How are we going to afford this?

A few years ago my husband and I made the decision to pay off all of our debts and pay cash for everything.  Our rule quickly became that, if we can't pay cash without dipping into our 6 month emergency fund, we won't be doing it.  This decision means we've said "no" to a lot of things, but we also know it's the responsible thing to do.

2016 was a VERY expensive year with $$$$$$$$$ in unexpected expenses, so we had to dip further into our emergency fund than we felt comfortable with so we've been spending the past year or so trying to rebuild it (Slowly. VERY slowly.)

This blog started as my documenting my frugal adventures, even before we made the decision to pay off my student loans and my husband's car. We are now debt free, except for our house, and have even refinanced that into a 15 year mortgage (with 13 left on it).  At one point (before 2016 "ate" it all) we had 6 months worth of living expenses saved up.

With our renewed passion for travel, and our desire to travel with our kids, while staying in our budget, I am getting creative in ways to save and/or make money.  None of these will buy a plane ticket on their own, but they add up over time.

Little things add up to big things. My little things:

I am not going to the grocery store except for milk and fresh fruit for the foreseeable future as I want to save as much money as possible by eating through our pantry.

I am using Shopkicks to earn gift cards to Target and Starbucks (there are MANY more stores available, but these are the ones I use). I don't make special trips to the store for kicks because I don't want to waste the time or gas, but if I'm there I will take a few minutes to go on a scavenger hunt to scan products. These "kicks" add up quickly and in about a year I have earned $55 in Starbucks gift cards and $100 in Target gift cards! No, this won't get me overseas but it's a nice way to save on things I would already buy at Target (or a way to get a Starbucks treat without spending any money).

I am a using Swagbucks to earn Amazon gift cards.  I earn points by searching the internet, doing surveys, watching videos, etc.  I can exchange these points for Amazon gift cards. Again, I won't get rich (or be able to buy a plane ticket) but every $5 I earn in Amazon money is $5 I can add to our travel budget.

Because we use cash envelopes for our grocery budget and for our "fun" money (my husband and I each get a set amount each pay period for things like lunches out, coffees, non-budgeted entertainment, etc.) I tend to end up with a lot of spare change. Each day my husband and I empty our spare change into a bowl and then I wrap the coins and deposit them in our travel fund once I have enough.  Our credit union doesn't charge me to deposit rolled coin so it's an easy way to build savings without feeling it.

Finally, when I do my online shopping at places like The Children's Place, Target, LOFT, etc. I do it by first going to ShopAtHome.com.  I signed up in 2011 and have earned $363.15 back! I'm still able to use promo codes from my favorite retailers AND I get cash back for doing it!

What are creative ways you save money?

Where to start?

After I started dreaming on Sunday night about giving our kids the world and traveling with them I spent a good portion of Monday trying to figure out how we could make it work to spend Fall Break visiting our two Compassion kids in the Dominican Republic. I started researching flights and rental apartments.  The Dominican Republic is home to our oldest Compassion child (Luis) and our longest sponsored child (Naidelin).  Luis is getting ready to graduate in December so I'm feeling the crunch of visiting him before he graduates.

My husband and I both know we don't want to stay at one of the large resorts that are popping up in the country, especially in Punta Cana, which is about an hour's drive from Naidelin. If we are going to give our kids the world, and the experience of traveling, we want to give them a real cultural experience. No matter where we go we want to stay away from areas designed for North American/Western tourists and go where the locals go.  As it is, when my husband and I travel, we avoid chain restaurants whenever possible and try to find "hole in the wall" places where locals eat. We prefer to rent an apartment at our destination rather than a hotel room. First of all, it makes much more economic sense to stay in an apartment rather than a hotel, and secondly we get to meet locals that way and see the area through their eyes. We know that when traveling, especially to a Third World country, that if we were to stick to the touristy areas and resorts we might as well stay home in our middle class bubble.

While I know that it is extremely unlikely we'd be able to make it to the Dominican Republic this fall, before Luis graduates, it was fun to do some online exploring Monday to get an idea for how much it'll cost to fly our family of 4 from our home in Arizona to Santo Domingo.  I enjoyed looking through homes to rent and getting to know the neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic.

I'm back!

Well, I'm back. I've been wanting to get back to writing for awhile, but didn't really know if I had anything worth reading.

Well . . . over the weekend a few things happened and I've, once again, been bitten by the travel bug.  Actually, I was bitten years ago, but suburban life with a husband, 2 kids, a dog, etc. have suppressed it for awhile, but now that our kids are 10 & 8 they're old enough to be great travel companions so . . . we're going to go for it! We're going to bypass the Disney vacation I've been wanting to take our kids on and give them experiences they'll remember for the rest of their lives.

Right now, we're in the earliest stages of dreaming about showing our kids the world. Though plans may change, right now our first thought is to visit our Compassion kids. We have 9 kids throughout the world so it's unlikely we'll visit all of them BUT 2 of our kids live in the Dominican Republic so we'll probably start there.  Last night my husband and I were dreaming of Kenya, where 3 of our girls live, but the more I started thinking about it, the more I started thinking that our kids' first international trip should be a bit closer to home (though Kenya is still very much on the list).

This blog started with me chronicling my frugal adventures, and our budget is already pretty much trimmed of extras, so I'm not sure where else we can cut to make it happen, but I'm willing to try.

We're a single income family and I've already started thinking that getting a job might be the easiest/best way to pay for all of the adventures we want to take, but I don't know of anything that will work with our family schedule.

I will be using this blog to chronicle our planning process, and once we're able to start traveling, I plan on using this blog to document our experiences! 

New life . . .

This time of year has always made me sentimental and it's not just because the sights, the sounds, and the smells of the season tend to bring a sense of nostalgia with them.  Somehow these first two weeks of December mark some of the most significant beginnings of my life.

Recently I was reminded that it was on Sunday, December 11, 1995 that I made my public profession of faith by being baptized as a 19 year old college sophomore at my first church home.

It was the beginning of December, 2002 that my husband and I started dating.  14 years later I still smile when I think of the significant dates this month that mark the beginning of our story. I see our early days played out as I decorate our tree.

Just last week I was volunteering at the Compassion Experience, which was being held across the street from my last apartment. I knew my husband was interested in me when he left his parents' home early on Thanksgiving weekend to help me move in to that apartment. Less than 2 weeks later he picked me up for our first date at that apartment.  One year later he helped me move out of that apartment, but by then I was wearing a ring on my left hand and he was helping me move in with my parents for the last 3 months before our wedding.

It was the first week of December, 2005 that 2 lines on a home pregnancy test told my husband and I that we were going to be parents.  9 months later our firstborn arrived in dramatic fashion.

Today, on Saturday, December 10, 2016 our son, the one whose arrival we found out about 11 years ago this month, and whose delivery still has us praising God for the way things turned out that day, will make his own public profession of faith and be baptized.  He will be baptized by my husband and I, on the same stage we got married on nearly 13 years ago.  As my husband and I baptize our son  tonight, friends and family will celebrate, including my husband's former youth pastor, who baptized my husband 35+ years ago, who was one of the pastors who performed our wedding, and who is now the Senior Pastor at our church.

As we prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas, and the celebration of Jesus' birth, I'm incredibly thankful for all the new beginnings December brings in my life.

Good Bye 30's . . . Hello 40's!

10 years ago today I woke up to my last day in my 20's.
Today I woke up to my last day in my 30's.

10 years ago I was 6 months pregnant with my firstborn.
Today I have a 9 year old and a 7 year old.

10 years ago this week I traded my Mustang in for my "Mom Car".
Today that car has about 108K miles on it and I'm still driving it.

10 years ago I thought I knew (most of) what I needed to know to be a good parent.
Today I feel like I know less about parenting every day.

10 years ago travel plans were dictated only by vacation time.
Today all travel revolves around the school calendar (and a dog!).


I can't pretend to know what the next 10 years are going to hold but I know how fast these 10 years went and I can imagine:


10 years from now my firstborn will have finished his freshman year of college.

10 years from now my baby will be finishing up her Jr. year of high school and we'll likely spend at least part of the summer visiting colleges.

10 years from now my husband and I will be preparing for an empty nest.


Most of my 30's are a blur because they were spent raising young kids and I wouldn't trade that blur for sanity (most days).  I'll be turning 50 before I know it so my goal for my 40's is to slow down and enjoy the ride.

Raising Grateful Kids: A Review

It's been a long time since Dr. Hoffman required book reviews during college and 20 years later I don't remember the proper format since I don't know if I've written one since earning my degree, but as with everything else in the digital age the rules have certainly changed, so I'm just going to hope Dr. Hoffman isn't reading this.

When I found out Kristen Welch was coming out with a new book, on gratitude & entitlement I couldn't wait to read it.  I have long been a fan of Kristen's blog We Are THAT Family, her work founding both The Mercy House and Fair Trade Friday, as well as her book Rhinestone Jesus, so I knew I would love this.  In fact, many of my own views on how to encourage gratitude in our home have come from reading Kristen's blog over the years.  More than a year ago Kristen wrote about what their family eats on Mondays and we adopted the same tradition, for the same reason.

I applied to be on the launch team, and was accepted, thinking, "This book is going to be easy for me to read."  I didn't expect the level of conviction I would feel.  (God has REALLY been chipping away at my pride lately).  Kristen's words come from a mom who is in the trenches with a daughter who is in high school, a son who is in middle school, and a daughter who is in elementary school.  Kristen readily admits that she didn't write the book because she has all the answers she wrote it because she doesn't.

The first few chapters were hard to read, and I didn't like them, despite my familiarity with Kristen's work, and knowing where she was coming from.   The reasons I didn't like the first few chapters had nothing to do with Kristen's words and everything to do with my own conviction.  I didn't want to think that, while I was trying to raise grateful kids, the reality is that I have become pretty entitled myself.   In the days that followed reading the opening of the book I started seeing things in my own life that I expected or deserved. As Kristen wrote, "We often buy things not so much because we need them, but because we feel like we deserve them.  We work hard; we owe it to ourselves."  OUCH.

As I continued to read the book, pray, and examine my own heart I was cheering for Kristen as I wrote this. THIS is what I want our family to look like.  I want our family to be counter-cultural, even though I know it's going to be hard.   I want a home that is Christ-centered and focused on the needs of others, rather than our own wants and desires.

More than one friend has commented "This is the book I wish I'd had when my kids were younger."  I can identify with Kristen, and her perspective, because we are in similar places in life.  While her youngest is roughly the same as as my firstborn, she is parenting in the same world of technology and social media that I am.

It is with the greatest confidence that I can say EVERY family in 2016 could benefit from this book, because we can all use a bit more gratitude and a lot less entitlement.

Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World is available today!!!

What's Good for the Goose . . .

I know I can't be the only one fighting the "I wants" in my home.  If I were, Kristen Welch of We Are THAT Family wouldn't have needed to write Raising Grateful Kids In An Entitled World . . . a book that has already sold so many copies during the pre-order that they've sold out of the Global Family Kit that was first offered in the pre-sale.

If I'm being honest, my kids aren't the only ones struggling with the wants.  We're doing our best to live simply.  We've prioritized our Compassion children in our budget.   I have helped build homes Amor Ministries.  I have virtually visited the slums of  Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.  God is seemingly giving me a dose of perspective on a regular basis. While trying to show our kids what it would be like to have to haul water I got a lesson in perspective about a vacation to Disney I'd been holding on to like a god.

Even with all of that I look around my home and I want new cabinets, I want a bathtub I can actually soak in, I want new furniture that wasn't previously owned . . . I want. I want. I want.

Honestly, because we eat nothing but rice and beans once a week, we take our kids to events like the Compassion Experience, because we pray nightly for others, many of whom we've never met, I signed up for the launch team of Raising Grateful Kids in An Entitled World thinking we had a pretty good handle on discouraging entitlement.

What I didn't expect was to be challenged as much as I was.  I looked in the mirror and saw way too much entitlement in me.  While I was expecting my kids to be thankful with what they had, and not ask for more, I wasn't doing the same.   I was comparing myself to others in my upper middle class neighborhood and looking at what I didn't have.   As Kristen so eloquently writes in the book, "If we are going to compare ourselves to those who have more, we must also compare ourselves to those who have less."

 I've been busy telling my kids to focus on those who have less, while I have been too guilty of comparing myself to those who have more.

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Now that I'm aware of the problem, what am I doing about it?
**We'll continue with what we're doing (rice & beans on Mondays, keeping our kids involved in the lives of our Compassion kids, having the kids help us select toys for our church's Adopt A Family, etc)
**We're going to use the Global Family Kit when it arrives with my pre-ordered copy of Raising Grateful Kids
**We're going to use the Compassion curriculum  Step Into My Shoes that we ordered in November, but haven't touched during the busyness of the past few weeks.
**I am going to continue to read and re-read Raising Grateful Kids
**I am going to continue to pray God shows me my own entitlement and help me root it out

How are you fighting entitlement in your family?


Want more ideas of how others are battling entitlement and pointing their families to gratitude? My fellow bloggers from the Raising Grateful Kids In An Entitled World launch team are participating in a blog hop today!Inspiring an Attitude of Gratitude - by Alison

Raising Grateful Kids - by amanda

Why You Can't Buy Gratitude At The Dollar Store - by Andrea

Missing - Gratefulness in our home - by AngeChoosing Gratitude - by Angela

Gratefullness - by chaley

5 Steps to Gratitude-Fille Family - by Christa

Practicing Grateful Parenting - by Dana

Sing a Song - by Hannah

Cultivating gratitude in our family - by Jamie

Gratefulness In Our Home - by Jana

Gratefulness In Our Home - by Jana

Let It Begin With Me - by Jen

Choosing Gratefulness - by Jennifer

Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World - The Book - by jeri

Eradicating Entitlement - What are you rooted in? - by Jessica

Gratefulness in our home - by Kate

The Problem With Entitlement is that it begins with us - by Katelyn

7 Unusual Ways I Know How to Be Grateful - by Kathryn

Raising Grateful Kids - by Keri

How My Children Remind Me to Pray with Gratitude - by Kishona Grateful - by Kristy

Entitlement: The Ugly Truth of a Beautiful Lie - by Leigha

The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Raise Grateful Kids - by Lindsey

Dear Son: How Do I Teach You To Be Grateful Without Guilt? - by Marie Osborne

Gratitude, A Practical Definition - by Mia

Cultivating Gratitude in Our Home - by Nancy

Learning Gratitude through Chronic Illness - by Rachel

Being Grateful - by Rebecca

I've Found Something I Can't Live Without - by Sarah

The Power of Naming our Gifts - by Sarah

Outfitted - by Sarah Jo

Growing Gratitude in our Family - by Sondra

Teaching Gratefulness - by Stephanie

How Grateful Looks From Here - by Alison

Fighting Entitlement in Children and All of us - by Leah

Entitlement Problem - by Karrie

Grateful Today - by Krystal