I have been married to my wife for 22 years. We have 4 sons. With a family this size, we learned a lot by just sticking to the basics. There were sacrifices made, but not as devastating as some think it would be. We started with making our own baby food. All you need is a food processor and an ice cube tray. Once a week, usually on Saturdays, we would puree the food and put it into the trays. One ice cube is equivalent to what majority of babies start out on, 2 tablespoons. We did not purchase special foods to puree; our babies ate what we did. As the boys grew older, we stayed with the philosophy of making my own dinners. We didn’t buy any pre-made dinners and stayed away from the box dinners. Several bags of pasta, a 5 pound chub of hamburger and several types of soup and we had dinners for a week. We kept the cost of even these items down by shopping at the discount food stores and warehouses. Our children were amazed at their own mother when she showed them she could feed a family of 5 for a week on $15.00! Everyone left the table full.
As our boys reached the Junior High and High School levels, a new challenge was delivered. Keeping up with the Jones’! They have to have name brand shoes, name brand jeans, name brand everything. We quickly found some consignment stores, local church thrift stores and some national chain stores that offered great deals. Once again, my wife and I went shopping together and returned home with two (2) grocery bags filled with jeans and shirts. Some of the items still had tags on them from the original store they were purchased. Oh, and all of them were of a name brand. The clothes were washed, put on hangers and placed in the appropriate closets for the children. When they came in from school and changed clothes, their eyes lit up and asked if we had hit the lottery or something. All four were very pleased with their “new” clothes.
Our country is going through a lot of changes and Americans are going to have to find their way of changing with it. This does not mean we all have to sacrifice everything we own. It means we need to tighten the budget belt and find ways to lighten the burden of all the rising prices upon us. We have said something to each other for years now and it has become our so called motto. “We have done so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do everything with absolutely nothing!” Good luck to you all and just remember; sometimes what we are looking for really is in our own back yard.
Would you like to learn about more methods to save money and even find money right in your own home today? I am offering a report "How To Survive The Depression of 2008-20??" using my designed Page-A-Day System. Go to: http://www.helpmesully.com