One Hundred Dollars a Month

I also learned to sew more and sew my daughter skirts, my son sleep pants and more.  I have no formal sewing training other than basic home economics when I was in seventh grade, but I’m improving little bit by little bit.  I replaced my first jacket zipper just a couple of months ago.  If I had taken it to a seamstress it would have cost me 40.00 to replace the zipper, but by figuring it out myself it cost me less than 5.00 to do.

With the clothing I make, I buy my fabric used at the thrift stores or yard sales.  I find sheets are wonderful sources of material and often times are cheaper at the used stores than fabric by the yard or remnant.  I buy thread with coupons at Jo-Ann Fabrics and use Amazon for a lot of other satellite items in bulk, such as waist elastic.

We do take advantage of open playgrounds at the schools during the summer months and we will take trips to the library for my daughter to pull out some books.  For the most part, however, going over to visit grandma and grandpa is a big outing for my kids (my son has severe eczema on top of everything else he has to deal with, so we end up under glorified house arrest sometimes when his eczema is really bad to avoid him getting into allergens and making it worse).  We also get the kids out to our local pool as much as we can as both of the kids love it and luckily it’s not terribly expensive to do.

Education:

Well, this area is two fold for us.  My husband is an electrician.  This year we must renew his Journeyman’s license (200.00) and he has to get a certain amount of continuing education classes under his belt too, which normally costs about 160.00 to get done.  I’m budgeting as well as I can to get it done, but it still hurts.  We do count ourselves lucky that at least there are online education classes my husband can take instead of having to go and sit through 16 hours of continuing education classes instead.

​When it comes to my personal education, I’m constantly learning.  The last year I’ve found a love of embroidery that I didn’t realize I had as before all I’d ever done was embroidery kits.  Once I discovered how creative I could be with it I really do love it and it made Christmas gift giving that much more special.  I have fixed shoes and boots this last year.  I have repaired furniture.  It’s really amazing when I look back at it.  It awes me that the more you find you have to do, the more you find you can do.

Right now  when it comes to books and learning materials my personal muse/inspiration is reading how people on the home front in Britain and America lived during WWII.  There is so much to be learned from that time.  How to cook cheap, filling meals.  How to substitute things and get creative.  How little you can actually live on.  How to forage for food and use what is available in your own environment.  How to make do and mend.  There are so many wonderful resources available.  I watch the series “The 1940’s House” at least once a week for inspiration to keep the house clean and food on the table, even in the most depressing of circumstances and have slowly bought a small library from Amazon using Swagbucks to pay for the books.

Living frugally is now a passion of mine and I can see where my grandma always told me that once you lived truly frugal for a while there was no going back to the way you were.  She was right.  Living like this has changed me and for the better, I think.

Top 5 Things I Can Live Without:

1.  Cable.  Haven’t had it in nearly a decade and don’t miss it at all.  We have VCR’s and DVD players around here and get the majority of our movies at used stores for .50, at yard sales for as cheap as free, at pawn shops or on Amazon for  .01.  The kids, if anything, have more movies than they’ll ever watch, but they are never hurting for things to watch.  And no commercials to warp their young minds into thinking they need things they don’t as well.

2.  Smart Phones.  Okay, smart phones are cool and all, but I don’t need one and I know I don’t.  I have a TracFone so that the schools can get a hold of me if they need me (my daughter has a stomach condition and my son might have a melt down or an eczema flare, etc), but if that wasn’t the case I don’t know if I’d have a cell phone at all, honestly.  I find the multiple alarm function on my phone handy for keeping track of therapies and all, but yeah…that’s about it.

3.  Gaming systems.  We have an IPAD for my son that we have various educational apps loaded on, and yes, games, but when it comes to gaming systems we don’t keep up with the Jones’ on those.  We have a Playstation 2 that my husband and I had in our apartment that we got in the early years of our marriage to use as a DVD player, but we barely use it.  We have a WI mini that we got the kids a couple of years ago to see if we could get my son interested in interacting with the screen, but nope, that didn’t happen.  So, yeah, we wouldn’t miss either one of those things if they went bye bye.

5.  Status symbols.  Designer purses, designer label clothing, super expensive cars with all the bells and whistles.  Give me a good dependable paid for car, that can climb my icy hill in the winter, my driver’s license and my check card in my pocket, clothing on my back that fits and I’m just fine with the world.

And there you have it.  My money saving story.

~ Erika

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