Cha-Ching on a Shoestring™

Living Large on a Limited Budget

How We Got Here, Part 4

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Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series.

So, when Wes and I married, I had debt.  He didn’t.

I remember the conversation we had when I revealed to him the debt I was going to bring into our marriage.  He responded with such graciousness.  We committed to eradicating this debt within the first year of our marriage.

This was good.  Becoming completely debt-free is one of the best decisions we have ever made.

I am a pretty low-maintenance kind of girl, so I quickly adapted to the way Wes handled money due to his frugal up-bringing.  I did have a few ground rules, however:

  • NO milking our own goats
  • NO hatching our own chickens
  • AND ABSOLUTELY NO COUPONING!!!

Oh, every once in a while, I would buy a Sunday paper and make a lame attempt at using a coupon or two.  Instead, the stack of coupons would usually just sit there laughing at me that I had spent a whole $1.50 on them.  I was convinced that when God was handing out the couponing gene, He skipped over me.

It took Wes’s lay-off a little over a year ago for me to realize that there was so much more that I could do to save money.  I was pregnant with our second son and would be giving up my part-time job as a result.  Who knew how long we would be without an income?  I had no choice but to learn more about those evil things called coupons.

I began asking my friend Beckie, whom I lovingly referred to as the Queen of Freebies, to PLEASE mentor me through this foreign world of coupon clipping, deal hunting, and freebie finding.

Little did I know that my world was about to change.

I wrote this in my other blog a few weeks later:

Hi. My name is Kaley and I’m an addict.

I never thought it would come to this.

I’ve become a coupon/free stuff junkie.

It’s bad.

It all started because of Beckie’s influence and now I’m having a hard time pulling myself away from my coupon clipping, ad-scanning, web-surfing addiction to even tell you about it.

My mind is overflowing with CVS extra bucks deals and Rite Aid single check rebates and Price Chopper’s triple coupons and the sale prices of dozens of items.

Beckie tells me that in a month or so, I should be back to my normal self. I will no longer have nightmares about missing out on a free after rebate deal. I will stop making my husband wait for 45 minutes in the car while I just “run in” to CVS….for the third time that week. And I will be able to dedicate a little bit more time to the non-essentials in life like cooking and cleaning.

Eventually life did return to normal–but  a new normal.  My inner deal-hunting diva was discovered and I realized how do-able saving money really was.

Soon I began sharing what I was learning on my blog and quickly realized that I enjoyed helping others find deals as much as finding them myself.  I mentioned to Wes one day that I might actually enjoy creating a blog, chronicling our journey of saving money.  He loved the idea.

And that, my dear readers, is How We Got Here.

(And I haven’t had to milk a goat yet!)



How We Got Here, part 3: Wes’s Edition

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How We Got Here: Part 1

How We Got Here, Part 2: Kaley’s Edition

My wife has a way with words. On the contrary I only have a bad way with commas. I once got a 40 on an English paper in college due to my unabashed misuse of commas. To this day I am gun-shy when it comes to using them so I would suggest taking one BIG BREATH before trying to read the story of my life.

“I grew up frugal.”

It is what I know, it is how my parents taught me to live. My Pop worked very hard to provide enough income to keep my Mom from having to work. When my brother and I started school my Mom worked part-time jobs that would allow her to get back home before the school bus dropped us off. We didn’t have a lot, but we certainly had enough. My parents were the dog; they wagged money like it was their tail.

First off, I learned that lots of people throw away money and that I shouldn’t be one of them. There I was at the horse show hanging around the trash bin after lunch (isn’t every little spendthrift into dumpster diving?), like a cat ready to pounce. They would walk up and toss it in, before it could hit bottom I had snagged it. It was in my plastic bag, and my eyes were peeled for my next victim. Don’t they realize that with a little bit of effort and some sticky fingers they could have a nickel to call their own? I wasn’t about to tell them. The masses threw those can deposits away before recycling was cool, so I snagged them and turned them into video games.

Coupons, packing your lunch, hand me downs, washed out sandwich bags, hatching your own chickens, patched up pants… they all rang up as dollar signs in the Ehret household. A trip to the grocery store meant that poor lady at the register had to double and triple my Mom’s manufacturer coupons, whoo hooo FREE FOOD! Mom drove around in her Chevette, hunting the supermarkets for deals like Dirty Harry hunted bad guys with his .44 magnum.

A little extra time and effort clipping coupons was my Mom’s way of sticking it to the man, or woman in most cases. She stretched our $40 a week grocery budget like it was nobody’s business. It is only in looking back that I’m able to marvel at it now. My mom was willing to do the UNIMAGINABLE (clipping coupons, using buy-one-get-one deals, she bought in bulk, and exercised restraint) to increase our food budget by upwards of 25%. I’m glad she did too, because we loved that dish of ice-cream during The Cosby Show.

Secondly I learned that Kids = Slave Labor…I mean ‘Hard work can save a lot of money’. Growing up to us meant some chores intermingled with Scooby-Doo and WWF Wrestling, or maybe it was the other way around. My brother and I were scrawny but we could pull weeds, shell peas, and toss firewood with the best of them thanks to our plantation-owning parents.

Gardening, splitting firewood, raising chickens for the eggs, and milking goats all rang up dollar signs and exercise. News flash–when you grow some of your own food and chop your own wood for heat you don’t have to pay someone else nearly as much to feed you and keep you warm. Rather than seeing it as grueling work, we saw it as a way of controlling where we spent our money. We could hand it over to the “the man”, or our dirty fingernails and a little sweat could be turned into a new cd player, a swimming pool, or a week at camp. A little effort really does go a long way.

Thirdly, I learned the satisfaction of doing it myself –vs- paying some schlub to take my money. My first bike was a nice repainted compilation of bike parts, the greatest of which was a beautiful cushy white banana seat. My Pop spent a few hours putting that bike together for me to learn to on. I also looked on as he snubbed the Maytag repair man by figuring out how to re-wire our washer for the price of parts. Pop took on things he had no business fixing, he’d tinker around and a day later it was good as new.

Fourthly, I learned that a budget is a very good companion. Every Thursday evening, like clockwork, my Pop was at the kitchen counter with his checkbook and a stack of bills. He had it all worked out–what bill to pay when and which account to take it from.

“That money is already spent,” he’d say as he pointed to a lump of cash sitting in the ledger book. He knew the car insurance would need to be paid every six months so he saved every week and when the bill came due he sent that “already spent money” in to pay it.

I didn’t appreciate it as much then as I do now, but my Pop was exercising some serious wisdom right in front of me. Wisdom says you don’t spend money that you don’t have, save for an emergency, save for a rainy day, save for something of quality even if it takes a little longer.

These formative years of frugality laid the groundwork for ‘How I Got Here’.

TO BE CONTINUED…

How We Got Here, part 2: Kaley’s Edition

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This post may contain affiliate links, which means I will make a small commission if you click and make a purchase.

You can read the first part of this series here.

I’ve always been a fan of the “This is Your Life” concept. If there were a made-for-tv movie highlighting all of the events in my life leading up to my current state of frugality, I think it might look something like this.

Cue soundtrack. Cut to slideshow of old family pictures. Begin voice-over of Kaley speaking.

The early years–I’m the one with the finger in my mouth

“I grew up poor.

Wow, that feels weird to say. I think I had no idea how poor we were. My parents worked hard to find creative ways to keep us from feeling poor. And rarely did we talk about money being tight.

But, the salary of a small country church pastor is small and our family was large, so we were definitely poor.

If I had to do it all over, I think I might grow up poor again. (Although I might choose to be filthy rich the third time around!) For a lot of reasons.

First of all, I learned how little I really needed. Cut to scene of young girl sitting contentedly on ugly orange carpet. I was the kid who wore her sister’s hand-me-downs with pride, had no hate about the ugly orange carpet in her teeny tiny bedroom, and was completely unfazed by the fact that the guy she dated in high school had a brand new red sports car. And I promise I wasn’t weird.

I also learned that I liked to save my money. At some point when I was younger, my parents gave us a set of three envelopes to keep track of our money. We labeled them Savings, Tithe, and Spending. I would separate any money that I earned into those three envelopes. My favorite envelope was the one for savings. Maybe I was secretly hoping to save enough to replace that ugly, orange carpet…I don’t know.

Being poor also meant that I saw God provide for me a lot. When I was in college, my parents moved overseas to become missionaries in Korea. So our family’s pay scale changed from poor to dirt poor. To be honest, I’m not sure how I was able to afford college. But, over and over, God showed His care for me in the form of financial provision.

Cut to scene of college-aged girl in line at the grocery store, searching through her purse. Whether it was the $.25 that I found on the day that all I needed was a quarter or the $100 bills that would show up randomly from a secret provider or the woman behind me in line at Kroger who paid for the rest of my grocery bill when I didn’t have enough money–I knew my lack of funds was not a problem that was too big for God.

There were a few things that being poor did not teach me, however. Learning to be wise in my money management was one of them. Cut to scene of girl standing in the middle of a bank, crying. Loudly. The day that I stood in the middle of my bank sobbing uncontrollably because I had bounced my first check was one evidence of my lack of money sense. (I’ve always felt sorry for that poor bank teller.)

Cut to scene of girl devouring a pack of Twizzlers. I also signed up for a credit card in college because by doing so, I would get a pack of Twizzlers. By the time I was done with college, that was the most expensive pack of Twizzlers I have ever purchased. I had a good chunk of debt and little idea of how to get rid of it.

Then I married Wes.”

To be continued…

How We Got Here, part 1

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This post may contain affiliate links, which means I will make a small commission if you click and make a purchase.

While we are still in the ‘getting to know each other’ stage, I thought I’d like to share this series with you.  You may have already read it if you followed me over from my other blog.   We owe you part 4, however, so I will re-post parts 1, 2, and 3 here first!

Do you ever look at your life and wonder, “How did I get here?” Lately I’ve been asking myself that question about the frugal, deal-seeking, coupon freak fan I have become.

Less than a year ago, I would have told you that yes, I liked to save money. But coupons were those pretty papers that I threw out with the newspaper and my idea of thrifty was filling up my diet coke to the brim when I left McDonald’s.

Now I’m making my own baby food. Whaa–what?!

In fact, a friend e-mailed me today after reading my blog and asked me what has happened to me. How did I become so interested in this world of saving money?

And so, I’ve been thinking. How did I get here? It’s a really good question to ponder.

For those of you who don’t know, my husband was laid off almost a year ago. Since that time, we have experienced a variety of new and different life situations, including the birth of our second son, some temporary employment positions, and months of no job at all.

This, of course, was the kick in the pants that I needed to begin seeking out new ways to cut costs in just about every year of our lives. I really didn’t want to. But I had to.

So, I guess that’s how I got here.

But wait, there’s more…

Because in the past year, in spite of both cars breaking down and me giving up my job, and the birth of a new baby, and our vacuum cleaner going on the fritz and life happening, we have managed to make it without ever having to touch our savings.

And it wasn’t because of all the extrabucks I earned at CVS.

I’m thinking about taking a trip down the road aways to explore ‘how we got here’. It’s sure to include glimpses of my childhood, my life as a poor m.k. college student, and my marriage into the Ehret family. In fact, I’ve asked Wes if he’d like to share a ‘guest post’, which promises to be fun.

Mostly, I think it will be about a journey down the path of God’s grace.

Wanna come?