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Adapting to Inflation {Episode 231}
423 Plays1 year ago
Is your family feeling the effects of rising inflation? Then this episode is for you! Bonnie and Audrey share a whole bunch of ways their families are adapting to inflation in 2023. They cover food costs, shelter/home increases, clothing economics, and a whole bunch more ways to adapt to inflation. Plus they share the secret to reducing the effects of inflation.
Mentioned in this episode:
#197 Self-reliance (food, etc)
#180 saving money on groceries
#149 Job loss/reduced income/hard times
About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms, parenting a combined total of 19 kids and finding joy in the chaos. Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion. Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience, these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, we are back and today we are excited to talk to you about some ways that our families can fight inflation. It's happening and it's happening kind of in a greater measure to large families because there's so much of us and we have to buy so much more things.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Previous Episodes & Money-saving Tips
00:00:49
Speaker
We wanted to point out right here at the beginning that we have some other episodes that would be super helpful if this topic resonates with you. We have episode 180 specifically about saving money on groceries. That's a huge one, even before inflation. 197 on self-reliance, which can be pretty cost-effective, and then episode 149 on job loss and reduced income and hard times and what to do and all that.
00:01:15
Speaker
Both Bonnie and I have experience with all those things, but today we're going to specifically talk about the current problem of inflation and how large families can adapt to that.
Childhood Story & Inflation Introduction
00:01:25
Speaker
Yes. And first, we're going to start, of course, with a humor segment. And this one actually comes from my childhood because every time I think of the story, it makes me giggle. So my parents were, as many of us are in our very early marriage years, pretty poor. They were both in school and trying to make ends meet. And I was a precocious little child, the first child who came just nine months after my parents got married. And when I turned three, I really wanted to go to preschool. I was super excited about school, but my parents didn't have the money for private preschool.
00:01:55
Speaker
But anyone who asked would say, oh, aren't you a smart little girl? How old are you? I'm three. And are you going to school? No, because preschool costs money and we don't have any money. We're poor. So instead I'm going to wait for kindergarten because kindergarten is free. My mom said every time someone would ask me about school, she'd just go, oh, how can I change this topic? My kid goes on and on about how we're poor.
00:02:16
Speaker
So kids pay attention to things sometimes and share things that you don't want them to. Oh, I know. So totally. Yeah, kids, they keep you humble. So like we said, inflation is skyrocketing. All the charts, everything is showing it. And as large families, we really feel this because we have to consume more. So when just a quick lesson here, I know all of you know about money because you have to spend it and use it every day. But there is the income side.
00:02:46
Speaker
and the expense side. And when inflation goes up, it means your expenses are going up and your income is not. So that's what is inflating. The expenses are inflating, blowing up like a balloon, and the income is not matching it. That's how we all feel inflation. So we're specifically going to share some ideas for large families to help with inflation, because as we said, you know, you don't just buy one.
00:03:14
Speaker
roll of toilet paper, you've got to buy the mega pack because there's a lot of you. Yes, I know about toilet paper.
Understanding Inflation & Financial Management
00:03:21
Speaker
We totally did not prepare adequately for the COVID shortage and felt that one. Since then, we have had, I think, seven to 10 of those mega Costco packs in our garage. My husband is terrified it's going to happen again. We can just use a bidet or a sprayer or something, but yeah, that was a good reminder to make sure you are self-reliant in
00:03:42
Speaker
the most essential of ways, right? So when you live on a fixed income, obviously expenses rising is a problem. But we personally, our family actually has a variable income because my husband is in sales. So when he is not making any sales, we live on his base salary, which never happens thankfully except for during COVID because he's always selling.
00:04:05
Speaker
But what that means is that we have to also be very particular in our planning because there are months of plenty and months of lean. So my first tip is just making sure that your money is being managed. Anything that is not being managed is being mismanaged, right? Your brain, if we just let our thoughts come willy-nilly, it's going to be a train wreck in our life. We have to manage our brain. We have to manage our
00:04:29
Speaker
spiritual relationships, we have to manage our physical relationships with our family here, we have to manage anything that we want to stay in control and money is no different. And so whether you are variable, have a variable income or a fixed income, starting with just knowing where your money is going can open your mind, right? Like anytime you're trying to eat healthier, you just start writing down what you're eating and you realize, oh, I didn't realize I was eating
00:04:51
Speaker
three cookies after lunch every single day. That makes a lot of sense, right? Same thing with money. Just start a simple spreadsheet. If you don't want to get anything fancy and if you're not a regular budgeter, that can really open your eyes. When we try to make money cutbacks or changes to our expenses, I always look at our history. I look at the past year. What have we historically spent on this category? Is it going up? Is it going down? How do we need to adjust? So there's my first hit.
Financial Planning & Income Strategies
00:05:17
Speaker
Absolutely. In some of those other episodes we mentioned
00:05:20
Speaker
We share some of our favorite budgeting planning type tools. But the old adage goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. You've got to have a plan, especially with money. And when the gap between your income and your expenses is getting smaller, if you're on a fixed income,
00:05:57
Speaker
rate and you work a certain number of hours and it's kind of fixed, so it comes in every week. But if you have a flexible income, this is more like if you want to spend more, you go make more money first. I mean, if you do it the right way, right? Yeah. So you can match inflation better on a flexible income if you have more ways to make money that aren't tied to like a salary or a wage per hour.
00:06:03
Speaker
that really makes a difference.
00:06:26
Speaker
So that's kind of the difference between a fixed income and a flexible income. At a fixed income, you're kind of at the mercy of having to look at cutting costs because your income is steady and it's not changing, which is normally a blessing, a steady income, like we're so thankful for that. But inflation eats away at that and the gap gets smaller and then we have to find
00:06:45
Speaker
ways to cut expenses. So we first of all wanted to focus on income because cutting expenses like you can only cut so far, but income is like the money, the water coming into the reservoir, right? The money coming into the bucket and you can possibly, you know, if you can play with that, that has a greater potential. If you have expenses, there's only so many you can cut. So just kind of emphasizing the income versus the expense.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And making more money is always more fun than cutting expenses. Let's just say that right up front. I would much rather make more money in one way or another, even if it requires a little bit of time and energy from me, than to just endlessly cut expenses because that gets tricky. And if you are managing a family, especially a large family, it's not just your own needs and wants that you have to consider. You have to consider your husbands and your kids. And then it's a lifestyle adjustment for everyone, right? When COVID hit us and we had to take a pretty steep pay cut,
00:07:43
Speaker
It was a family affair. We had to sit down and talk about what we could and couldn't buy anymore and why and get everyone on board. So obviously, if there's an opportunity to increase your income, do that first, right? Now, that might sound silly. Of course, I think most of the world thinks, yes, sure, having more money would be great. But it really can be simpler than you think. So if getting more income, more money coming in means your husband takes a second job
00:08:10
Speaker
or works more hours, this can mean sacrificing in other ways, like obviously we'll be spending less time with him. Or if you're a one-car family and he's delivering pizzas after he gets off his regular job, then the car is not going to be available. So just keep in mind there are sacrifices that come with making more income as well as cutting expenses. That's not only cutting expenses, that means sacrifices. But there are also sacrifices.
00:08:36
Speaker
sometimes that come with bringing in more income. It's fun too, but let's not just forget that sometimes there's sacrifices.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yes, absolutely, for sure. Of course, my favorite way, and both of our favorite ways, I think, to bring in additional revenue streams is from our own businesses, from building something of our own. In fact, we could take an entire episode to talk about the myriad of ways of making additional income from home. In fact, do you think we should do an episode? We should totally do an episode on that, talk about all the different ways. We have seen women be super successful from home. Yes. We have made our own money from home. I think let's do that. Yeah, let's put that on the list, for sure. Yeah, yeah.
00:09:11
Speaker
There are a few things to know about having your own business as well though. The pros are obviously flexibility, being able to be home with your kids, so I'm talking specifically about a business that you could do from home, and personal fulfillment. That is something that has brought both Audrey and I lots of fulfillment is building our own businesses. However, the cons are that it takes time, of course, like anything, and some energy.
00:09:36
Speaker
and it takes some courage. It also takes sometimes more time than you think. So building a business is generally not what you want to do if you need cash right now, unless you already have something set up and you can just increase sales in one way, right? That is for sure. It is so hard sometimes not to get frustrated with the time that it takes to build a business.
00:09:55
Speaker
For sure. Okay. So after you focused on increasing income, the other way that we mentioned to fight inflation or adopt to inflation is to cut your expenses, cutting costs.
Cost-cutting Strategies for Families
00:10:06
Speaker
And this is something that big families are, get really creative at because we already know what it's like to have to, oh, you know, everything is more expensive when you're in a big family. If you travel, it's not just one hotel room, it's two hotel rooms, right? Often our vehicles, like a 15 passenger van, takes
00:10:24
Speaker
more gas than gets a lower miles per gallon than other more economical vehicles. So we are well aware, large families, we're well aware of getting creative with ways to cut expenses. But we're going to go ahead and share in this episode ways that we've adapted and we've seen others adapting to the rising inflation.
00:10:48
Speaker
Okay, so some of the main ways that we have found to cut costs are food, obviously, especially when you have a lot of mouths to feed, shelter, everything having to do with your home, cars, and clothing are some pretty basic ways because those are all things that we all need and we all spend money on every month. Some of our other episodes dive really deep into these things, so feel free to check those out if this is something you are struggling with, but those are kind of the main places that we start. Absolutely.
00:11:14
Speaker
Okay, so food, we love to grow our own food. Besides being more cost effective, it's just really a lot better for you to grow your own food, to be in control of the food source from the beginning to the end. We all saw that when there were supply chain issues, right?
00:11:31
Speaker
Maybe tomatoes were cheaper from the store, but there wasn't any. So raise your own food. You know, chickens, dairy animals, rabbits, whatever you can do. Raise your own barter with other people who are raising their own. What skill, what thing do you have that you could trade with others? Maybe just time. Maybe you can go do chores for them when they want to go on vacation.
00:11:56
Speaker
would love to have somebody to come over and do our chores so we can go on vacation or something. Eat more nutrient dense food. Don't jump me here. Just hang on a second. I know nutrient dense food is more expensive. I know it is. But it fills you up and you eat less. And then there's other side benefits that your health care, medical costs go down because you're nourishing your body through the food that you eat.
00:12:22
Speaker
Cooking at home, eating out less, that is a huge way to save money. You know those prices at the restaurant are more because they're paying the servers and their overhead and all that. Cooking from scratch, it is so much cheaper to buy a bag of flour than to buy
00:12:43
Speaker
ready-made pancakes that you just stick in the toaster, waffles, whatever. You don't stick pancakes in the toaster, waffles. I do. I stick pancakes in the toaster if they're pre-made. It's easy. But it's so much cheaper to cook from scratch than to cook from something that's already ready-made.
00:13:03
Speaker
And then if you do some eliminating of things that really aren't very good for you anyway, carbs and sugar, when you eliminate those things, you're not only doing good things for your body, but you're saving money too, because you're not buying the carbs and sugar to be eaten.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yes, exactly. So many great tips. The nutrient-dense food thing is a really great reminder because when we default to cheap food, it tends to be carb-heavy, and then your kids are always hungry. Ramen does not fill a belly. It fills it for about five minutes, and then an hour later, they're starving. Nothing I love more than a kid coming to me while I'm cleaning up a meal and saying, Mom, I'm hungry.
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So some really great tips there. For us, I have noticed that when I plan our meals, it makes a huge difference in the amount of food that we waste. First of all, it's easier to eat nutrient-dense foods if you're planning them ahead of time. You're planning recipes and you have all the ingredients.
00:14:04
Speaker
But then it also means I'm using ingredients left over from other meals in current ones. And I know this is a pain. You guys, it's like my least favorite thing to do in the world is to meal plan. However, if you can just, you can, there's a million and one resources online. You can spend $4 and download somebody, some recipe bloggers meal plan for six months. Like they, the resources are a plenty, but find them and use them. And that makes all the difference and not,
00:14:31
Speaker
having to buy individual ingredients for six different, wildly different meals that you can't reuse any ingredients, right? So the more you plan, the less you waste. Try some challenges like take a week every month to just eat through your fridge and freezer, to just finish the leftovers, eat that thing of quinoa you stuck in the back of the freezer three months ago and forgot about, right? And then bonus, it cleans out your...
00:14:52
Speaker
your pantry, right? Have a potluck with friends. Let's say it's the end of the week and all you have left is that quinoa and some sauce. Call up some friends and say, hey, who wants to bring the meat? I've got some grains, somebody can bring some fruit, and you guys all have a party and eat through your leftovers, right?
00:15:09
Speaker
get your kids involved to be creative with cheaper ingredients. So I love having my older kids be in charge of meals. I still retain some control over what they make, because otherwise they'll just make grilled cheese every single day. But also just say, hey, guys, we're not going to go to the grocery store for another couple of days. What should we make? Throw up in the fridge and say, anything goes. Oh, well, we're going to make waffles and eat this leftover, whatever, ham from the other day. Like, it can be a hodgepodge. It doesn't matter.
00:15:37
Speaker
As long as you are not wasting that food, that will save you a ton of money. And you know what? Kids are going to have memories from this kind of thing too. My husband's family still talks about a liver and sauerkraut pizza that was epic, that they made for leftovers. But they're all in their 50s and they're still talking about this pizza. It's so amazing.
00:16:04
Speaker
memories, right? We see it as hard times. Kids see it as excitement. Kids love change.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, in fact, one of my most successful meals is, I forget what we call it, just random stuff or something, and I'd literally just pull out everything out of the fridge. I don't call it leftovers because they hate the term leftovers, but it will just be leftover lunch meat and I'll cut into fun squares and they'll eat that and then some leftover pasta that all heat up and just bits and pieces or something, make up some cute name and they think it's an adventure, and then go eat it on the floor of the living room and all of a sudden it's like a party.
00:16:37
Speaker
My mom called it goulash when we were growing up. I think everything leftover from the fridge went into goulash. That's kind of a gross name. It's German or something. My trick is pot pie. You could take chicken and then you just throw all the leftover vegetables in it and put it between two pie crusts and the kids think they're eating pie and they're happy. I love pot pie. That sounds really good right now. I also want to know how you knew about the leftover quinoa in my freezer.
00:17:07
Speaker
because I have it too. Every time I open the freezer, it's there. I'm like, I have a really, really yummy chocolate cake recipe that is gluten free, but it's just made with quinoa. And every time I see it, I think chocolate cake instead of dinner. I'm not sure what it'll be used for. Probably cake. Probably cake. Oh, I know. And then, you know, if we do get leftovers that are beyond
Energy and Household Savings
00:17:31
Speaker
edible. We have chickens. And so all the scraps go to the chickens, all the scrapings off the leftover plates, which saves us in other ways on chicken food, right? And I feel like it's not being wasted if it goes to the chickens. Okay, let's move on to shelter. Next thing we're going to talk about is our homes. So where can we save money? When you turn the, I want to save money,
00:17:52
Speaker
lens on your home, you can find a lot of places. But we have a whole episode about, what do we call it? Tiny home living or smaller living in a smaller home. And that doesn't necessarily mean a small home. It just means there's a lot of us per square footage. But I do want to tell you that if you live in a smaller home, you're saving money because the entire space doesn't need to be heated or cooled.
00:18:17
Speaker
I'm not saying to fight inflation, move your family into a smaller home, but maybe just celebrate if you are living more people per square footage or in a smaller home. What would happen if you turned down your air conditioning or your heat by one degree? Nobody would die and you would save a little money, right? How about using less water? Do you run?
00:18:38
Speaker
the water constantly while you're brushing your teeth, train your kids to turn it off. Just use it at the start and the end. Do you have a 17-year-old boy that takes 25-minute long showers? Have a chat. Yeah, I have some teenage girls that do showers because they have all this hair and I love all their hair, but it does take a while. You can only wash your hair twice a week.
00:19:02
Speaker
I know. I know. I have this like legend story that I used to tell. So when we were, my daughters, my kids, teenagers, that shower. So when we were growing up, we lived on a well and the well in the summer would literally run dry. It was shallow. It was a shallow well. And so my folks trained us to take a shower. You turn on the water, you get wet, you turn it off, you soap all up, you do everything you need to. You turn the water, you rinse it off, you turn it off.
00:19:25
Speaker
Wow, that's brilliant. Smart. I know. So I tell my kids about that. I'm going to threaten them to take a shower like that if they don't quit using so much water. You are a literal pioneer, Audrey.
00:19:41
Speaker
I know my parents later got a deeper well drilled and then we could take as long as showers as we want and it's like, yeah, this isn't fun anymore. It's not a game. Okay. So anyway, use less water instead of dumping your extra drinking water down the drain. Can you save it and what are the plants? You know, that kind of thing.
00:20:02
Speaker
How about your internet, your phone plans? Can you negotiate down on any of that or use a smaller plan or less data? Once you start looking around, you're going to find a lot of ways to be able to maybe just save a little bit money here, a little bit money there. This is all just increasing the gap. It's increasing your available income by decreasing expenses, making the gap bigger in that way.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yes. I love all those. A while ago, my husband and I got on a phone plan with his brother's family. And so now both our families are on the same plan and that family plan saves us a ton of money. It's amazing. You know, the smaller home thing, I was going to respond when you were saying that I recently went to go get my vacuum repaired and I was telling the guy, gosh, yeah, we go through vacuums quite quickly because we vacuum a lot. You know, we have all these kids and he just went, 10 kids. Oh my gosh. How big is your house? And I told him, he's like, oh my gosh, that's like
00:20:56
Speaker
That's only like so many square, you know, 100 square feet per person. I just thought it was funny that he immediately went to that because, you know, a 3,000 square foot house is not small, but when there's 12 people in it, it feels kind of small sometimes. It's like he gets it. He gets it.
00:21:12
Speaker
Okay, a couple other tips for shelter, saving money on shelter. Consider leaving your home when the temperatures are miserable, right? When it gets really, really hot here, instead of just running AC constantly, I'll turn it up a little, temperature up so that AC is down. And we'll go to a, I don't know, a splash pad or something. So
00:21:31
Speaker
get out and cool off a different way so we're not always running the AC. And then just take a look at your expenses. Like I mentioned before, it's really, really helpful to use the same budgeting software over and over and over year after year because then you can look at your trends. And recently I was looking at ours and noticing that our household expense is up. So that's not bills and things, but it's things like
00:21:50
Speaker
buying a new pack of pencils or buying more hair brushes or so just, you know, those kind of random Amazon purchases that add up and just ask yourself, is this truly a need or is this something that can wait? One of my tips, side note for Amazon, if you're an Amazon shopper, is I'll put things in my cart as I think of them or need them. And then we only check out once a month. And I go in inevitably, I think, no, I don't need that. No, I don't need it. It was just kind of a spur of the moment purchase, but careful of that prime. It's very easy to just
00:22:17
Speaker
have those little purchases add up. I know. Have you ever noticed how, so we'll buy like a pack of hair ends and there's like a hundred in a package and they'll just randomly take them out and flick them across the room or whatever they do when they're done with their hair ends. But when we're down to the last two and they take care of those. Yes, forever. It's so funny. Yes, true, true. I think I've had two on the top of my little lotion pump forever because I won't let anyone use them because the only two I
00:22:43
Speaker
I don't want to buy more.
DIY & Clothing Savings
00:22:47
Speaker
And then another thing is you might be the kind of person that likes to hire some things out at home. So like we have a pool and for many years we took care of it ourselves, but it got to be too much so we hire that out. That could be something where you could save considerable amount of money if you would take that back on yourself or like a yard service or a cleaning service or a delivery service, maybe you get something delivered all the time, pest control, what are some of these things that maybe you can control, you know, take care of yourself and save a little bit of money.
00:23:11
Speaker
Those are all such good tips, good ways to start looking at increasing the gap between income and expenses. Okay. Now we're going to talk about clothing because there's a lot of bodies in large families that need clothes. And you guys, if you've listened to like more than one episode, you know how much Bonnie and I love to talk about sewing. It is not always cheaper to sew your own clothes when you're talking about the material that goes and the costs that go into it.
00:23:41
Speaker
It does end up being cheaper because the clothes last longer and they fit better. And if you know what you're doing when you sew, you can definitely get a better fit, a better quality. Another way that is a great way to reduce expenses on clothing is capsule wardrobes.
00:24:03
Speaker
If you have one top that can only go with one bottom, that doesn't go as far as one top and a mix and match wardrobe. Hand-me-downs is a huge advantage that large families can do. If you buy clothes that are classic, things that don't go out of style or change very often, then you can definitely hand it down across
00:24:24
Speaker
across different kids. And then secondhand stores is a great way, especially kids when they grow so fast, they don't go and wear out their clothes. Shoes. I have found most of my kids' shoes, good quality. I like to buy leather shoes. Yes, they're more expensive, but they last longer. The kids don't need as many shoes because they're better quality. And so I get them at secondhand stores and they're always in really good condition because kids' feet grow so fast that they don't have time to wear out their shoes. So there's some tips for you in clothing.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yes, I talk about this all the time on my own personal channels, but I am a huge fan of quality clothing. Yes, it hurts to buy quality clothing or to sew it and take the time and the effort, but it lasts so much longer. So side note, when my first two boys were a little, we couldn't really afford to buy nice things. We would just buy cheap stuff wherever I could find it.
00:25:19
Speaker
And it wore out quickly. By the time my first daughter was born, I really wanted to buy cute things for her. And so I saved and I shopped like sale on sale, you know, when like the winter stuff was clearancing out and I would go buy the season ahead. And those clothes, I would typically shop at Gap Kids because I really, really liked their style. And it's also extremely high quality. Those clothes have lasted through six little girls.
00:25:44
Speaker
Okay, they're not boys. Boys are extra hard on their clothes, but a lot of the things that might be- That's still incredible. Right? That is great. We're talking 14 years of constant wear. So there are a few little dresses that look as good as the day they were bought. Well, unless there's children in their stains.
00:26:01
Speaker
Don't buy white stuff, okay? They look as good as the day they were bought because I spent a little bit of extra money and I hunted down sales to buy these. So when I just pop into Target or Walmart and want to buy a t-shirt, I'm always thinking, do I really just want to buy this for this one child because it's not going to last? Or do I want to go find something that's going to last? Now, if you don't have a million children, that might not be worth the initial expense, but you'd be surprised. Sometimes even just wearing it through three kids can be enough to
00:26:28
Speaker
to make that money worth what you're going to eventually use it for. I really like Miranda of Live Free. Miranda talks about cost per wear. I have a pair of jeans that I love and they were expensive. I think they were over $100, but I have worn them like three times a week for four years. The cost per wear is down two pennies.
00:26:48
Speaker
versus the $30 pair that never quite fit right and that you wore a couple of times and ended up giving away to Goodwill. So look for impeccable fit, be willing to spend a little bit more for the quality and long-term you will spend so much less. So think about mixing and matching things in a new way. I love to create new outfits from older clothes can be fun.
00:27:07
Speaker
And if there are stores that are sending you promotional emails or Instagrammers that you like to follow, but they tend to prompt you to buy new things, just unsubscribe. Unfollow those people. That could be kind of a hard thing to hear, but when I find myself overspending, it tends to be because I'm allowing people or marketing to influence me in a way that is not in keeping with my values. And then finally, have a list of needs. So when something comes up, like your shoes are wearing out, your tennis shoes are a little bit,
00:27:36
Speaker
run down, put it on your list and don't immediately go out and buy it, but then you can prioritize and say, okay, well these shoes are going to cost this much, but actually this kid needs sandals more than that. So that running list will always ensure that you know what to spend your money on when you have it and you're not always buying things that aren't the most necessary.
00:27:55
Speaker
Oh, that list of needs is such a good idea. I totally need to do that because sometimes I'll see a good sale and I'll be like, I know one of my kids need this, but I don't know their size and I don't remember which kid and that's a good idea. Yeah. Other side note, I have a note in my phone with everyone's current shoe sizes.
00:28:11
Speaker
Because that would happen to me all the time. I'd be out and be like, oh my gosh, somebody needed shoes. Who was it? Who was it? And I would check my list of needs and then wait, what size are they in? You do have to update it regularly, but pretty much any time a kid grows out of shoes, I'll go into my note and change it to the next size up. But that helps a lot. Yeah. That is such a good idea.
00:28:28
Speaker
Okay, a bunch of other considerations that we wanted to go through for you guys, places that you can possibly save money.
Transportation & Family Activities
00:28:35
Speaker
Are you on a subscription for something? Oftentimes, subscriptions seem like a good deal, but go ahead and analyze how often you're actually using that. And would it be cheaper to just buy it per time rather than keep the subscription going? We don't have a television. For 27 years of marriage, we haven't had a television. Neither one of us grew up with a television, and nobody died.
00:28:57
Speaker
How much money we saved too. Okay, but what do you have to say when people say nine kids? Do you not have a television? You have to say nope. We have to say nope and that's not what's causing it. We just say we do, but we have a pause button.
00:29:19
Speaker
Oh, how about some carpooling? So you and a neighbor, you know, work a mile apart and you go to work at the same time, you follow them to work every day, right? How about carpooling? Less activities for your kids. I know, I know. They really want to be in everything their friends are in, but in large families, this is going to save not only gas money and expenses for whatever those activities are, but just really mom's time and sanity. I told my kids a long time ago that I was sorry, but I was not able.
00:29:47
Speaker
to put them all in their favorite thing. So maybe just one activity per kid or maybe none that promise you they'll grow up okay and they will become actually more creative because they have to think of their own things to do.
00:30:03
Speaker
That's my soapbox. Okay. How about negotiating on your insurance rates? Sometimes we have all of our insurance with one company because they give us a good deal for having everything. And sometimes we have car insurance with one company and home insurance with another.
00:30:19
Speaker
And sometimes we have one kind of vehicle with one company and another kind of vehicle with another company because of the way that they, my husband is so good at this, always shopping quotes and getting better rates on insurance. Maybe you can be a one car family, or if this is a big family and you have teenagers that drive, maybe you can be a two car family. One thing that we've done this year to adapt to inflation is we have put a dollar limit on what we spend on our kids for their birthdays.
00:30:46
Speaker
In the past, it was kind of like, oh, it's their birthday. Let's just kind of spoil them. But having that dollar limit really makes me be intentional about what they're getting for their birthdays.
00:30:57
Speaker
I love that. And what I've noticed about birthdays, there is a creep, right? So if one kid wants an elaborate cake and wants to have friends over and like order pizza for everybody, all of a sudden you've spent the birthday budget on the party and the kid never gets a gift, you know? So yeah, just kind of adapt to that. We've told our kids, you can have a party with friends like when you turn 12 and 16, you know, like a couple of milestone birthdays, not every year. Or yeah, if you want a big present, then it's just going to be the one.
00:31:25
Speaker
We're not going to buy five because that's what your sister got because all she got was a pack of gum. It's cheap, so I love that. I also really, really love the idea of negotiating insurance rates. That's something we didn't do for a long time, but once we started doing it, it was shocking how much we were saving. I think these insurance companies just assume you're going to be along for the ride permanently and they just nudge up your rates. If you don't have the time or don't want to spend the energy hunting around, you can find an insurance broker who will do that for you.
00:31:53
Speaker
So we have a buddy who does that, which is so nice. We just give him a call and say, things are looking a little high. You want to look around for us and tell us if you can find us a better deal. So good. All right. Other ideas. Get creative with how to have fun, especially in the summer, right? We're in the summer months. Kids are like, well, I want to go to this public pool and I want to go to this museum and I want to do these things.
00:32:12
Speaker
everything that you do that costs money adds up, right? So a couple of years ago we did this summer fund list and I told them that we had to balance what we were going to do for money and what we were going to do not for money and what we're going to do out of the home and at home because not every day was going to sign up to go pay money to go somewhere. So we divided a big poster into four quadrants. One said at home free and one was at home paid and the other one, the third one was
00:32:36
Speaker
out of the home free and out of the home paid. And we just listed each activity we could think of. And each one was pretty robust. And so we would just rotate those. One day we would do something free at home, you know, whatever, a hose fight. And the next day we would do something out of the home that maybe cost a little bit of money. Anyway, that can just be a fun way to get creative and have fun without spending a ton of money every single time, especially with a large family.
00:33:01
Speaker
The other thing I like to do is make a savings goal and have the kids be involved. So when you say, oh, we don't have money for that, or, oh, we can't afford that, that frankly, I think, teaches a really limiting, scarce mentality to your kids. And they grow up thinking there's never, ever going to be enough. And instead I want my kids to think, sure, we could find money for that. How are we going to do it? What are we going to cut back on? Oh, you want to go on this vacation? That's going to be fun. That's going to cost us about $2,000. Where are we going to find that money? And then they get creative with you. Oh, we're not going to order pizza this week. We're going to do this instead.
00:33:29
Speaker
We're not going to go to this museum. We're going to do this instead. And so all this extra money can go towards the savings goal. It makes kids really creative and then helps them get involved as well.
Positive Financial Mindset & Conclusion
00:33:41
Speaker
Oh, that reminds me, we have a whole episode about teaching kids about money. And we start some really amazing things because kids are so good at it. Like, I'm going to say they're even better than at us because we kind of have some societal negative associations around, you know, saving money and not spending money. And kids are like, oh, really? We're not going to eat. We're not going to buy groceries till Friday. Fun. And we're thinking. I know they're such weirdos.
00:34:08
Speaker
I know. Okay. I have some final thoughts for you guys. One more note I want to say is that financial strains, financial issues can put a strain on relationships, marriage relationships, relationships with friends, relationships with your kids. So be careful. Just be aware of that and be careful. Another thing to keep in mind is inflation is temporary. Inflation is something that's cyclical. So maybe we'll spend a couple of years, five years, whatever,
00:34:38
Speaker
this increasing inflation trend and then it's gonna go back down stuff is gonna change like we don't have to do we don't have to change the world we just have to adapt to it while it's here and then we're gonna be in a deflationary period and you know we'll do an episode about that when that comes right but my final words here are just to be get creative be intentional and be positive we we can do this we can
00:35:04
Speaker
We can bring our families through this and if we have the right attitude and the right heart about it while we're going through it, our kids are going to look back on it with fond memories. Yeah, I love that. Again, going back to our COVID time when our family had to be a little bit tighter, my kids had great memories of just going on bike rides.
00:35:23
Speaker
and doing things that were, we had a lot more, typically we order pizza on the weekends and we had a lot more homemade pizza and we had a lot more just creativity with how we were spending our money and they don't have any negative memories of it.
00:35:36
Speaker
I'm a little bit traumatized by it, but it was overall a good experience. And I also want to address attitude and mindset. There is so much more to life than just feeling tight around money. We deserve to be joyful and to enjoy our families and life in general. When we manage our money and we just pay attention to where it's coming and going, we can just make tiny shifts that make all the difference, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
And there is really, truly an unlimited potential to the amount of money you can bring in if you start looking for ways to do it. If that's something that's interesting to you, wait for our episode that we're going to come up with. There really are so many ways. Look for ways that are where you can create something and make money from it.
00:36:19
Speaker
Forever right so you're not necessarily trading time for money just get creative and look at what other people are doing And then finally expand your mind look for those ideas and pray for help
00:36:31
Speaker
God wants us to be joyful and have peace in our homes and not to stress, especially if we have large families that we are raising. He wants us to be at peace with that. So opportunities will open up to you. When we have felt tight and we have done everything in our power to manage our money, stuff just comes. We get like some random refund check or all of a sudden this bonus comes through and we're like, well, that was unexpected. And we know that it's a direct blessing for managing what God has already given us and doing our best to raise these beautiful families.
00:37:00
Speaker
Isn't it amazing every single time? Yes, so good. Yeah, it's just incredible. Okay, you guys, thanks for listening to this episode. We hope some of these ideas have helped you. We know that there is a pinch and you're feeling it, and we just want to try to encourage you to keep on going and keep trying. That's it for this week. I'm Audrey. I'm Bonnie, and we're outnumbered.
00:37:25
Speaker
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