Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How to Afford Kids - Food, Shelter, Clothing, & Everything Else (including college!!) {Episode 25}
151 Plays6 years ago
We both often get asked "How do you afford all those kids!" This week we're sharing tons of tips and advice on exatly how we make ends meet with large families. We've divided this topic into 4 parts; food, shelter, clothing and everything else including college expenses.
Follow us on Instagram
Support the podcast on Patreon
Mentioned in this episode:
#3 in Top 15 Christian Mom Podcast list on Feedspot
Sweet Peas meals
Audrey sews capsule wardrobes for her kids.
Bonnie's favorite places to buy kids clothes.
Audrey recommends:
Unfair Advantage by Robert T. Kiyosaki
Rich Kid Smart Kid by Robert T. Kiyosaki
Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens by Robert T. Kiyosaki
Bonnie recommends:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Announcement
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're homeschooling moms to a combined total of 18 children. We know firsthand that motherhood is full of crazy chaos and overwhelming obligations, but it should also be full of love and laughter. Regardless of where you are on your journey, come join us as we work together to find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 25. We have repeatedly been asked to do an episode on how to afford kids. So today is the day. However, we're going to start with a humor segment.
Humor and Misunderstandings About Money
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, managing money with kids is always interesting, but explaining money and budgeting to them is even more so. So one time one of my kids was wanting some money from me or wanted me to buy him something and he kept saying, don't you have any money? Get your money out. And I said, actually, I don't have any money. I use the whole out of cash excuse, right?
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah. I said, no, I don't have any dollars. Look, look at my wallet. And they looked. And of course, there was no dollars. They're still trying to figure out the whole dollar card thing. Right. And and but this kid was earlier than my other ones just said, well, just use your card and go to that machine and get the money out. I said, well, we don't really have money for that thing. Yeah, you do. You just go to the machine and you get the money out.
00:01:25
Speaker
I'm thinking, wow, you picked up on ATM real quick. And I don't think you understand that if there's no money in there, you can't get it out. But it was just kind of a eye opening thing. Like, that's all they see, right? Is that you put the card in, the money comes out. They don't know anything about what happens behind the scenes. And I thought, oh, maybe we need to teach you a little bit more about how that money gets in there to begin with. Oh, boy.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yep, we've had several experiences like that too. They think the money magically somehow appears in there.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't grow on trees, kids, no, but it comes out of a machine at the bank. Just at the push of a button, it's like magic.
Achievements and Excitement
00:02:08
Speaker
Okay, and we wanted to mention that we ended up in a top 15 Christian Moms audio podcast list on FeedSpot. So we were really blown away when we found this out. It's pretty exciting.
00:02:24
Speaker
to think that people are finding us and listening, but we didn't know it was to this extent. So over on Feedspot, they rank podcasts based on Google reputation and Google search ranking and the influence and popularity on
00:02:40
Speaker
Facebook, Twitter, and social media, the consistency and quality of episodes. And then their editorial team does an expert review and picks the top 15 for 2019. So we ended up as number three in the top 15 top Christian mom podcasts for 2019. So that's pretty exciting.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, that is cool. Yeah, so thanks to everybody for listening and telling your mom friends that means a lot to us as we try to share what we do. Yeah, this has been a really fun project for both of us. We really, really felt inspired to start a podcast, both of us individually. And then we came together and thought, okay, I guess we better do it together. And it's a really, really fun and inspiring thing for us to do to put it together. And just knowing that you guys are listening and enjoying it makes it so much more worth it. So thank you so much.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm personally finding it sustainable to do it together as a team like this because like we're kind of inspiring and motivating and nagging each other, right? Exactly. It helps us too. Yeah.
Debunking Large Family Myths and Financial Tips
00:03:45
Speaker
All right. So we're going to talk about money today. We have two episodes planned, but today we're doing how to afford kids. And in a later one, we'll be talking about how we teach our kids about money.
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. So today is kind of the behind the scenes of raising kids and being able to put enough food in their mouths and clothes on their backs. But really money, it can be a complicated thing in our minds and emotionally, but really it's really simple, right? If you want to afford to have kids and a lot of them, then you need to either make more money and or be frugal with what you have. It's really that simple, right? But then again, it's not. There's a lot of emotion involved and tied to money.
00:04:25
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And I think that lots of people have misconceptions that big families, by default, are poor because there's more people. I know that we run into a lot of people just asking straight out, how do you afford that many kids? And if they're serious, we try to explain a little bit to them. But we'll do a deep dive today into how we afford kids. But also, we've had kid people who
00:04:55
Speaker
I think they're being generous, but they just drop off bags of stuff and it's very sweet. The thought is very sweet, but we try to be pretty intentional about what we buy. We have one ant in particular who
00:05:11
Speaker
goes to thrift stores in Goodwill and she just buys stuff that she thinks our kids will like. And then she drops it off boxes at a time. And we've gotten to the point where we don't even show it to the kids, but we'll go through and pick out like maybe one or two things for the kids and then take it back to Goodwill. Yeah, like in our time management one, don't ever let them go through stuff unless you're sure that you want them keeping it all because they're going to do it.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, I think I've found the same thing, just kind of an assumption that we don't have any extra money. And thankfully, we've been blessed financially and we've learned some tips and tricks for budgeting. And just like, I've noticed that people who have three kids and are stressed out with their three kids freak out when they hear that someone might have nine kids and
00:06:07
Speaker
and think that their own chaos and stress level would be multiplied three times if they had nine kids. And maybe that's true in some instances, on some days it might be true, but the same thing goes for finances. It's not necessarily three times as expensive because you're already buying groceries for kids, because you're already buying clothes, et cetera. Does that make sense? So it's not like your finances really get taxed exponentially,
00:06:33
Speaker
if you're careful. So I just wanted
Financial Encouragement and Support Stories
00:06:35
Speaker
to say that. So, you know, I know that some people hold off growing their family because they're thinking there's just no way I can afford it. But really, I feel like having another baby, if you feel like that's the thing for you, is one of the most noble things you can do to raise another little life. And if you feel like you're meant to do it, but it's just finances holding you back, I think you can probably figure it out. Like there's a lot of creative ways to do it. But I was just thinking specifically about one instance,
00:07:02
Speaker
during Christmas time a couple of years ago and we actually do pretty good at Christmas time because my husband is in sales and so he often gets some of his end of the year bonuses at Christmas time which is really nice because if we forget to save for Christmas then we have a little extra money but somebody just left like a large sum of money in an envelope on our car.
00:07:19
Speaker
And we were just blown away. We thought that was the sweetest thing ever. And I just thought they probably assumed that, you know, how do they even begin to pay for presents for all those kids and food and everything else? And it was just so nice and so grateful. But yeah, it's not always the case. Sometimes some families do better off than others, depending on their situation, obviously.
00:07:39
Speaker
That is a very sweet gift. So we also are a single income family and we feel very blessed and looked out for like every time we have a need or a kid that another kid comes along. My husband's got a raise or you know some
00:07:57
Speaker
a bonus or something has come through, you know, suddenly we get a tax check back or something. And we just know that the timing of it is not coincidence. Um, so we also feel very blessed. Um, but anyway, one thing that we have that helps us financially is that kids just arrive in singles or in your case, you've got a set of twins, but still you don't get nine kids dropped on you in one time. That, yeah, that makes a huge difference that, um,
00:08:27
Speaker
You just get one at a time, and so it's just a little adjustment and a little adjustment at a time. And then finally, I know we've both talked about this, is we choose what's important. So it's important for us that our kids have straight teeth, so we pay for braces. But then there's other things that aren't as important for us, and we choose to leave those things out.
00:08:46
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on the kids arriving one at a time. You know, other than the hospital bills or midwife bills or whatever that come with actually delivering a baby, there's not a whole lot of expenses for a child in those first couple of years, especially if you choose not to take your child to every well visit that your doctor requires. That's not something we do. I'm like, ah, you're healthy, you're fine.
00:09:13
Speaker
They ease into it. I mean, once they start turning 13 and 14 need glasses and braces and want to go to a sports camp and want to drive a car, then it starts getting a little pricey. But thankfully, I really have felt like we've been able to ease into having a new kid each time.
Cost-Saving Parenting Strategies
00:09:29
Speaker
And a big blessing there is breastfeeding. I was just thinking about that the other day. I'm pretty sure we would have be like,
00:09:35
Speaker
I would have spent probably eight to nine thousand dollars on formula and bottles over the past 14 years if I had bottle fed. And so I'm grateful that I've been able to breastfeed because that's a huge money saver. And then I like how you mentioned that you've really felt blessed.
00:09:52
Speaker
Every time you had a kid and you know, this has happened to us almost every single time that we have a baby Even if we're feeling kind of a crunch financially at that time and something happens To alleviate our financial stress almost every single kid. It's I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so Heartwarming, you know, like I'm watching out for us. This is not
00:10:13
Speaker
a coincidence and this is not an accident. And I remember the first instance of that was when we had our first, we knew we wanted me to stay home at least part time. And I couldn't find a part time job at the time. So I thought, okay, well full time stay at home mom it is. And neither of us were making very much money at the time. Anyway, it just so happened that he ended up getting a raise right when we needed one, et cetera, et cetera. And it's gone on like that. So I just really feel like if that's something you feel inspired to do to grow your family that
00:10:40
Speaker
you can figure things out, you know, that God's really watching over us. So my husband and I were talking to a young couple who had just gotten married, and they were saying that they were going to wait until they felt financially secure to have kids. And we told them, no, no, no, you'll never feel financially secure enough to have kids. Just go ahead and have the kids. Yeah. When you start adding up all the things that they need, you're like, oh, I'm never going to be able to afford this. So just just go for it. Fine.
00:11:06
Speaker
Now, that being said, obviously you want to be smart. You want to be able to at least take care of yourselves, you know, but it really doesn't take that much extra money to take care of a baby at least those first few years. So, not as big a financial burden as you might think.
Budgeting for Essentials: Food and Shelter
00:11:19
Speaker
So, we are going to split this episode into four parts. We're going to talk about food, how to afford feeding all those kids, shelter, clothing, and then everything else we might want to pay for in that last category.
00:11:32
Speaker
Right. So we're going to start with food. And this is a grocery bill, right? And we are going to discuss ways that we personally have found to lower our grocery bills, because when your grocery bill is longer than your oldest child, yeah. You might be a large family if, right? Right. Right.
00:11:56
Speaker
Okay, so one thing that we do to start with, and this seems a little bit counterintuitive, but we focus on a healthy diet and supplements, and we prioritize those. That's one of the things we do not hesitate on spending money on. So it does mean that our grocery bill, our food cost is higher, because we include supplements in our budget for groceries and food.
00:12:25
Speaker
Our kids are healthier, so we don't pay it out in doctor bills. So in our experience, we are making up for the larger grocery bill by saving money and medical expenses. And then the second thing is we have actually found that eating a high protein, high fat,
00:12:45
Speaker
and nutrient dense diet, our kids actually eat less food because they're less hungry. In the past, you know, it's all been an experiment and trying it all along with different kids. But when we eat more carbs and more sugar, our kids are actually hungrier. Have you guys experienced that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So my husband, when he's in charge, I leave town or something or I'm I'm just I've just had a baby or something. Everybody talks that into buying all the cereal, right?
00:13:11
Speaker
And it's not like a good hearty granola either. It's all frosted mini wheeze. Yeah, whatever junk they can get away with. When my kids eat cereal, it's usually before I come down in the morning, you know, because they can get it for themselves. And then I come down and within an hour, they're hungry again. And it drives me so bonkers.
00:13:30
Speaker
And then they're usually on a sugar high for the morning. So I tell them, if you want to buy the cereal, great, but it's an afternoon snack. It's not breakfast. It drives me nuts because they can't start the day that way. It's just, it just goes right through their system. And then they want to eat more. And I don't know if you've bought a box of cereal lately, but it's like $5 a box. No, we're not doing that. And with nine kids, they each get one bowl, right? Yeah. Yeah. If that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
Another way we have found of saving money is a good old fashioned garden. So in the summer, and we have quite a long growing season here in the Midwest. So in the summer, spring, summer and fall, we grow, I would say 90% of our produce. We do have an orchard also with fruit trees. And so we get lots of fruit and vegetables and
00:14:20
Speaker
almost almost all of our produce out of the garden in the summer months and then in the winter we have a greenhouse and it's not enough it's not large enough to grow all our produce needs through the winter but it is a good way to get more nutrient dense food so you can grow greens and lettuce and spinach and real nutrient dense foods through the winter in a greenhouse so gardening is definitely a money saver for us you compare the price of a packet of seeds you know that
00:14:47
Speaker
carrot seeds for $4 and you can grow hundreds of carrots from this packet. And yeah, it's...
00:14:55
Speaker
It's a money saver for us. That's really impressive. We have tried our hand at gardening multiple times. And we usually make it about halfway through the season, get a few things. And then we forget, we have a pretty long growing season here. We actually just can't grow much through the summer because it gets too hot. The sun burns all the things. But I'm trying to train my older kids so that they can help maintain because it's a lot of work for one person, obviously. So that's really cool. Yeah.
00:15:18
Speaker
You know, my husband and I take alternate years on gardening. Well, okay, so for about eight years we took alternate years. He would do the garden for a year and then I would do the garden for a year. And then that way you don't get burned out and like you get all the kids helping and stuff. They do the garden every year, but which one of us was in charge of it and what to plant when and where and all that. And we would alternate years.
00:15:40
Speaker
Except for the past three years, my husband's just taken over because he's he's better at it than me. His gardens are so gorgeous. It's like, you know, magazine spread. Yeah, that's awesome. He can come to my house and start one. OK, but I don't know if anybody can garden in Phoenix in the summer. Yeah, no, I don't think so. That's OK. We'll just do fall and winter.
00:16:01
Speaker
And then, you know, we can't buy like exotic produce. We can't grow any citrus here or mangoes or pineapples or any of that. So we still, you know, if the kids were or us are craving that we still do buy that from the grocery store. Gotcha. Another money saver for us is farm animals. And I think they save us money.
00:16:27
Speaker
We do, we do, you know, have their feed bill. But I think the quality of food that we raise having farm animals is better. So you compare, you can go down to the grocery store and get milk for $2 a gallon, but it's not going to be the same quality as our cow on the back pasture, grass-fed on non-GMO
00:16:53
Speaker
feed corn and fresh air and all that. I'm going to say it's better quality. So it would be more like organic milk that we're drinking and you can't get that for $2 a gallon. So I think once you figure it in, I think we're saving money.
00:17:08
Speaker
I also want to know where you're finding milk for $2 a gallon because it's like almost four where I am. Yeah, ridiculous. But yeah. Well, Walmart or Aldi have it as a lost leader item. Oh, good idea. Yeah.
00:17:24
Speaker
Okay, so then we also have chickens for eggs and meat and we raise rabbits for meat and we have dairy goats and we go back and forth between the cow and the goats on who's providing milk. We did figure out when we wanted to get a cow, the kids figured out how much we spent on dairy in a week and how much the cow would save us if we could make butter and cheese and milk and all that.
00:17:47
Speaker
And they figured out in how many months the cow would pay herself off. And yeah, that was kind of a fun exercise. Yeah, it's a good math worksheet. Yeah. And then the last tip for food that I have is that we buy in bulk. Of course, we go to Costco and buy ground beef, for example, by the 50 pounds at a time instead of one pound.
00:18:12
Speaker
What do they call those? Cryovac packs. I mean, you can't afford to feed your family on that. Or we'll buy half a beef. Or sometimes we've raised our own beef. And then we buy everything else that we can in bulk or family size too. Or we have an organic food co-op that we're part of for our grains. And so just finding different sources of food that saves a little bit of money. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
00:18:37
Speaker
So one tip that I have is to get on board with meal planning. So this is something that I've struggled with in the past because I'm never very motivated to plan the meals for the week. It's like, one more thing I have to do. But I have used a couple of meal planning services and that is definitely worth the money in my opinion. It's usually just a couple of bucks a month. One I like right now is Sweet Peas Meals. They are fairly healthy and they come every week.
00:19:06
Speaker
They give you meals for six days out of the week, et cetera. So anyway, it takes the guesswork out of dinnertime and it's done in such a way that you're not buying different ingredients for seven different meals. You know what I mean?
00:19:21
Speaker
Like if it's up to me, I'll sit there and go, I think maybe I'd like clam chowder this week. And also I'm gonna have a strawberry salad. Well, you know, there's no overlap there. So I'm gonna be buying so many more groceries. So a meal plan can really help you make use of, get the most bang for your buck on every ingredient. And then also you're not running to the store last minute thinking, oh, I forgot to buy something for dinner tonight or getting pizza or some takeout or something that's also gonna up your food bill.
00:19:47
Speaker
I love meal planning and then along with that, after I open up the week's meal plan or make it myself, I almost always do grocery pickup or grocery delivery. Now, I started doing this just to save time because I can't stand wasting an hour or two of my time at the grocery store.
00:20:06
Speaker
It's not my favorite thing to do, but I have noticed how our grocery bill has gone down because there are no impulse purchases. And I don't run the risk of going when I'm hungry and picking up a pack of cookies I didn't want, or I really only buy the things that are on my list. And it's been kind of revelatory, like, wow.
00:20:26
Speaker
I didn't realize we ate so much stuff off the list. That is so, so smart. That is genius because if you go grocery shopping with kids, your bill goes up. If you go grocery shopping when you're hungry, your bill goes up. So yeah, that's pretty smart. Right, right. One tip on that is if possible, try to find a grocery pickup.
00:20:46
Speaker
or delivery through a store that has like the loyalty shopper program because obviously you don't want to pay the prices that aren't the loyalty prices because they always kind of jack them up. So for example, our local grocery store down the street is Fry's. It's one of the Kroger stores and they have a loyalty card and then the loyalty card also gives you gas points.
00:21:06
Speaker
So when we go fill up our tank, if we use that card, then we get, you know, up to 80 cents off a gallon or something like that. So we use that card, you know, so not all services will honor that and let you do that. But if you can find one that does, that's an extra bonus.
00:21:20
Speaker
I also like to base our meals on what's on sale. I don't always do this, but if I'm trying to save money, I will check out the weekly promotion for my local grocery store and say, oh my gosh, look, beef is really cheap this week or mangoes are or whatever. And I will put those into a meal so that we can take advantage of those really low prices. Like you mentioned, splitting bulk meat with friends. So we often get some bulk beef.
00:21:48
Speaker
through my husband's family. He has an uncle who owns a farm. And there are other resources for that as well. You can do that with friends. You can do that through local co-ops. There are often produce co-ops you can find too. There's just so many resources for saving money if you just hunt around a little bit and look for it.
00:22:05
Speaker
And then lastly, I wanted to mention that we have tried to reevaluate our grocery bill every now and again and try to eliminate or lessen the really expensive dietary items. So for example, my kids love yogurt and for a long time we were buying packs, you know, the little individual things of yogurt. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. We eat like 10 of them a day.
00:22:30
Speaker
The good quality ones are like a dollar a piece. We're not doing this anymore. We just stopped eating yogurt for a while and they survived. It was okay. It wasn't like I was a bad mom because they didn't have yogurt in the fridge. Then when we would bring it back in, we would just buy a large container of plain yogurt or whatever was the cheapest. Sometimes they mix a little jam or honey in it or whatever. Same thing with milk. We do not have a dairy cow. I would love one. It would be awesome.
00:22:56
Speaker
So we stopped drinking milk. We drink some of it and usually just use it for cooking because if my kids had free reign to drink all the milk they wanted, we would be buying 12 gallons a week.
00:23:08
Speaker
I don't even have the freezer space for that, let alone the budget. It's not as big a deal as you think to rotate out some items that are costing a lot of money. People have survived on much, much less than what we have today. We have a very nutrient dense diet when we are eating lots of whole grains and produce and healthy meats. Anyway, that's just my little plug for that.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yes, we are about to dry our cow off because she's getting ready to have a calf and you dry her off about 60 days ahead of time. And I am not looking forward to it.
00:23:39
Speaker
I did freeze some milk in preparation for this. Like in the spring, we had so much milk ahead that I just froze some. But I'm going to have to limit what the kids can drink because I really don't want to go back to grocery store milk. They actually kind of get stomach problems, stomach aches going from raw grass-fed organic milk back to, you know, $2 Walbarn milk. They get stomach aches in that transition. And so I don't want to do that at all.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, we actually stopped drinking it for health reasons years ago, my son has like irritable bowel every now and again. And so we just stopped doing it. And then every time we bring it back, he gets flare ups and it's gone in five seconds and we spend more money. So I'm like, eh, we'll get some cream every now and again to throw on our, on our fruit or whatever. Cause that's always fun. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
Bonnie, I need to teach you how to make yogurt. Yes, I would love to know how. The thing is, I really, really, really want a good clean source of dairy here. But the only place I've found is a farm like 45 minutes away from us. And I was like, maybe once a month I could make that trek. But it's not anything feasible yet. So we might be able to do goats here. I don't think we could sustain a cow on our property. But I'd love to have a source that I know. But I know where it's coming from.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah. You can make goat milk yogurt too. That's pretty good too. Yeah, I'm sure that. All
Housing Choices and Cost Efficiency
00:25:03
Speaker
right. Let's move on to shelter and ways that we save money at home. So as I've mentioned before, several times we have a smaller house and this is my choice. There's many reasons that we've chosen to live in a smaller house, but I'll just mention some of the financial reasons in this episode.
00:25:24
Speaker
So we have lower utility bills because there's physically less space to heat and cool. And then a smaller house also means there's less space for stuff. So I don't have to decorate eight rooms with
00:25:38
Speaker
You know, I don't even know a music room and a library and a studio and a study and a homeschool room and all that because there's just not all those extra rooms for me to decorate. So there's less space for stuff. So we have to be more intentional about what stuff we do have. We talked a lot about that in our toy management episode, didn't we? Yep.
00:26:00
Speaker
Okay, so then I have also mentioned that in our small house we have three bedrooms and I think I mentioned in our Q&A episode that we have a little studio out back and my oldest very large son is using that as his college dorm.
00:26:15
Speaker
But in the bedrooms in the house, in the kid bedrooms, we have bunk beds and the kids are sharing a room. And so that means fewer bedroom sets. Like we don't have to source matching beds and dressers and bedrooms, bedside tables and bedroom sets for all these bedrooms because we just simply don't have all the bedrooms.
00:26:36
Speaker
In the kitchen, we don't have every gadget and appliance, like a good old knife will work just as well as a food processor, for example, or you can get by on a whole lot less than you might think if you're watching kitchen shows.
00:26:55
Speaker
When I know I mentioned this in our episode on laundry, but we always buy on our appliances, we always buy the warranty because spending a little bit extra money for a five or 10 year warranty, probably not 10 year five year warranty is going to save us a lot of money in the long run because we use our appliances so often. For example, in the kitchen,
00:27:18
Speaker
We run our dishwasher minimum of two times and sometimes three times a day, and so it is run way more often than a family that runs their dishwasher once a day or once every other day. Yeah, they're going to lose money on us, that's for sure. Exactly.
00:27:34
Speaker
In the homeschool room, we reuse books and supplies among other kids. I intentionally use homeschooling curriculums that we can reuse and share books and curriculums. And then here's kind of a funny one, but in the bathrooms, this is connected to food. But eating a healthy diet means we use less toilet paper. So anyway, just throwing that up there. That is an unintended benefit, yes.
00:28:06
Speaker
You could just get a hose and hook it up to your toilet. I think my boys do that sometimes.
00:28:16
Speaker
You know, about the homeschool thing, I was going to say that I actually just talked about this on an Instagram live that I did the other day. We walked through my school room and I love workbooks. Workbooks are a really fun way for me to learn as a kid and a lot of my kids really enjoy them. But I have no desire to buy nine of the same workbooks, right?
00:28:36
Speaker
So years ago, I realized that if I found a workbook that I really, really liked and I wanted multiple children to go through it, then I would tear out each page and laminate it and just give them a whiteboard marker to do on it. And laminating sheets are fairly cheap. I worked out the math and I realized that if I was planning on buying the workbook more than three times that it would offset the cost. So I was like, all right, sold. And then I don't have to worry about throwing them all away and finding a new one every time someone wants it, they just wipe it clean and keep going. So we love that trick.
00:29:06
Speaker
That is really smart. I reuse workbooks by copying the original, but after a while, you know, after so many times you put it through the printer, it kind of gets beat up. That's a really smart idea. Yeah, we've all used those workbook sheets from the third grade, right, where the teacher's already copied it 500 times and you can better read it.
00:29:24
Speaker
Okay, so my tips for shelter is I just kinda wanna put out there that sometimes it's important for us to rethink how we live, right? So, especially if you live in an area, a more affluent area where everyone you know is moving onto bigger and better things, it can be easy to think, well, I have bigger kids, I need a bigger home.
00:29:42
Speaker
or I had an extra kid and now I need an extra bedroom, et cetera. But it's really not necessary, like you were saying. We have kids that share bedrooms. We actually have four bedrooms besides the master, so four for kids. One is teeny tiny, so we give that to my oldest. That's the privilege of being the biggest helper.
00:29:59
Speaker
So the other eight kids share those three bedrooms. And I actually want to eventually move them into the two biggest bedrooms and just have a girl's bedroom and a boy's bedroom. Because I just feel like they learn how to share better. They learn how to get along. They make friendships when they're sharing rooms. If we just do built-in bunk beds all around that room, then we don't even have to buy beds.
00:30:23
Speaker
So it's just kind of a different thought process instead of thinking, oh, how could we possibly fit these kids in here? In our last house, I'm not sure how big your house is, Audrey, but our last house was about 2,200. It's about... Go ahead. Yeah. Ours is about 2,500 square feet. Okay. Yeah. Our last one was 2,200 square feet.
00:30:39
Speaker
And honestly, it felt fine for a long, long time. Towards the end, it felt a little cramped simply because I wanted a space for my blogging and sewing. I didn't really have any space for that that little kids wouldn't get into. And we wanted a bigger yard. But honestly, people for years were going, how? You're going to have another kid in that little teeny house? I'm like, it's not that.
00:31:02
Speaker
teeny, you know, I've been to other countries and they live in much smaller places. So it's, you know, really just reevaluating the stuff that we're holding on to and and how we're seeing kids can be a huge deal.
00:31:15
Speaker
Right. We have three acres. And so that is one reason why we chose this house is because we're not all in this 2,500 square feet all day long. Lots of times everybody's outside. Right. I will say that too. So when we found this house, it wasn't quite as big as some of the ones I'd looked at and definitely not as fancy and had a different layout than I was looking for. But the lot was so much bigger than anything else we saw. I said sold because I don't want my kids in the house all day anyway. You know, so to send them outside and get, you know, it's better for them anyway.
00:31:45
Speaker
Absolutely. I also wanted to suggest rethinking our needs and reevaluating whether the things that we have our eye on are really that necessary. When you think about your needs, what are they? Basically food, clothing, shelter, right?
00:32:02
Speaker
and some sort of transportation if you don't live close to things. That's it. And yet we live in a culture where every new Instagram post is something else you need, need, need. And so if we're struggling with money, sometimes we just need to take a step back and go, is that really necessary?
00:32:18
Speaker
And if there is something that you really want, like a quality of life type thing, like, no, I'd really love to take my family on vacation. I'd really love to make a memory in that way. Or I'd really love to renovate this bathroom that's always causing problems. Then that's, those are worthy saving goals, right? And to teach your kids to save can be one of the best life lessons they ever learn to put off their wants and to save for something bigger.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then I also wanted to mention that if you go a little bit crazy and your home seems to be closing in on you and your furniture's all falling apart, there's so much we can do to improve our homes without spending a ton of money. So I really feel like moms in general
00:32:59
Speaker
care the most about how our homes look. We're literally home makers, right? We make a house and a home. We make things look beautiful and attractive and we want people to feel welcomed and happy when they come into our home. But that does not mean that we have to have a marble sink from Italy. It doesn't mean we have to have designer wallpaper. All it means is that it's a place where people feel loved and welcome. Now I've had
00:33:24
Speaker
homes where I lived in that did not feel that way because everything was old and falling apart. But, you know, we can furniture hunt at the thrift store. We can sew up some new pillows to bring some new color into our living room. We can paint a wall. We can move furniture around. That is hands down my favorite thing to do to make my house feel new and fresh and fun. It's just move furniture around.
00:33:44
Speaker
And it's totally free. Oh, yes. I love that. I love doing that too. Yeah. So those are just a couple of tips to just kind of change your mindset and think, is there a way I can make things a little bit more welcoming and happy and cute without spending a bunch of money?
00:34:01
Speaker
Yes. And now we're going to move on to clothing. But I do feel like we gave a lot of good tips in our episode on laundry. So maybe we just review a few of those here. But anyway, if you're looking for more, we did a deep dive into clothing and laundry in that episode. And that was episode number 11.
00:34:20
Speaker
All right, so we like to choose classic styles over trendy. And one reason is this. It's our taste, but also they can be passed down. Like the cold shoulder trend is going to go away and the kid, you know, five years later is not going to be able to wear that. So we choose classic styles over trendy.
00:34:36
Speaker
Um, we choose quality clothing over quantities. So maybe we only have three shirts, but they're such good quality that they are not going to fall apart and they're going to not going to pill in the laundry and they're going to be able to be passed down onto another kid possibly. Um, like I mentioned in our laundry episode, we do capsule wardrobes and then, um,
00:35:01
Speaker
For specialty sizes, I do a lot of sewing. So a lot of my kids are tall and thin. They get it from me. I'm six feet tall. And I sew a lot of my clothes. I sew almost 100% of my clothes. And this is money saving for me because if you've ever shopped a specialty catalog or store for tall women, like a t-shirt is $60 or something. It's just outrageous the cost of clothes when you order
00:35:31
Speaker
when they have to be special ordered for large special bodies. You're so special.
00:35:43
Speaker
Oh, you know what? One mistake I made on clothing, you were talking about how much money breastfeeding saves you on not buying formula. If I would have bought cloth diapers with my first kid, I felt like it was too big of an investment then. But if I would have bought cloth diapers, do you know how many thousands of diapers? Oh my gosh. I probably could have saved by not buying diapers this
00:36:04
Speaker
We actually did buy cloth and do that for our first two kids and partway through the third, but then I got too overwhelmed. We started doing foster care and I was like, I can't handle this anymore. So I will say that it is a time investment, but yes, over the years, can you imagine?
Saving on Child-Rearing Essentials
00:36:20
Speaker
And I also often sadly joke about the entire landfill dedicated just to my children's bowel movement. Ridiculous. So many diapers. I feel so awful.
00:36:32
Speaker
Oh, dear. It's a trade-off. Okay, then one last thing for me on laundry is that our kids that have jobs and are old enough, are teenagers, they have, by choice, they buy their own clothes. So that's been a money-saving benefit.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, and then, oh, I did mention in our episode on laundry, doing laundry that we try to, we were talking about how we have our kids like where their church clothes, Sunday clothes twice, and then less laundering means the clothes last longer. Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:10
Speaker
So, I wanted to mention also with the quality over quantity thing, I have just recently learned this lesson for myself because I'm a big fashion lover and I love to shop, but for years I would just buy whatever cheap thing that I saw because I liked it and then finally realized, oh, this isn't lasting.
00:37:31
Speaker
It just needs to be something fairly high quality. But as far as kids clothes go, I actually shared this in a blog post recently. I did a blog post about my favorite places to buy kids clothes, specifically for babies. And I used to live not far from a mall that had a baby gap. And I always loved their clothes. They're colorful and really cute, but they're always really, really expensive.
00:37:52
Speaker
And I just couldn't afford it. And then I started kind of stocking their sales and noticing when things went on sale. And then usually about like a week or two after they went on sale, they'd go on sale again, meaning like you'd get the double clearance thing, you know, it's already on sale and then you get an extra 40%. So I would go and stock up on out of season stuff when they had that double clearance. So I'm buying sweaters in April, but I had them for the next year. And those clothes have lasted forever.
00:38:17
Speaker
Like I started doing that when my oldest daughter was one or a baby, I guess, and she's 10 and they've gone through four girls and are now starting on their fifth girl and they look brand new. So I just share that. Sometimes it's painful to invest in the beginning, even stuff on sale, but if you shop smart, it can be so much more worth it than buying the cheap stuff that you throw away every year.
00:38:42
Speaker
Okay, so a couple of my clothing tips besides that are now we like to still shop those gap sales, but I also have found a couple other stores that have regular sales and I like to kind of keep track of when those happen. Old Navy is a pretty good bet for us just because we have one close by and when the stuff goes on sale and then clearance again, you can get it for so cheap.
00:39:07
Speaker
So we go and like to stock up on things, especially things out of season because that's what really goes for cheap. They also often have like, like old Navy has old Navy cash benefits where if you spend so much, then they give you so much off the next purchase. And then in a large family, there's always so many hand me down. So really, right now I really only buy for my oldest son, my oldest daughter, and then my youngest daughter and youngest son, because by that point,
00:39:36
Speaker
A lot of the clothes are worn out and we have to rebuy, but that's how we do it. And then also there's lots of ways to repurpose things. So if a child is growing out of pants, I look at the pants and think, are these going to last through another child? If they're already kind of worn down, then we'll just cut them into shorts. If they're a good quality, then we pack them away for the next kid. Leggings. I always get holes in them, but my kids love fun.
00:39:59
Speaker
Crafty patching jobs. So we'll cut out a little knit heart and sew it over the the legging hole short sleeve shirts can be layered over long sleeve in winter or Long sleeve can be cut into short sleeve, etc So there's so many things you can do to make clothes stretch a little bit more and I was gonna say about the quality silhouettes that you mentioned I like to buy silhouettes that aren't particularly that aren't super
00:40:22
Speaker
form fitting, so that they don't grow out of them really quickly. So for example, if my girls need something on the bottom, I love to buy them longer skirts, and then they wear the longer skirts until they're shorter skirts, and then they wear those until they can't fit into the way, you know, because their waist changed so little, it's just usually their height that changes so fast, so they can wear those a lot longer.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yes, my kids always outgrow things in length before they outgrow them in a whip, so that's a great tip. Right, yeah, or if you can buy pants that are cuffed or just buy them extra long and they kind of gradually grow into them. So yeah, those are our clothing hacks. Okay, super great tips there.
Prioritizing Experiences Over Possessions
00:40:59
Speaker
Now we're going to finish up by talking about everything else. We're lumping this all together because like you said at the beginning,
00:41:07
Speaker
Those are the necessities, food, shelter, and clothing. And everything else is just kind of a matter of what you prioritize. So one thing we do, and this is kind of like eating a quality diet. So we turn our heat higher in the winter, and it does mean higher electricity and gas bills. But we find that our kids are less sick during the winter, which also cuts down on medical bills. But I also just hate dealing with sick kids. Yeah, seriously.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, we actually do something similar in the summer here. And I think a lot of utility companies offer this. They'll offer some sort of money saving program. So if you have your AC down a little bit lower than other people during like a really expensive time surge, then they will make it cheaper for you. So for example,
00:41:59
Speaker
Here in Phoenix, with the utility company we use, if we turn our AC up, let it run hotter from 3 to 6 PM and we don't use any other appliances, then we get a cheaper discounted rate the rest of the day, if that makes sense.
00:42:15
Speaker
It's a little bit of suffering. We just pre-cool our house. We get it down really, really, really low right before that period of time. And then it gradually gets hotter during that time. But then we just avoid the dishwasher and washing machine, et cetera. So if you ask your utility company, you might be able to find some sort of benefit to following their plan.
00:42:36
Speaker
We do something really similar to that. We fill our propane tank, which is how we heat in the winter. We fill that during the summer when the prices are way lower. Then the prices of propane in the winter go up because the demand is way up. That's really smart.
00:42:53
Speaker
So then I know that we have talked about this next one in a lot of different episodes, but we just value experiences over stuff. We talked about this in our toy management episode most recently, which was episode 23. But we just value experiences over stuff, so having time together or doing something for a birthday party instead of getting toys or taking a trip.
00:43:16
Speaker
And then we also place a huge value on family and being together. And we place more value on fostering these family relationships than over memberships to a gym or being on sports teams or other things that would take money because we're placing value and placing effort
00:43:40
Speaker
in our family relationships because we're going to be with each other together for life. And well, you know, people do make friends and learn good skills.
00:43:52
Speaker
It's not when you're 90 years old and need somebody to take care of you. It's not going to be the person you hung out with at the gym. It's going to be your family. That's a very good point. Yeah. We found the same thing. I am the kind of person that would love my children to have every opportunity and be on every sports team and every dance class, et cetera. But it's just not feasible, not only monetarily, but logistically.
00:44:13
Speaker
I can't get people to all those different places, nor do I want to. So we've tried to substitute that with, you know, good, old-fashioned, wholesome playtime here at home. Sometimes we'll just do, you know, pick up games of sports, throw a ball around, play kickball, play basketball in the yard, invite friends over to do the same. And that, I think, creates some really, really awesome memories that you may or may not get from organized sports with friends, but I think that
00:44:42
Speaker
that making those memories with family is always worthwhile. Right, my kids love volleyball and in the summer we just put up a net in the backyard and we're getting enough kids that, you know, we can keep a good volleyball going for a while. Yeah, for sure.
00:44:58
Speaker
Another thing we do is we put emphasis on entrepreneurship. So we are encouraging all of our kids to find ways to make money themselves and make that a desired state. And I'm really trying to be a good example of this with my side hustle and side hustles.
00:45:16
Speaker
Like I said, we're a single income family. None of my side hustle is big enough yet that it can help support and pay bills. But I'm trying, like I'm putting the effort in there and I'm trying to grow and build a business and just be a good example to the kids in that.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's so important that they all realize that we do everything we can to make ends meet at our family. So nobody's wasteful, nobody's greedy, dad goes to work, mom goes to work, whatever your family situation is to pitch in. And that creates a really good
00:45:50
Speaker
a culture of entrepreneurship or gets kids thinking about the future and how they're going to take care of themselves. I was going to say that I think it's really, really essential that our children always have something that they want to
Fostering Entrepreneurship in Kids
00:46:03
Speaker
get that they don't have. So whether that's a toy when they're four
00:46:08
Speaker
or an art class they want to take when they're 17, or an apartment that they'd love to move into when they're 20. I just think that if we fulfill every one of our kids' needs and most of their wants, they're going to get complacent. And they're going to expect people to give them things the rest of their life. But if there's always something they're hungry for, they're going to find a way to get it. And I think that's great. That's totally life skills that we want our kids to have.
00:46:32
Speaker
Another thing we're doing with our teenagers is we are making them pay their own way. We don't make them pay rent, but they do, as I mentioned in the episode on kids and cell phones, they're learning to respect their cell phones because they're paying for them and themselves. That was episode 15.
00:46:54
Speaker
our two oldest kids that are in college, they are paying for their own college. We do not have enough resources financially to put nine kids through college. So we are encouraging them to pay their own college. I have a lot of friends that have said, oh my goodness, why would you have so many kids? How are you going to pay for college? And I just laugh. I'm like, I'm not paying for anybody's college. They're adults, they got to pay for their own college. Yeah, I think that's totally reasonable.
00:47:20
Speaker
And then we give them all the research that they need to get to a point where they can do that. So we teach them about hard work. We encourage them to get a job outside of the home when they're old enough. You can encourage your kid to go find a way to get what he wants, which is an education and a viable way to take care of himself and his family.
00:47:40
Speaker
The things that we're specifically encouraging our kids to do is not only pay for their own college, but to graduate without debt. And so we are, what we did was we ended their high school education. We structured it in such a way that they could graduate a couple of years earlier than their peers and spend a year, a gap year or two years where they're working and traveling and in apprenticeships.
00:48:07
Speaker
and learning skills and then taking some online classes and so on. Our kids started college with college credit already. We structured their high school education in such a way. So we helped them save money in that way. Another way they're saving money for college is by living at home and going the first two years at a smaller, cheaper, local college.
00:48:30
Speaker
and getting a two-year degree there that will then transfer to a larger university where they will get their final degrees. And then the last way that we're helping them is, like you mentioned, on scholarships. We have helped them apply for and get scholarship aid. Yeah, that's so great. You know, I think that
00:48:49
Speaker
setting them up with these skills and this education ahead of time to get through college is so important. And I've noticed that kids who go to like a smaller community college before transferring to a full university have a couple of benefits. Number one, they save money. Number two, they get their general education classes done. Usually
00:49:10
Speaker
quicker and they're often easier at the community college than instead of paying tons of money to take them at the university. And then thirdly, it's often easier to get into a university with stringent application requirements if you've already taken some college. So I remember at my college, many people I knew did not get in as a freshman right out of high school, but they stayed home and went to a couple of years
00:49:35
Speaker
of community college, and then we're able to get in later. I think it's just easier to be allowed in as a transfer student. So lots of benefits there. Absolutely. And my kids are finding that with the smaller class size, they get way more of the professor's attention and interaction than they would in an enormous class that the professor was basically just, I don't know what's the word, proctoring, and had a TA teaching and correcting and all that.
00:50:02
Speaker
with as much smaller class size, they get way more help from the professor themselves. So that's an added benefit too. I also think we're going to encourage all our kids to go through some sort of trade school, either during college, like you said, during a gap year or before they get to college, maybe when they're 17 or 18.
00:50:24
Speaker
because to have some really marketable handy scale like electrical work or hairdressing or mechanical work or any of those things that there's always a demand for can be so beneficial in getting them through college and getting them through those tough early years as an adult or as a newlywed. I just love that idea of sending them someplace like that.
00:50:45
Speaker
I know in our state, we have quite a few colleges like that that have benefits for homeschoolers. So most homeschoolers can go at a discounted rate or for free. Sometimes there's like also other educational work programs that they can get a discounted rate. So just lots of available options if you look into it.
00:51:02
Speaker
Right, absolutely. We have also encouraged our kids to learn a trade. For example, our son works with a Mason, a master Mason. He works for them in the summer and then on holidays through the school years. And so he has this trade that he can fall back on if his degree, for some reason, he can't find work in that. He has a trade that he can take anywhere in the world, actually. He could go to
00:51:29
Speaker
any country in the world and be able to play block and break. And one final note on this part is that I feel like the kids who pay for their own education or cell phone or car or whatever else just naturally value it more. They tend to work harder. They tend to put more time and effort in because they know the cost instead of just, well, I got to go to college because dad tells me to and he's paying all the bills. You know, when when they see the kind of money that goes into it, they're like, I cannot waste a minute. This is expensive.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah, because they earned it and they want it.
00:52:05
Speaker
OK, so just a couple of recommendations here at the end. And because this is an episode on how to afford kids, we want to assure you, our audience, that Bonnie and I only recommend things that we have personally found worthwhile and help us. So we're not just recommending things because it's another thing to buy. This is stuff that really does help us.
00:52:29
Speaker
So, we have taught our kids about money and different ways of thinking about money with books by Robert Kiyosaki, and he is the author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books, so we'll link these in the show notes. But the three specific books that we have used with our kids is Unfair Advantage,
00:52:48
Speaker
Rich kid, smart kid, and rich dad, poor dad for teens, just to get them a different way of thinking about money. Yeah, I read his original book and it was really, really fascinating. So I will share a kind of practical resource. The budgeting software I use is called YNAB. It stands for You Need a Budget.
00:53:06
Speaker
I think it's uneedabudget.com, we'll link it below. But it is one of the most, one of the easiest, most intuitive budgeting softwares I have ever used. And there's a free version or you can pay a small fee to use it. And I am not a numbers guy, girl, whatever. I have had trouble budgeting my entire life, but this is a very basic, simple
00:53:26
Speaker
what they call a zero-based budgeting system, and I highly recommend it. And along with that, I have a friend who is a YNAB expert. She has taught herself this software and managed to get herself out of $50,000 worth of debt. So she's awesome and she has a blog and does some coaching, so I'll include that below too. Her blog is called mostsomoney.com. So those are a couple of resources for you guys.
00:53:51
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a written review on iTunes. If you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumberthepodcastatgmail.com and find us on Instagram at outnumberthepodcast. See you next week.
00:54:14
Speaker
Okay hang on Bonnie, there's a spider and I'm not gonna be able to concentrate until I take care of this thing. Call a kid in.
00:54:24
Speaker
Okay, we're good. I'm back. I think that needs to be an outtake. It sounded like you were taking a hammer to your desk. Could you have concentrated if there was a spider? No, but I don't know that I would have killed that. I probably would have called a kitten to do it.
00:54:46
Speaker
But you said your teenage sons are gone. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. My 10-year-old would do it. But what's funny is I'm trying to teach the kids not to just kill instantly. You know, like, OK, let's have a little respect for life, you know, whatever. But spiders, I don't handle. So the other day, one was falling in my mirror, and it was disgusting looking. And I was like, what do I do? What do I do? You know, I'm going to put it in this cup and tell the kids, hey, can you release this little guy outside? But if I have to look at him one more time, I'm going to throw up. So gross. That was hilarious. Beep, beep, beep. OK.
00:55:35
Speaker
All right.