One of the things I cherish here at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam is the interaction and community that is created in my comment section, but also the stories that you email me. Every week, I receive blessings galore when I open my in box and read your about your latest Frugal Fashionista find or personal finance story.
The majority of you do not have blogs to share those success stories, so I want to begin a new weekly feature where those of you without blogs can be featured and encourage others with how you are “Living on Less and Loving It.”
The door is wide open with what you can share. For example, it may be just a picture and break down of your latest grocery trip where you saved so much with coupons or possibly your latest Trash To Treasure Redo. Many of you have made huge strides towards getting debt free and you’d like to share some of your life lessons along the way. I think this will be such a huge encouragement to my readers and I would love to feature you!
Send me your stories and let’s share LIFE together…both the beauty and the bedlam of Balancing Beauty, Bedla, and the BUDGET.
Are you accepting stories from those of us who are new to the blogging world? I do have a blog, but I don’t have much traffic. I have many stories I would love to share… I would love to share some of our success stories as well as some of the…. well… bedlam ones. Ha Ha!
Oh, this is going to be so much fun!!! I love the FF series! (It’s like a treat!) And I can’t wait to hear stories from others, too!
I wonder if you would consider adding a linky to these posts so those of us who have blogs can share our own stories as well… I think a roundup of trash-to-treasure or our latest yard sale finds would be fabulous!! In fact, I’ve been thinking about writing about my latest finds on my blog, but a roundup would be so much better!
Back on June 4th I set up a spreadsheet of what we spent and how much we saved (not including bills, utilites etc.) We have spent $668.69 AND saved $414.14. Which is a savings of 61%.
I am a work in progress. I have used coupons in the past but not to this extent.
Oh and we have even been to Goodwill! LOL Didn’t buy anything, but at least we made the first step. LOL
Sorry, this is long, but it’s a bunch of little stories that add up to one main point… a BUDGET is key to any financial plan.
A year ago this month I signed up for a budgeting program b/c I felt like things were out of control for us financially. We just couldn’t seem to make any progress despite our best efforts! I had tried budgeting before, but it was never user friendly enough for me to stick with it. Once I got started it really opened our eyes and we began to make headway. I quickly realized that DH’s truck was a HUGE part of our monthly “extras” and was actually able to show him instead of having to convince him with not real concrete “evidence”. We were at Carmax a week later selling it back to them and we were able to take the positive equity in it to buy an older Suburban with cash. Shortly after we discovered a MAJOR mold issue in our house. It’s a family home, and part of the “deal” was that they would buy it back when we were ready to move out. Well, of course things never work out like they are supposed to and they backed out. We could either choose to be bitter about things or move on, so we went searching for other options. Thanks to the budget program we were making headway, but nothing like what we would need to do to be able to afford two mortgages. We felt stuck. We have two young children and were already noticing health effects from the environment… we had to do something. We were fortunate and came into some money that was just enough to pay off our current home (fortunately we didn’t pay much for it originally so there wasn’t a huge amount left) plus our remaining CCs with some “change” left over to start on a downpayment… add to that a hefty tax refund that we weren’t expecting and we felt like things were falling into place. I was able to keep track of it all and could see our progress each month. We’ve had some bumps in the road, but here we are 7 months later and I can look out of the window of our current house and see our nearly completed home. We should be moving in in less than 2 weeks! When the framing first started going up, I went to the front door and just stood there… the most amazing feeling of peace overwhelmed me. I knew it was God saying that things were going to be OK. If it weren’t for starting that budget, I know we would still be stuck in our vicious financial cycle. Even if we had won the lottery, I know I would have lost track of it and it would have just slowly disappeared one penny and one dollar at a time.
I truly understand now that step one of any financial plan is a BUDGET! It’s darn near impossible to get anywhere without it. We are officially DEBT FREE and are able to easily afford our dream home because of it (and even better is that if all goes well, we can easily have it paid off in 10 years or less!)
Today at Kroger I saw the salad greens that I like had a sell by date of July12. I found an employee and asked that it be marked down. I also bought 2 pizzas to freeze and wings to eat for dinner tonight – all marked down half price. I’m learning from all the frugal posts. Thanks.
I know this may be a small thing, but it can add up. I started paying attention to how much laundry soap I put in a load of clothes. You know the cups that come with the soap? (I still think powdered laundry soap is the best.) Well, I now use about half of what the mark they say to use on the cup. Laundry soap is expensive and when you can cut down by half….that is a good thing. The only things is, you have to watch it when you do this to gauge the correct amount the first time or two! You could probably try this with liquid detergent as well! I also use vinegar as my fabric softener for my towels….works great! I love all the ideas that I am getting from all of you….keep them coming! We are all in this together!
After listening to Dave Ramsey, we began trimming off the debt, and were able to pay off our home in 2007. Our home is small, modest but nice. As we near an empty nest in a few years we realize that pretty soon it’s just going to be myself and my husband. While many of my friends are trying to down-size, we are in a perfect size home, that’s paid for. As far as recent successes, when I heard my college age daughter say, “I don’t know how so many college students eat out every day, that’s a huge expense”, as she was packing her lunch. Then was my 16yo son, who said, when he heard his 15yo friend was saving up for a mustang, “Can you imagine what the insurance is going to be on that thing? That’s crazy!”—Love hearing them talk that way!
Hey Jen,
Great idea! I have a blog. A baby blog compared to yours but, I would love to “share” too like Kassandra said or have a linky party like Renee suggested. Then I could finally share my $ 2.00 dress story from my sister’s wedding to a rock star in LA! You would be so proud of me Jen! I was bursting at the seams over my good fortune!
Kristin
I have been to some great garage sales and thrift stores in the last few months. I will have to find some time to model all my “new” clothes and have hubby take some pictures to email you. I love seeing your frugal fashionista posts and it would be fun to share my finds with you!
God is good. We have been blessed by some great neighbors! When a new couple moved in down the street this past spring, we wanted to be a blessing. As we were clearing out the shed from winter storage, we came across our old patio table/chairs set. We had been blessed with a hand-me-down Teak set from friends, so we blessed our new neighbor with the perfectly good older one. They love it and use it daily.
Then last month, we were considering buying a new bed for our 3 year old, when another neighbor offered us a mattress and box spring set. What an answer to prayer! So next we passed on his toddler bed to our ‘new’ neighbor. God is good and we are blessed to be a blessing- And HE blesses us in return!
Jen, thanks so much for this upcoming series. I REALLY need the encouragement right now. I love the feeling of community that I get from the comments (even if it is just cyber friends!)