Great Deal!

A great blog for finding out about deals that are out there is Dear Savvy Shopper. She posts about groceries, clothes, decor, and basically, anything that you might need and want that has a price you can live with! Recently she posted about a great deal on Udder Covers (basically the same thing as Hooter Hiders and whatever else people call them). Check it out though, because as I said, it is a great deal! Regularly priced at $32 they are free (except shipping, which was just under $8), so go here to get the promotional code.

Guest Blogger: Ruth

We are continuing money/finance week this week as well, since we have a couple of amazing guest bloggers and other money saving ideas! Here is Ruth to start us off!

Ruth is an amazing mother to 5 adorable children (including twins) ! She and her husband are the ultimate goal setters and she is the perfect person to review the principles that Dave Ramsey puts forth in his book "The Total Money Makeover". Here's what she has to say:

If you want to buy the best ingredients for a strawberry tart, would you head to the hardware store? If you wanted the best advice on which TV to buy would you visit the baby clothing department?

No and no.

The same is true for getting financial advice.

The best way to get out of debt and build wealth is to get advice from someone who did just that—from someone who is out of debt and is wealthy! Keeping in line with many principles found in Elder Marvin J. Ashton’s pamphlet “One for the Money: Guide to Family Finance”, (which you can receive for free, see below) Dave Ramsey’s book “The Total Money Makeover” is a must read!

In “The Total Money Makeover” Dave guides you step by step on how to become debt free through his six “baby steps”. The first steps focus on getting out of debt and the latter steps are geared towards building wealth and helping others.

In following the baby steps, Dave will first teach you the importance of quickly building a $1000 emergency fund to prep you and help cushion the unexpected emergency expenses as you tackle your debt. Next, he advises attacking the smallest debt first while making minimum payments on everything else. After the debt snowball is rolling and all of your debts are paid off except your house, Dave maps out the rest of the course: building a three to six month expense-only emergency fund, paying off your house, funding kids’ college funds, saving for retirement, and giving to others.

In “The Total Money Makeover”, you will also read about Dave’s personal experiences with getting out of debt, along with other people’s personal struggles and successes in their journey to financial freedom.

If you are serious about getting out of debt, and are ready to be debt free in two to three years, you need to follow Dave’s plan. I love “The Total Money Makeover”; I’ve learned the specifics about how to get out of debt quickly and how to build wealth one month at time. Plus, the book is a great motivator and makes me excited to get the paycheck every two weeks so we can pay off our loans! Sacrificing small luxuries and being intense on eliminating debt for just a short time will bring long-term benefits.

After we finished our undergraduate degrees and my husband attended four years of graduate school, we had accumulated about $37,500 in student loans. My husband’s “first job” started in August of 2008. That October, with back-up of a $1000 emergency fund, we started our personal debt snowball. We have paid a little more than $20,000 of the debt off and are on track to being debt free November 2009. To make it even more exciting, we canceled and cut up our credit cards in January.

To make our situation a little more personal: Ranging from newborn to 5 years of age, we have two boys, twin girls, along with our new baby boy who is a preemie in the NICU. Everyone can become debt free in any situation! For our situation, here are some things that my husband and I do together that are quickly helping us to become debt free:

Create a budget every month and stick to it

¡P Review the budget often—it helps me curb spending and impulse buys!

¡P Plan a menu for a whole week before going grocery shopping once a week

¡P Spend $300 a month on groceries (I bake from scratch) and $50 on food storage

¡P Live without cable TV

¡P Rarely go out to eat

¡P Have a decent clothing budget—for us $75 a month works well, and we sure use it!

¡P Part of a family cell phone plan with my sister

¡P Drive a paid-for 1997 mini-van (that is our only vehicle)

¡P Husband will often bike to work

¡P Kept Christmas to a minimum, and we always will (my husband and I didn’t buy each other any presents last Christmas)

¡P No “vacations” this year

¡P Listen to The Dave Ramsey Show—find a station in your area

¡P Communicate

¡P Communicate

¡P Communicate

¡P Did I mention that communication was important?

Communication and goals are very important. Some of our goals are: being debt free this November, saving up a 20% down payment for a house, and being millionaires when we retire.

If you want more reading, I recommend another one of Dave Ramsey’s books, “More Than Enough”. Also, go here and get the free pamphlet, “One For The Money: Guide to Family Finance”. Even shipping is free!

Remember, if you want to become debt free and build wealth, follow the advice of those people who have done just that.

General Conference

We interrupt finance week to share a post on helping kids get the most out of General Conference (I think most of you reading this blog know what General Conference is, but if you don't, go here).

We've heard of all sorts of things to help kids focus during the sessions of General Conference. What we decided to try this year is an idea I got from a friend and I think it will work well for our daughter:

We cut out the pictures of all the General Authorities and General Auxiliary Leaders, put them in various envelopes, and bought a special General Conference notebook. While we're watching conference we'll have our daughter find the picture of the person speaking (we'll provide her with the right envelope since she's so young). Then she can glue their picture into her notebook and take 'notes' or draw pictures to help remind her of what they are speaking about. Obviously, the older she gets the more effective her notetaking will become, but we're hoping this will be a fun way to start her in that direction.


What sort of things do you do for your kids? What have you found to be effective?

Money Saving

For the past 8 months we have been using homemade laundry soap. I know, I know... it sounds very complicated and old-fashioned, but it is quite simple and saves a ton of money!

The initial cost was about $11 to buy the three needed ingredients. I am about due to make another batch, which will last about 4 months. So, over the course of a year I will have spent $11 on laundry soap!

At that time I will have to buy another Fels Naptha bar (only costs $1). The other two ingredients will definitely last over the next year which means for that year we will spend $1 on laundry soap! Obviously, how long each batch lasts will vary according to family size and need, but it is so much cheaper to make it and it is no big deal for me to make it every 4 months.

Here are the three ingredients:

And here are the directions for making it:

Grate 1/3 of Fals-Naptha Bar with cheese grater. Dissolve in 6 cups boiling water. Add 1/2 cup each of Borax and Soda. Stir until dissolved. Divide into halves*. Pour each half into 1 gallon jug. Add water to fill jug. Shake jug before each use and use half cup per load.

*I actually have it in a 2 gallon container so didn't divide it in half but filled it up with water to the two gallon mark.

One For the Money

Sometimes it can be overwhelming to even think about finances, let alone setting up a plan to actually improve them. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a great pamphlet (20 pages long) that makes finances easy to think about and to change.

It's called One For the Money and you can download it here or here, or pick it up for free at any one of these locations.

Basically it goes over proper money management, developing self-discipline (includes a debt elimination calendar), using a budget, teaching family members (including young children) the importance of work and how to make good decisions, and a few other valuable lessons. It is straight forward and easy to understand, and if finances seem overwhelming it is definitely a great resource to start you off on the right foot.

*If you haven't viewed the video on How-to-get-out-of-debt, scroll down, it's worth it!

Money, Money, Money!

This coming week is going to be devoted to topics involving money! We'll post resources, ideas, and tips to get out of debt, earn and save money, and anything else we can think of that might be useful.

For those of you who would like to contribute your thoughts and ideas to our money week, please email us so we can include you as a guest blogger!

With that in mind here is our first piece of advice (thanks for posting it on your blog Ruth!):

A Learning Experience

Our daughter will be 3 in April and lately we've been discussing ways to teach her the value of money. We want her to realize food, toys, and basically everything we have, gets paid for with hard earned and saved money. We've come up with several ideas, but one that seemed to work quite well for her was actually giving her a dollar and having her spend it.

I went with my sister-in-law to a craft store and gave Victoria a dollar (4 quarters) and told her she could spend it any way she wanted to. She was beyond excited and it didn't take long for her to decide she wanted a container to hold her treasure box coins.

We searched and searched until she felt like she found the perfect container (a little more than a dollar. I didn't mind helping out a little, especially since it was so cute!). When we got to the check-out and I told her to put her dollar on the counter to pay for her container she started crying. She told me the dollar was hers and she wanted to keep it. Which was great because then we got to talk about how she could either keep the dollar or get the container, she couldn't do both. After a few more tears she finally decided to get the container.

The rest of the day she would ask if we had bought certain things throughout the house. At the dinner table she said, "So... all of those things we get at Ikea we have to pay money for!" (I told you we love Ikea at our house). Long story short - I think she understands more than ever why we don't just go out and buy a new toy when one gets broken.