Welcome to The Thrifty Housewife! This website is your one-stop-shop for money-saving tips, party planning and organizing on a budget, couponing, and living lavishly on less.
I’m a young mom to two rambunctious little boys! I have an amazing husband who goes above and beyond to provide for our family. We live in the heart of the Midwest and we are a typical American family. Like many of you, we struggle with our finances and budgeting and are constantly battling the pressures of our spend-now, pay-later society.
My thrifty transformation began in 2009 shortly after my 1st son was born. At that time, my husband was in his second year of a job with a large law firm. The job was intense and stressful, but it also came with a generous salary. If we knew then what we know now we would have saved more and spent less, but we assumed our income would stay the same (or go no where but up) and rationalized spending beyond our means.
After my 1st son was born we quickly realized that the lifestyle that came with my husband’s job at the large law firm wasn’t what we wanted. He worked long hours, often leaving before my son was awake and getting home after he had gone to bed. We decided that things needed to change, but neither of us had any idea how difficult that decision was going to be. My husband soon found a more manageable and rewarding job in public service, but he also took a substantial pay cut. Our family had to get by on about 70% of our previous income. Although this was a big change for our family and at times it has been a struggle to adjust financially, we’ve never regretted our decision because the improvement in our quality of life was PRICELESS!
When the paychecks got smaller and the same bills kept rolling in, I decided that I needed to develop a whole new mindset when it came to spending money. We always had a make-shift budget but now it was time to get serious and we had to stick to it. Boy was this a challenge! I immediately started to cancel and do away with things that we didn’t need. The first thing we gave up was Cable television. (insert GASP!) Needless to say, we got used to it! J The bottom line was I needed to rearrange my priorities: putting my family first and learning to live on less became my focus and material things moved to the back of the bus.
I can’t tell you how glad I am I did this. Many times I think about what life would look like if I hadn’t made this change. Where would we be now? How much debt would we be swimming in? We’re still working to become 100% debt-free, but we’re so much closer than we would be if we’d just kept living the way we were: with no budget, no plan for getting out of debt, and very little knowledge about how to live within our means.
We’re a world away from where we were just a couple short years ago, and this blog is my way of sharing that journey with you in the hopes that the lessons we’ve learned will also make life a little better for you and your family. I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to stand in line at the grocery store and watch the total bill drop after each coupon is scanned and then hand the clerk cash out of our “grocery fund” instead of pulling out the credit card. My hope and prayer for your family and mine is that we would all be able to rely solely on cash and not a piece of plastic (even if they are sometimes really cute pieces of plastic!).
I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us all!
