How Do Other People Manage?

I always find myself wondering how others manage. I honestly don't really get it when I look around. When I see a neighborhood full of huge homes I wonder, are there THAT many millionaires? How are they making so much money? Well my conclusion is most really don't have a lot of money. They buy expensive cars, go out to eat a lot, buy high quality name brand clothing and put on a facade of being rich. Most are in debt. The statistics on people in debt are crazy. Next time you see someone with something expensive, whether it be a house, a car, clothes or shoes, just remember that they probably can't really afford it and its all put on a credit card that they'll be paying off for years to come.

Tips to Keep It Real

- New cars lose an average of $2,000 when they are driven off the lot.
- Cars depreciate the most in the first three years.

In Summary: Buy a used car that is over 3 years old!

-Buying Groceries at "Clubs" is great for some items, but not everything is cheaper. Be aware!

-Coupon websites are great, you could save $20, $30 or even more at each trip to the store.

-Rebate websites are nice. Places like Ebates.com and others you sign up for and get money back for items you buy just for going through their site first.

-Cloth diapers save you thousands of dollars a year. They are made very well now-a-days.

-Bottled water is now been shown to be possibly worse for your body than tap water. If you really want to filter it further, buy a filteration system and use a glass! Go green!

Promotional Codes and Coupons!

I thought I would make everyone aware of the great deals you can get just by "googling" before you buy something. I have been doing this for years and almost always find a way to save on either shipping or price or both. When you find what you want, go to a search engine and type in "coupons for store X" or "Promo code for store X" and generally you will get many sites which return codes to you. A great example is a site called BabyAge.com. I found a coupon which dropped the Britax Boulevard Car Seat from $320 to $210. How can you go wrong with that?

Best Ways to Start Saving

It all depends on what works best for you and your family. For us the best way to save money is to stop eating out as much, spend less time shopping, and use coupons at the grocery store. A major money eater is alcohol. If you actually calculate how much money can be spent on beer alone, at least in our home, it has been up around $200+ a month. To my husbands disappointment, this is something that has been drastically cut (along with my shopping).

Buying non-name brand items is a no brainer. It is all about experimenting though, because not all items will work in the store brand. For example I bought a generic store brand diaper once, and it was horrible. Sam's Club seems to have good store brand items.

If you have credit card debt, have that be your first priority. Do not go out to eat, do not buy anything unnecessary. That has to be the first item gone. Credit card debt will eat you alive!

Where Can I Live to Get the Lowest Cost of Living?

My husband and I work from home. We have actually been calculating this for years, trying to find the best balance of quality of life. We put it all into an excel spreadsheet and crunched the numbers. Using many items like good schools, house prices, tax liability, parks, crime, weather and job growth, we finally found what we consider the best areas of the country to live.

If you use CNN Money as a reference for the Best Places to Live, they have a yearly count of 100 places. This is nice for statistics, however many of the places on the list are not cheap by any means. We have used our own criteria to come up with a list that suites our lifestyle.

In no particular order:

-Fishers, Indiana
-Williamson County, Tennessee
-Wake Forest, North Carolina
-Fort Worth, Texas


The above listed places have both low taxes, low home costs and job growth. They have nice amenities in the cities and happy families who don't have to live on such a tight budget.

How Much Should I Have in Savings?

It depends on what you make and what your bills are like obviously, but "they" say you should have at least 6 months household salary saved up in case of an emergency. This seems like a huge amount of money, but if you start out slow you can get it there overtime.

If you start a high interest savings account, you can earn interest on whatever you are saving to help you get ahead faster than you would otherwise. Why not right? You can open them up via the internet without ever having to go into a bank.

How Much House Can I REALLY Afford?

Well my personal rule of thumb would be to go WAY under what you can actually "afford". Do you really want to cut back every other fun aspect of your life for your house? As long as you have a house in a safe area where you can enjoy the company of your family, why get something over the top. I have to tell myself to be patient and overtime I can get something nicer, bigger and with more features. Personally I don't want to HAVE to count every single penny in order to pay my mortgage, that is just to risky. If you still do a great job of being strict with your spending and have money left over, take a nice vacation or do something special with the family.