nurses called my doctor and pulled him away from his diner out with his family, I felt awful. He came and prepped me for a C-section just in case. I was only 31 weeks along and they had tried what they could to stop labor, but I was progressing so quickly they couldn't even life flight me to another hospital that more equipped for that type of delivery. Instead they decided to life flight my boys to another hospital.
It was scary and stressful trying to deal with that thought. A few hours later our 2 nd son was born. He was healthy and doing fine. Our third son was breech and the doctor tried to turn him. He would not turn so the doctor decided that since I had already had one that he would just grab the next ones feet. He was delivered breech (feet first) and had a hard breathing on his own.
They took care of me and took me back to a room. As the boys left they brought them to see me. It was so hard to see such little babies have to go through this. The first one went by air and the second went by ground. Once again we were so fortunate that we had medicaid and WIC! I did not see a single bill for any of this! I can only imagine how much this would have cost us. The boys were in the NICU for about 5 weeks.
They spent the first four weeks in Ogden, UT which was the closest town that had a big enough NICU for both of them. Ogden was about a 50 minute drive from Logan where Mike and James were. I spent the week in Ogden with the boys and would go home to go to church with Mike and James on Sunday and then I would head back. It was a long 4 weeks without my family. A lot of prayers were said and tears were shed during that time.
After 4 weeks we were able to get the boys moved back to the NICU in Logan. We didn't know how we would pay for this, they had to go by ambulance and that was a very expensive drive. We talked to the hospital staff and they said that Logan Regional was going to pick up the bill for the transfer. We were elated. We could finally be a family again. We were able to go back and the boys did really well. We were able to bring one home after another week and the other came home a few days later.
It was busy work and we were exhausted all the time. Our diaper bill just increased by tons though. We now had three kids in diapers! We had a wonderful sister who was the Relief Society president at the time in our ward, who was single. She was such a blessing to us. She took us out dinner one night and then showed up to my house one day with blankets, jammies, onsies and other things that we just didn't have, or have money for. We were so thankful for her generosity and love for us.
I never went back to work after that. I stayed home with my three children, and with a lot of help from friends, neighbors and family that came often to help, I made it through the first months of twins.
Our Heavenly Father had blessed us so much already, but he wasn't done yet. After the twins were home and doing well, Mike was asked by a fellow student to take part of his internship with Parker Hannifin (an aerospace company). He would be doing programming and working in his field. The plant was in Ogden and he traveled there when he could. The rest of the time he worked from home, which was nice for me to have him around a lot. He graduated in Dec. in computer programming and now we could start the beginning of the rest of our lives!
To be continued....
We are so blessed with such wonderful family. During all of this Mike's odest brother was close by. We were able to join them for Sunday dinners and they had older girls that bacame our babysitters on many occassions. This helped out with money not having to worry about one meal a week and not having to pay for sitters. We had a family in our ward that we were really good friends with who would trade babysitting for haircuts and when we didn't need a babysitter, they would give up beef for haircuts, which helped out so much. His parents were beef farmers and had more than they knew what to do with.
When our oldest was around 18 months old I found out I was pregnant again. We were pretty excited, but they were due to be born in Sept. and Mike would be graduating from college that Dec. We had a hard time thinking that we would have two kids at graduation, we weren't planning that, but then again, can you really plan children? Obviously not, because on our first doctor's appointment we found out we were going to be having twins. We were very surprised and didn't know what to think of this.
This second pregnancy wasn't as bad as the first, but I still had sickness. I also got big very quickly, by three months in I was already in maternity clothes. During this time I was still working and taking care of my family as best I could. I knew that I didn't have to much longer to work before Mike would be done with school. He had told me that if I would put him through school, I would never have to work again. I could handle that, there wasn't much time left.
Mike decided to get a temp job to be able to help out a little with bills and food so that when our children came I wouldn't have to worry too much about work. In July I went in for a routine doctor's appointment. I told him of the pains and uncomfortableness I had been having. That day I stayed home and laid on the couch all day having contractions and pain. That afternoon I finally Mike and told him he needed to take me to the hospital that I needed to be checked out. He came home from work and took me up. They monitored me and checked me and I was in preterm labor. I was very scared and so was my husband. We called the leaders in our ward to let them know what was going on and our bishop and his counselor came and gave me a blessing. I was immediately calmed and knew everything would be all right.
The nurses called my doctor and pulled him away from his diner out with his family, I felt awful. He came and prepped me for a C-section just in case. I was only 31 weeks along and they had tried what they could to stop labor, but I was progressing so quickly they couldn't even life flight me to another hospital that more equipped for that type of delivery. Instead they decided to life flight my boys to another hospital.
It was scary and stressful trying to deal with that thought. A few hours later our 2 nd son was born. He was healthy and doing fine. Our third son was breech and the doctor tried to turn him. He would not turn so the doctor decided that since I had already had one that he would just grab the next ones feet. He was delivered breech (feet first) and had a hard breathing on his own.
They took care of me and took me back to a room. As the boys left they brought them to see me. It was so hard to see such little babies have to go through this. The first one went by air and the second went by ground. Once again we were so fortunate that we had medicaid and WIC! I did not see a single bill for any of this! I can only imagine how much this would have cost us. The boys were in the NICU for about 5 weeks.
They spent the first four weeks in Ogden, UT which was the closest town that had a big enough NICU for both of them. Ogden was about a 50 minute drive from Logan where Mike and James were. I spent the week in Ogden with the boys and would go home to go to church with Mike and James on Sunday and then I would head back. It was a long 4 weeks without my family. A lot of prayers were said and tears were shed during that time.
After 4 weeks we were able to get the boys moved back to the NICU in Logan. We didn't know how we would pay for this, they had to go by ambulance and that was a very expensive drive. We talked to the hospital staff and they said that Logan Regional was going to pick up the bill for the transfer. We were elated. We could finally be a family again. We were able to go back and the boys did really well. We were able to bring one home after another week and the other came home a few days later.
It was busy work and we were exhausted all the time. Our diaper bill just increased by tons though. We now had three kids in diapers! We had a wonderful sister who was the Relief Society president at the time in our ward, who was single. She was such a blessing to us. She took us out dinner one night and then showed up to my house one day with blankets, jammies, onsies and other things that we just didn't have, or have money for. We were so thankful for her generosity and love for us.
I never went back to work after that. I stayed home with my three children, and with a lot of help from friends, neighbors and family that came often to help, I made it through the first months of twins.
Our Heavenly Father had blessed us so much already, but he wasn't done yet. After the twins were home and doing well, Mike was asked by a fellow student to take part of his internship with Parker Hannifin (an aerospace company). He would be doing programming and working in his field. The plant was in Ogden and he traveled there when he could. The rest of the time he worked from home, which was nice for me to have him around a lot. He graduated in Dec. in computer programming and now we could start the beginning of the rest of our lives!
To be continued....
Monday, March 21, 2011
Our Financial Story
I read a very inspiring story from a fellow "co-worker" (she teaches for Grocery Smarts as well). Reading her story of how she saves money, made me think of my last 10 years of marriage to the most wonderful man! We have had our ups and down and finaniacially we have struggled through every year. We ar finally to the point in our lives where we don't have much debt, other than the medical bills from last year and the new windows that will purchase to be able to get our home to a point that is comfortable to live in. We have always had some sort of debt which has been really hard for me to think that we have this hanging over our heads. We have been counseled and counseled by our church leaders to stay of debt and that they weighs heavily on my mind every time we put something on credit. We are however very good about planning ahead as to how we are going to pay these things off. We are very fortunate to have such a wonderful job that pays very well. We are also fortunate to receive tax returns (we do have 5 kids) that have been very good. And then we receive a bonus every year in August, so we can plan our purchases around those dates and know that things will get paid off quickly.
I have a wonderful money savvy husband who loves to spend money, but has also realized over the years that is important for us to save money and specify what money is for. We have even gone so far as to have multiple bank accounts that have certain amounts deposited each month for specific things like, medical, auto, groceries, and savings. To me it is quite frustrating, but it makes sense and then we know how much we have to pay toward each thing.
When Mike and I were married almost 10 1/2 years ago, we started out marriage in debt with not discussion of how to get out, other than the occasional we discussion that we needed to get out of debt. We moved from our hometowns to Logan, UT so that Mike could start college at Utah State University. We found a little home to rent and we both signed up to work temp jobs. I had just recently graduated from cosmetology college in Idaho and was not all that interested in trying to test in Utah to get my license. I remember one morning getting a call from the temp agency at 8 o'clock in the morning, with a job for me at the hospital in the medical billing that could turn into a full time job. I turned it down, since she had woken me up that morning. I kick myself now, but realize that everything happens for a reason.
I then found a job working as a hostess at a restraunt. It was hard getting to work at 5:30 in the morning and working around old guys that like to hit on you. I couldn't handle that for very long and decided it would be best to take the Utah cosmetology test and get my license. It took me 3 times and $50 each time to pass the test but I finally did. I then got a job at a cut little salon but it was on a comission bassis, so needless to say it didn't pay hardly anything. At the same time Mike was working hard to pay the bills and keep us above water.
We had so much debt that just wasn't getting any smaller. Each week we would go shopping for the week for groceries and come home with over $100 in food and go back the next week just to do it all over again.We finally broke down and humbled ourselves and asked our family for help. We were able to get a loan from family to pay off our car, credit cards and the student loan I had. We were finally debt free, but not for long. We kept slipping into debt and not knowing how to manage our finances.
I quit my job and the little salon after a month because we just needed money. I got a job at another salon that was much better and I got paid hourly. Eventually I was even promoted to assistant manager which was a little better pay. At this time Mike was working full time and also going to school full time. He was struggling with keeping up with his classes and trying to work. On top of that I found out I was pregnant. Mike came to me and told me that he could not continue to do both that I would have to work and put him through school. I did not like tat idea but I knew it needed to be done. So Mike quit working to focus on school.
Being pregnant was awful. I was very sick and had to be on medication to help. I was always in the bathroom and had to just work around being sick. We were very fortunate at this time with only one job and my husband in school that we qualified for Medicaid and WIC. We didn't have to worry about medical bills and we were able to get milk, eggs, cheese and some cereal from WIC to help us out. My paychecks were able to pay our bills and whatever I made in tips is what bought our groceries, which some days wasn't much.
Sturggling with being pregnant and sick paid a toll on my work status and I ending losing my job the day before Thanksgiving. I was devastated and didn't know how I could take care of my family. It took me a while but I finally found a new job at another salon. It paid the bills that's all that mattered.
A few months later my first son was born and four weeks after he was born I was back to work, we couldn't do with out it. I was blessed with a boss who was very flexible with me and allowed me to work split shifts so that I could be home when Mike was in class and Mike could be home while was at work, so we very rarely had to get a sitter, which saved tons of money! Diapers were so expensive but I didn't think much of it, we always bought a box a Sam's Club when we needed them.
To be continued...
Our Financial Story part 2
Our Financial Story part 3
Our Financial Story part 4
I have a wonderful money savvy husband who loves to spend money, but has also realized over the years that is important for us to save money and specify what money is for. We have even gone so far as to have multiple bank accounts that have certain amounts deposited each month for specific things like, medical, auto, groceries, and savings. To me it is quite frustrating, but it makes sense and then we know how much we have to pay toward each thing.
When Mike and I were married almost 10 1/2 years ago, we started out marriage in debt with not discussion of how to get out, other than the occasional we discussion that we needed to get out of debt. We moved from our hometowns to Logan, UT so that Mike could start college at Utah State University. We found a little home to rent and we both signed up to work temp jobs. I had just recently graduated from cosmetology college in Idaho and was not all that interested in trying to test in Utah to get my license. I remember one morning getting a call from the temp agency at 8 o'clock in the morning, with a job for me at the hospital in the medical billing that could turn into a full time job. I turned it down, since she had woken me up that morning. I kick myself now, but realize that everything happens for a reason.
I then found a job working as a hostess at a restraunt. It was hard getting to work at 5:30 in the morning and working around old guys that like to hit on you. I couldn't handle that for very long and decided it would be best to take the Utah cosmetology test and get my license. It took me 3 times and $50 each time to pass the test but I finally did. I then got a job at a cut little salon but it was on a comission bassis, so needless to say it didn't pay hardly anything. At the same time Mike was working hard to pay the bills and keep us above water.
We had so much debt that just wasn't getting any smaller. Each week we would go shopping for the week for groceries and come home with over $100 in food and go back the next week just to do it all over again.We finally broke down and humbled ourselves and asked our family for help. We were able to get a loan from family to pay off our car, credit cards and the student loan I had. We were finally debt free, but not for long. We kept slipping into debt and not knowing how to manage our finances.
I quit my job and the little salon after a month because we just needed money. I got a job at another salon that was much better and I got paid hourly. Eventually I was even promoted to assistant manager which was a little better pay. At this time Mike was working full time and also going to school full time. He was struggling with keeping up with his classes and trying to work. On top of that I found out I was pregnant. Mike came to me and told me that he could not continue to do both that I would have to work and put him through school. I did not like tat idea but I knew it needed to be done. So Mike quit working to focus on school.
Being pregnant was awful. I was very sick and had to be on medication to help. I was always in the bathroom and had to just work around being sick. We were very fortunate at this time with only one job and my husband in school that we qualified for Medicaid and WIC. We didn't have to worry about medical bills and we were able to get milk, eggs, cheese and some cereal from WIC to help us out. My paychecks were able to pay our bills and whatever I made in tips is what bought our groceries, which some days wasn't much.
Sturggling with being pregnant and sick paid a toll on my work status and I ending losing my job the day before Thanksgiving. I was devastated and didn't know how I could take care of my family. It took me a while but I finally found a new job at another salon. It paid the bills that's all that mattered.
A few months later my first son was born and four weeks after he was born I was back to work, we couldn't do with out it. I was blessed with a boss who was very flexible with me and allowed me to work split shifts so that I could be home when Mike was in class and Mike could be home while was at work, so we very rarely had to get a sitter, which saved tons of money! Diapers were so expensive but I didn't think much of it, we always bought a box a Sam's Club when we needed them.
To be continued...
Our Financial Story part 2
Our Financial Story part 3
Our Financial Story part 4
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