Saturday Savings #1

I'm a stay at home Mom.  This means that my husband and I share one income.  (Obviously you all KNOW what this means, I'm trying to explain what it means in MY household).  Hubs works during the day to full our cash flow in and I work all day to try to minimize our cash flow out.  If your cash flow out is greater than in, then you've got some serious problems that need fixing.

Generally, I keep things about my marriage exactly where they belong, in my marriage.  However, I will elaborate that for the first year Hubs and I struggled.  We could barely afford our house after the market tanked and I couldn't find a job, I was recovering and we just were not in a good place.  Obviously we made it through but I always cringe at the thought of ever being in that position again.

But if it ever DOES happen again I am READY!  I've got my emergency escape plan set.

1)  Stay home.  This is so difficult in our day and age. We are all on the go from the moment we wake up till our heads hit those pillows.  But when you need to save money the first thing that is a huge money guzzler is our vehicles!  Gas is almost $4 per gallon.  One gallon of gas gets me about 30 miles.  That's only a one way to trip to Bear's doctors.  It costs us $8 to go to his doctors.  So we try to lump as many providers into one day as possible.  I also try to stop on the way home if we need anything. 

Condense all your grocery shopping into one trip.  It uses less gas to drive to one location. We're lucky because we have two grocery stores RIGHT next to each other.  So when I go by myself I park in between the two and shop both sales.   Also, only going out one time is a lot less tempting to overbuy.

Look into local parks or libraries, try to stay within 2 miles of home.  By doing this you can get 6 trips to a park from 1 gallon of gas.  If you went to the park 2 times a week that's 3 weeks of trips!  I also know that the day's Bear has therapy the Bookmobile shows up to the school.  We could easily stop in (it's open to the public not just the students) and avoid a separate trip to the library.

Thankfully living on a large lot (a little over 5 acres) gives us plenty of space to roam.  We have this swing hanging in our yard

(It's great for children with special needs because it's high enough to support a child that cannot sit and the harness makes me feel he's secure)


and Bear loves it.  We usually spend about 30 minutes out there of me pushing and playing with him.  Sometimes I put him in the wagon and pull him around.  If we lived in a development with sidewalks I would happily take him on walks down the street, but alas, we live on a well traveled road with no sidewalks or shoulders.  Sometimes we just go outside and lay on a blanket and play with the grass.  Lately this has been almost never because of our abominable weather.

All these things are free and give Bear a chance to explore things other than our four walls.  They also give me a chance to breathe and get some much needed Vitamin D.