... Your Visit Blesses Me! ...

…. originally posted on my other blog in October ‘06 …

Yesterday, I posted how, so far this month, I have brought $150+ worth of free items into my home PLUS I listed other savings that I have taken advantage of so far. Jessica left the following comment: “Boy, that almost seems like a job! How do you keep up with all this?”

Well, the short answer (because I only have a few moments this morning to pop on and check email!) is that I consider saving money to be one of my most important jobs in my home. It’s definitely up there in the Top 5 focuses each week. I look at it this way, if I spend 30-60 minutes each week planning my shopping lists and cutting coupons and such and then I save $50-100 (which is very normal for me), then my hourly pay has just become $50-200/HOUR!! There is NO job in the world outside my home that is going to earn me that much money. I do not count the time it takes me to do this shopping because I’d be shopping anyway each week to provide the food and such needed for my family. However, if I did count the time, my hourly pay would only drop by half and $25-100/hour is still nothing I could earn outside the home.

I also make NO special trips to save this money. I am already in town 2-4 days weekly and all of the stores are right there together on one strip of road. I pass ALL of them as I travel back and forth to my home, so there is no extra expenditure of my time.

Well, that’s the short answer … I have been doing this for almost 13 years since the day we brought my daughter home from the hospital and I became a SAHM, so it’s just 2nd nature to me now. It does take time to save $$, but not as much time that it would take away from my husband -AND- our family if he had to get a 2nd job to pay for these items if I wasn’t willing to work to buy them at rock bottom prices or get them for FREE or nearly free!