Frugal Book Tip-Paperbackswap

We love books in our house.  And while we have a lot of books in our home the majority of them we did not pay full price for.  One of the ways we get books is through paperbackswap. 

What you do is list books that you no longer read and then go through books others have posted and get books you want.  You send the books people request from you and receive the books you want.  You do pay to ship the books that are requested by you, but that's it.  It's a whole lot cheaper to send a book for $2-4 than to buy it new.

You can list paperbacks, hardcover, and audio books.  They need to be in reasonably good condition. 

Try them out for yourself.

Frugal Tip--What To Do With Old Clothes

Here is a great site that I just heard about.  It's called Thred Up. 

How does it work?  You list a box of clothes by size and item and ship it out to members who choose your box.  You can choose boxes to have shipped to you as well.  So, you can get rid of old clothe sand get new to you clothes for your kids. 

What a great idea!!!

Try it out yourself and see what you think!

Enter My Giveaway

As most of you know, we homeschool our girls.   The other day I thought it would be fun to make some homemade soap.  We then decided to have a giveaway of one of our handmade creations. 

To view the details visit our homeschool blog at:
http://busy-bees-academy.blogspot.com/2010/06/making-soap.html

How Our Journey Started

My husband and I married young and I came into the relationship with debt. I was already working on a debt consolidation plan and had it all paid off a couple years after we were married.

And though we learned a lot from our families and wouldn't trade them for anything, neither one of us were taught how to be financially responsible. Both of us are the oldest in large families, and money was always tight growing up.

So, we thought we were living large when we were first married and both of us were working. And we made stupid mistakes, we bought things on credit just because we wanted them, joined a gym on credit, financed a car, you get the idea.

Then I got pregnant with our first child. And it wasn't a surprise, we were trying to have a child, we just weren't really ready for one to come. But, come she did! I quit my job as a nanny, we both wanted me to stay home with our children. Now we were living on one income with a baby and still not having a clue about money.

Then our second child was born, 11 months later, this one was not planned! But, she came anyway! At 8 months old she was diagnosed with a rare bone tumor in her lower left leg. So, we started accumulating medical bills. Bills to different doctors, to specialists, to testing, to the hospital, to surgery, you name it she probably got it. Now we were living on credit because we had no other way to survive.

Things settled down, at least medically. And we were left with stacks of medical bills as well as credit card bills. We had been putting everything on credit cards, food, utilities, car, etc. Just so we could make payments on the medical bills.

We signed up for debt consolidation because we didn't know what else to do. All the credit cards got cut up. I joined multiple different MLM companies tried out different get rich quick plans and none of them worked.

We knew we needed help. We had to do things different. And we didn't want me to have to go to work full-time and put the kids in daycare. We were on a mission to find out how to do it right this time. We found Dave Ramsey. We love Dave!

Dave Ramsey has a ton of practical advice on how to be financially responsible and how to do it the right way. It is the simple steps that your grandma would teach you. It is not a get rich plan, it's hard work!

We sat down and read every book that we could get our hands on by him, and made our goals. At the beginning I was very resistant, I knew it was going to be hard work and would take a lot of sacrifice and I wasn't sure I could do it or even wanted to do it. But, Erik kept pushing that we needed to do this so I gave in. At the beginning I was not on board I was still in the house while he was out in the car, engine revving ready to go. He definitely had a gazelle approach to it, so much in fact that his budget wasn't even close to practical.

We finally got the budget worked out enough so I felt that we could at least survive and he felt that we were working to financial freedom. It was a long few years. Years of watching everyone else buying things, going on trips, eating out, while we were unable to do these things. And there were times that I resented Erik and his super strict budget. I felt that there was no hope, no way out, and no light at the end of the tunnel. But we kept plugging along. Some months were better than others, other months I totally blew the budget.

Then about 2 years ago, it hit me. The light bulb came on and I was able to see things the way Erik did. Now I was gazelle intense as well!

We did it! In the process we were also able to buy our first home. I love my home! We are debt free except for the house, and we are going to pay it off early! The light at the end of the tunnel is here!!!

And now in these horrible economic times we are okay. We still have a strict budget, and we are living beneath our means. We are financial responsible and are looking forward to the day when we are completely financially free!

Things aren't super, Erik is still working at a job that he doesn't love to pay the bills and keep us in health insurance. We are still in debt, with the house. But we are working towards our goals and dreams.

Come join us. We can all work together towards being financially free!