Mommies Frugal Finds

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....everywhere, literally everywhere you go. Is it just me or does it come earlier and earlier every year? It seems like Halloween isn't even over and you start seeing Christmas decor. So this year instead of turning my head and thinking omg, I am so not ready. I decided to embrace the thought of decorating early. (See pic, this is my house, not bad for $60 spent at the Dollar Tree right?) Yes, our tree is already up!!!! since November 8th! I did this for several reasons. First of all last year was really hard emotionally and financially. I just left my husband after being Married 16 years. Just getting thru everyday was more of a priority. I put everything off but in the end with a little help I was able to have a great Christmas for my boys. Secondly, I feel like I'm just In a better position this year emotionally as well as financially. More reasons I wanted to get it out of the way because I am going back to school and ...

As you probably know by now I have been following Dave Ramsey. Now I'm not taking his financial peace class but I am atudying his advice and watching his youtube videos. There was one video in particular that caught my eye. He was basically saying in order to get ahead financially you can not think like everyone else. You have to be ok with being different and doing things differently. You have to look at money, debt and really life in general from a different perspective. I'm going to call it " think like your grandma". Let's think about this for a minute, in our grandparents generation they had no credit cards, they used what they had and they did not shop fir recreation. They bought what they needed and most importantly, they were content, they lived and they lived within their means. I think if we took a step back and re- adapted our life styles to these simple concepts we could really get a lot further. Say goodbye to the Jonses too. If the people in your lif...

I decided it was time to re-evaluate my budget when my grocery bill per month got to $750 a month ( yes I got a little off track). I guess with everything that I've had going on in my life (divorce, moving, son in the hospital) the stress was too much and I stopped budgeting like I should have been. I used to clip coupons, meal plan, do make ahead meals, etc but all of that took the back burner for a while. So anyhow, now it's time to put my foot down on spening too much!!!! I'm getting back on track. I have some goals in place (more on that later) and it's time to make some changes. Here are some ways I am cutting our grocery bill down. One simple thing!!!! Shopping at the dollar tree! If you don't have a Dollar Tree in your area maybe you have a .99 cent store or something similar. Just by know what to b uy here you can save hundreds. Here are some of the things that I feel are a good value and I will do a price comparison Dollar Tree vs. Walmart Cream C...

As I was lying in bed I couldn't help but think about what success is, what it means to me and how we as as Americans define success. I couldn't help but think about a conversation I had a couple weeks prior with an old friend. The way she defined success didnt sit well with me. She defined success as having a mortgage she can't afford, a new car every year with a payment that she couldn't afford ( really if you are financing a car you really can't afford it let's be honest), and a recent refi to make her new house better ( move over Joneses). And heres the biggie. She slaves away at a job she hates five days a week... This is success??? Living for the weekend? Buying a beautiful house that you never use and having a family you never see. Is this really what auccess is to most of us? To me it's not. If you are happy, healthy and you have your bills paid and food on the table you are more successful than a lot of others I would say. I think we really have los...