A lot of people have asked us about being debt-free and what steps we've taken to get (and stay) out of debt. I post with a bit of hesitancy because this is not a finance blog by any means, and I do not have any expertise in how to manage money. So let's say: what I might lack in savvy, I make up for in scrappy. The biggest thing I know about money is how to NOT spend it. We started to pay off debt in May of 2013, and by June of 2018 we were debt free, having paid off a total of $76,783. This isn't a giant number, I understand; I know many people have much more. But comparative to our income, which is not large, that number was significant. It was a combination of undergraduate and grad school loans, car loans, a personal credit card, a Home Depot credit card, and a Guitar Center credit card. We had always listened to a lot of Dave Ramsey, but it was kind of always just for entertainment value and dreaming about "someday" when we paid off our debt. We weren't actually following it for a long time. Primarily, we went out to a LOT of restaurants and bars; I remember tallying it and there were weekends we'd spend $300, easily. It feels ridiculous now, but it's no joke. Food and drinks are a delicious and super fun way to make money disappear. That was our first step, eliminating all restaurants and bars, and we pretty much did only that step for a couple years. We had a loose "budget" but it was more just a detailed chart of what we realistically paid for each category (utilities, groceries, gas, etc.), compared to every drop of income we had coming in. It set in stone what "extra" we actually had, which wasn't tons, granted. Whatever we did have, we threw towards the debt - smallest to largest, just like Dave Ramsey advises. By two years in, we had paid off just a little over $39,000. We cruised along pretty solidly until we had kids, which didn't totally derail us, but definitely slowed us down a bit, since I was working much less (we couldn't justify the cost of full-time daycare for two kids against my income.) We would occasionally go to breweries (most of those were "research" that we could write off since Dave was doing a lot of freelance beer writing) and sometimes out for pizza, but for the most part, we were not in restaurants. We weren't exactly roughing it though, we did a lot of dinners out like this: We established "personal accounts" that were to spend on anything we wanted, and we each got $50 every two weeks. If it wasn't an absolute family necessity, it had to come out of our personal account. We're pretty hardcore about that, still - if I want a new throw pillow, that's a personal account purchase. If Dave wants a new pair of jeans but doesn't necessarily NEED them, that comes out of his personal account. This continues to be one of the best things we've done, since we don't have to argue about money at all. If you want it, but we don't need it, save up in your personal account then do whatever you want with it. By the beginning of 2017, we were down to about $22k, a number that finally felt surmountable. Every extra gig we booked (we're musicians), every extra freelance writing project we got, any tax refund check, any little bit we could we sent towards debt. Huge bonus excitement when Dave sold his first novel, which was just the push we needed to knock it all out. We made this very sophisticated graph to help us track each thousand we sent to debt: So once we were out of debt, we were psyched - but it was sort of anticlimactic, since we then shifted all our efforts into building up a strong emergency fund so that we would never have to go into debt again. So, needless to say, we still don't splurge on much, since we basically just redirected our efforts towards savings. But the beauty of that has been that we've been able to not enter back into debt for anything - we paid cash when our steps got replaced, cash for both of our cars, cash for any trip we take. If we can't pay cash for it, we don't do it. Believe me, there are a WHOLE lot of things I'd like to do that we can't, but it's become more important to me to have total freedom, because that's what it feels like, honestly. I don't feel like we have to have giant salaries or work crazy hours because we've realized we don't actually need that much to maintain our lifestyle. We're now working on the house, and baring any major catastrophes, we should be done well before the kids graduate high school. So after that....who knows! Maybe we'll let restaurants cook all our meals.
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Piñatas were are huge part of my childhood, and they are proving to be a big part of my children's as well. Is there really anything more satisfying to a kid than being told to smash something and candy will come out?? Plus, the leadup to the pinata is so exciting - every birthday my kids get to plan out what they want theirs to look like, and then go shopping for the goodies inside (which are about 4-5 packages of individually wrapped candy or gummies from the Dollar Tree. Nothing fancy over here.) The process is super easy, basically free, and the kids can almost do it all. It starts with old newspaper strips: And a balloon: And a mixture of flour and water. (We used whole wheat because that's what we had, but I would suggest the very cheap white kind - it's smoother and, of course, cheaper.) Dip the strips in the mixture, layer them on the balloon, and let it harden. We did two rounds of this just to make sure it held up. Add paint, a tin foil horn, some streamers, and boom, "Baby Unicorn" piñata is complete and ready to stuff with candy (after you pop the balloon to make a hole, I should mention.) It held up beautifully through two rounds of children and was a total hit at the party. Pun intended, of course.
I don't think there's ever been less than 6 cans of beans in my cupboard. Even when there's very little else (which is usually), there are always beans. I'll eat them in any form, but my kids are a bit more...discerning. So this is my new favorite way to serve them to them. No fancy recipe here, just literally dump a can of drained beans, a scoop of peanut butter, and a squeeze of chocolate sauce into the food processor (use a little milk if needed to loosen it up.) Ok, mental note that I probably shouldn't let my 3 year old reach her hands in with the blade and all. Ignore that and look at the next picture: I either serve it with pretzels or fruit to dip in it, or honestly, more often, just with a spoon.
It occurred to me the other day that my children might actually not know what a "paper towel" is. In their lifetime, I may have only purchased one roll which we used on a camping trip. Otherwise, they do not exist in our house. I get a bit tight-chested thinking about spending money on something that was literally made to throw away. Therefore, our house is full of 100 rags. Attractive, no. Most of them are old burp cloths given to us when the kids were born, but some are pieces cut from my old sweatshirts, or old towels. We use them for literally everything: sanitizing the counters (that is not purchased cleaning product, by the way; I refill the original bottle with vinegar and water), cleaning up spills, wiping faces, etc. (Also for the record, I only bought that individual cottage cheese and fruit cup because it was in the clearance section of the dairy aisle.) Using cloth rags, napkins, and towels for cleaning up definitely makes for more work on laundry day, but I'm alright with it. This is by no means a novel idea - my family, as well as most of my extended family, used only fabric when I was a kid too. I always felt like paper towels were the holy grail of other people's houses (and even as an adult when I'm at other people's houses I admit I still do kind of revel in the ease of simply wiping up a mess and tossing it away...) But now that I'm paying for groceries, I totally get it.
I've dabbled in and out of selling things online, but the ease of the new "shipping" feature on Facebook Marketplace has got me gung-ho. Most of the things I've listed are clothes that don't fit my kids anymore (most of which were given to us - thank you to those of you who have done so during the course of my kid's lives, because my gratitude for hand-me-downs is IMMENSE.) I shouldn't be super surprised, because when I need anything, the first place I check is Goodwill or the Facebook Marketplace. Yes, I'm always trying to get things as cheap as possible, but from an environmental/resource standpoint, I also really like to leave purchasing something new as a last resort. As a rule, I only sell stuff that is in good shape, and that I would actually want to purchase myself. I believe nice presentation goes a long way, so I focus on taking decent photos, and I also try to mark things at a pretty reasonable price, knowing even if I make $8, that's still $8 more than I had 5 minutes ago. I also didn't want to lose out any money on packaging, so I wasn't about to purchase bubble mailers. I use all the paper bags I've accumulated over these past few months and wrap them up in packaging tape (from the Dollar Tree). The shipping is paid by the purchaser, the label gets generated by Facebook, and all I have to do is print it, tape it to the package, and pop it in the mailbox. Sure, none of them are bank-breaking payments, but this weekend alone, I've made over $50 - say what you will, but in my world, that's dinner for 5 nights! I've never once enforced a "clear your plate" message for my kids, but if they don't finish it during one meal, it's definitely coming back around. I can't bear to see any sort of produce or protein go to waste, so at the end of lunch, everything gets put in the bullet. Add a little liquid, sometimes some maple syrup or fruit juice, and boom: smoothies or popsicles. So see, you DID finish your lunch. Just a couple days later.
I'm pretty sure that most people just open the trash bin when they realize they have packs of raisins sitting in their snack box that their kids won't eat and now they are literally the texture and hardness of BBs. But me, see, I can't do that. I CANNOT throw them away. I CANNOT cut my losses. It feels like actual defeat. So many good grapes were used to make those raisins and I am not about to take that for granted. I will make those raisins consumable. Even if it takes flour, sugar, and a stick of butter. In fact, there is an actual Martha Stuart recipe using raisins as the filling for an oat bar, so I wasn't that crazy. I didn't really follow hers, but I was inspired by it. I soaked the raisins in hot water to make them soft again, then put them in the bullet with some water to make a jam of sorts. The base and the crumble are just oats, flour, butter, and a little sugar. And I got to feel like I saved those little raisin's lives.
Here is our kitchen the night we moved in. The picture looks 50 years old because a) it's taken hastily on an iPad while drinking beer, and b) because it was likely last updated 50 years ago. Now, as much as I would love to yank everything out and redesign the entire thing, I have learned to set aside my $40k vision and work within my $40-a-project budget. Is it exactly what I want? Not even close. But does it hurt my eyes less and make me at least a little more excited to be in it every day? For sure. We kept the dishwasher for several years until it broke, so that replacement was a necessity. But as you'll see, the stove and microwave (might that be THE original microwave ever made?) are still going strong. As much as I'd love to replace them for something more, um, current, there is no way I can justify changing out something that still works. Not surprisingly, the biggest trick of this scrappy "renovation" was lots of paint. Painted the brick, painted the walls, painted the top and bottom cabinets - needless to say, I freaking love paint. I also took off all the weird fringy details on the cabinets including the wooden shutters.
Next easy change: hardware. Those aren't necessarily cheap (by my standards, that is), but under $200 for all of them. One trick my mom taught me was to not replace the hinges, just take them off and spray them with stainless steel spray paint. She's the most resourceful person I know. And for the finale, both the backsplash and the countertops are peel-and-stick. TA-DA! Because my next favorite thing to decorate with after paint is giant stickers. I've got to say, they have both held up extremely well, and we are not terribly gentle to our kitchen. Now, clearly, this kind of renovation is not going to scratch the itch of a high-end dream you may have (or the one that I have.) But, all said and done it definitely cost less than $1,000. Do I want a real kitchen overhaul? Totally. But what I want more is to pay this house off entirely, so for now, paint and stickers it is. I rely heavily on presentation more than substance for lots of things. A basket of any kind is one of those places - the excitement for my kids is really all about how it looks, not about what's actually in it. So their baskets this year were comprised of a $1 toy bunny ball shooter, a $.50 pack of gum (from the clearance section of the grocery store), a couple of peanut butter eggs (a $1 bag split between the two kids), and a $1 chocolate bunny. This all sat on top of a fabric Easter bag stuffed with about 25 plastic bags, to make the basket look full. Did they care? I'm not sure because they were already halfway through a chocolate bunny by the time they cared to notice. I'm not sure how long I can get away with duping them into not receiving much, but I'm definitely going to take advantage of it while I can. I'll admit, this bathroom could have been a WHOLE lot worse when we bought the house. It's not huge, the vanity screams '90s, but it's totally functional, and with a couple cans of paint, it was a pretty painless facelift. However, my biggest qualm was the floor - although the tile was pretty neutral and in great shape, I quickly found myself asking, "WHO PUTS WHITE GROUT ON THE FLOOR?" Cleaner people than me, that's who. That grout didn't stand a chance. It needed to be a darker color in order for it to look like it was even remotely clean. To my credit, this is not just dirt - I tried to fill in the grout lines with a black grout pen, which worked fine-ish but then actually got wiped away any time I cleaned the floor. Not ideal. It also was like $13 for one pen, and that's a fine quick fix, but you know what's better? Sharpie markers. Two for $1 at the Dollar Tree. Dave noted that I hunched over the bathroom floor "with the meditation of a monk," so yeah, it takes a little time and patience, BUT it is far less intensive than actual grout. And from a distance any farther than 4 inches, you can barely tell I hacked this job with markers. The best thing is that it looks 100% cleaner with black grout!
Having a kid enter the public school system this year was not convenient for MANY reasons, but one awesome part about it has been the food that the school cafeteria provides to us every week. I pick up my box every week and it honestly feels like Christmas every time. 'Cause THIS mom knows how to have fun these days. I'll give our school system credit, the stuff they send is impressive. We'll get a head of cabbage, a bag of baby carrots, two cans of tuna, applesauce, homemade beef stew - but we also get some of that good old nostalgic cafeteria junk like stuffed bagel bites and McRib sandwiches. This stuff usually sits in my freezer for a while longer than the rest, but I would not be worthy of writing this blog if I didn't actually put every bit of protein and calories to good use in this household. So tonight was mystery meat trio tacos. What's that? You're begging me for the recipe? Oh sure: 1. Unbury all processed meat products from freezer and place in pan. 2. Sauté and stir and put in salsa. 3. Put in taco shells. 4. Tell your husband you'll tell him what it is after he finishes. I've come to understand that I have a very high threshold for stress around most things; example: vehicles. For the last couple of months I've been driving the Jeep and I'd say its success rate of starting is about 2/10. I have literally anticipated it not starting most times I'm planning on going anywhere. I've had to back out of a few plans because we were stuck in the driveway. I've been stuck outside the elementary school after picking up our free food and had to explain to staff that "it does this all the time" and "if I just wait a few minutes it'll start." Super cool. Super classy. I was more than happy to go on like this. I loved our Jeep, it was roomy and great in snow and had been paid off for years. Plus us buying a new car without driving the existing one STRAIGHT INTO THE GROUND is just not an option we have ever considered. Alas...the day finally came when the Jeep just couldn't gasp another breath. Literally, the engine and catalytic converter were totally suffocated and it actually SHUT OFF while I was driving it to the mechanic. It had to be towed away and they graciously gave us a check for $525 to use it for scrap. Enter Sylvia. We bought her for $6,200 in a private sale which I'm typically nervous about but I had a great feeling about this one from the beginning. Only 87K miles (like NEW in our family!) and super well maintained, a local family was selling it to upgrade to a minivan because they had two kids (yeah us too) and go to the mountain skiing every weekend (yeah us too, haha.)
Luckily, the time between buying the Subaru in November and buying Sylvia in March gave us just enough time to barely replenish our savings and pay cash for it. So now we've got two paid for cars that were at least made in the last decade. Not much to brag about for most people, but I think we've established my standards are significantly lower than others. And guys, she starts EVERY TIME! I'm not entirely sure why, but across the board, curtains are so expensive. For this reason, I figured that my budget would mean that I would need to source fabric to make café curtains, rather than purchase 4 premade ones. And I knew I wanted a very specific graphic look for the fabric, which I ended up only being able to find on sites like Etsy and Spoonflower which are great, but also priced me out pretty quickly with my "under $25" requirement. However....I discovered that cute shower curtains are insanely cheap! I found this one on Amazon for $12, and could have made all 4 cafe curtains out of it (I did end up getting two of them, just because of the way the lines were oriented, and I wanted them to all be the same.) $12 shower curtain, courtesy of Amazon. Simple cut and sew = café curtains!
I have made fish tacos for years but turns out, I've been making them way too difficult on myself. The secret ingredient now: FROZEN FISHSTICKS. I used to think these were the lowest of the low when it comes to food, but turns out, they are delicious. And cheap. And sometimes, some of my kids eat them. Sold.
I can't tell you how much this tv situation bothered me. Even looking at it now makes me feel very uncomfortable. Something had to be done, and I had my sights set high on purchasing the perfectly sized corner console for the television to fit in (and all the speakers and wires and things Dave deals with could be neatly tucked out of sight.) Needless to say, that console does not exist, since it is the smallest corner ever. So, like most things, I decided I'd be better off making it myself. As I was on my way to Home Depot, I passed by the local wood "boutique" that had recently opened right by my house, and figured I would at least try to source what I needed there. They were amazing (shout out to The Lumbery in Cape Elizabeth) and had everything I needed for only about $40*, so I was more than happy to spend my dollars there. I won't insult you by explaining the process step by step because I think you can figure it out looking at the pictures. I'm no engineer that's for sure. But so far, it appears to be standing, and holding the TV without making me cringe every time I try to relax and watch a show. *I was planning on doing drawers in the front, but ended up doing beadboard that slides in and out, so I did eventually have to purchase the beadboard at Home Depot.
I'm sure you have these piling up too - this ban on reusable bags in the grocery stores has created a major excess of paper bags in this house. I was pretty proud of this little creation I came up with to turn them into fun gift baskets. Cut the handle off, with a band of excess, as shown. Fray the bottom of the bag. Glue the handle part back inside the bottom part, and fill with goodies.
Another frugal tip: I bought large packages of microwave popcorn, hot chocolate, etc. and broke them up to include a few packages in each gift pack. Very inexpensive when you break it down, but it looks impressive and exciting! This is not my invention, but I think it's too amazing not to share: bronzer made from pantry items. I found the recipe for it years ago so apologies that I can't remember the original source.
I've felt for a long time like the outside of our house screamed "old people." Probably not a coincidence since the people in the home before we bought it were, in fact, old. It was kind of adorable, but also a bit dated (stodgy, heavy shrubbery; faux brick siding.) I just never felt connected at all to the aesthetic of the exterior of the house, never really felt like it was "ours." Also, the steps were completely rotting and I was nervous to see what that might mean for structural concerns. So, like everything else we don't want to deal with, we put it off. For years. This summer we got a quote from a contractor and had finally saved up enough cash ($6,000) to take the stairs off and replace them. Usually, I'm the one who constantly wants to change things, and Dave could care less. So when he was the one who actually suggested, "Hey, we should take these shrubs out," I leapt on the opportunity. Of course it would have been faster and waaaaaayyy easier to have someone remove them, but instead, we spent HOURS of our weekends and SO much sweat equity to do it ourselves. Those things are intense. But we finally got them out! Next to go was the door and the stairs. Like I mentioned, that was beyond our abilities to tackle; it needed the work of a contractor who made the floor structurally sound and designed how to make our vision of clean, modern, steps (WITHOUT RAILINGS) come true. It was a bit tricky, and required building up the ground so that the steps weren't too high, requiring a railing. The contractor was awesome and really worked with us to remain in our budget, since we didn't have any wiggle room. He suggested one way to save some money would be to do the work of raising up the ground ourselves, so.....of course we decided to go for it. (We had some nice strong 5 year old labor.) I also utilized the child labor to help me paint the brick a uniform color as the siding, which made a huge difference. It was finally starting to really show some potential. Once the house was painted all one color, I decided not to put the shutters back on, and painted all the window trims black, giving it a more modern look. From there it made sense to add the black on the door trim, which made that little window detail really stand out, where before I barely even noticed it. I am NOT a gardener, but my mom and my brother in law are, so they gave me lots of direction around what to do in terms of planting. Plants are so expensive though, and our budget was definitely gone, so my mom graciously offered to have me come pick from her gardens and replant some in mine. (You can also see my mom and Alice checking out paint swatches for the front door.) Our final product makes me SO happy to come home to! It finally feels like a true reflection of us, and I am proud that so many hands went into the work of creating it. Definitely the most pricey renovation project we've embarked on, but considerably less given all our sweat and energy. Now to see what the gardens look like when they come back in the spring....
I used to absolutely HATE walking in the door to come home - which is a terrible feeling to have, especially for 10 years. The entryway had been put on by the previous owners, but never finished. Sections without drywall, no window or door framing, a vinyl floor on top of what eventually became a very rotted base floor. It was something I had dreamed of fixing eventually, and this summer we FINALLY saved up enough to do it. There was some contractor work needed for the floor and the outside steps (shared in a separate post on the exterior) but the majority of the inside was done by us. The work we did is amateur quality - there are huge gaps in the window trim and a lack of "refinement" in the craftmanship, but compared to where we were, it's come a long way. We'll need to eventually frame out the door and accent windows...one step at a time.
I honestly wasn't sure we would ever use this part of our house "for real." It was about as basementy as a basement can get (don't let the carpet squares fool you, they are only there because the cement had been painted an atrocious rusty red color that got ALL over your feet and tracked through the entire house like a bloody serial killer, so we had to cover it with something ASAP.) Pre-kids, it was only used for wood projects, drinking games, and late night karaoke. It was not a place I wanted to rest my eyes on in the sober light of day. But having kids makes it quickly necessary to utilize every single square inch of your house, lest you be overrun by toys in every room. So that's why this (1st picture) became this (2nd picture). I obviously knew I needed some improvement to the walls, so my first thought was to just slap paint on them. However, after lots of late night reading about painting cement, I realized it wasn't actually going to be that easy. The surface would need to really be prepared, including scraping any existing paint, and it was very flaky and disgusting, even for me. Drywall would have been the natural choice, but I don't know how to drywall and I also didn't really want to learn, and it also sounded expensive...I had convinced Dave that I could do it for $400 and I was bound and determined to do it. So here's the scrappy girl's drywall solution: I bought some wooden strips and literally glued them (with this incredible glue that's made specifically for concrete) straight to the walls. Then I took giant sheets of hardboard (it's so cheap and lightweight and wipes down like a dream) and just nailed it onto the strips. After all the walls were covered, I covered all the seams with a little piece of trim board with finishing nails. That's it! We put some $17 indoor/outdoor rugs on the floor (similar to this) which my mom eventually sewed together by hand, bless her. We even cut one down to use on the staircase which has held up amazingly. I can't even tell you how much we use this space, and I can't believe we ever used to live without it on a daily basis. As you can see from the pictures, it's been through many configurations already and has served our phases of life so well. It is our remote school room, our art room, our playroom, our music room, and the workbench is even tucked away in one of those corners, so we can still access it. A renovation worth every penny of the $400 we put in.
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