How We Save Money

everyone knows how hard it is to save money these days and that includes Nathan and i. with 3 kids, Nathan in school and me being the only one working to support us you might ask how the heck we do it! well i though i would blog about some of our money saving tactics in hopes that it may help someone else. if you have some of your own please share cause im not going to be able to fit all of mine in one single blog!

first i will tell you about our very inexpensive entertainment for the whole family. some times we might pack a picnic and go to the park or their are several water parks around here to all of which are free. other things we might do is go visit some of the local farms around here. our favorite is superstition farms (superstitionfarm.com). they have several mommy and me classes where they teach the kids how to make ice cream and cheese and butter all of which is fresh from the farm. they let you play with the animals and in season will allow you to watch a calf be born and walk for the first time. they let everyone roam the farm and play freely! there are so many things to do here!!

another thing we do is visit the zoo. usually its like $40 for all of us to get in but we buy a year pass for $75 and we can then go anytime we want. we have been known to go several times a week!!
we do the same at the Arizona science museum. we get a year pass for $85 which saves us alot of money. i think normally its $16-$20per person admission. they have a TON to do there and they are always changing their exhibits. the kids are free to touch and discover everything they have to offer!

we LOVE to watch movies but $10 a person is crazy! so we rent from redbox its only $1 a day and they have all the movies that have just been released every where else. its easy to go to redbox.com and find a movie at your nearest location and reserve it online free.

Nathan and i love to go out to eat but that can get expensive. so we go to restaurants.com and they have a huge selection of places to choose from. you go and find a restaurant you want and then you purchase a $25 gift certificate for only $10 and if you register for free you get a email offer every week for a $25 gift certificate for only $3 that's a crazy deal and we love it. we just print it out and then give it to our waiter.

Nathan and i have no interest in buying a house right now since he is in school so we decided to rent a nice apartment instead of a house so we could take advantage of the amenities. we shopped around for months and it was worth it! the first time we checked out the apartments were in now it was $920.00 for our 1200sqft apartment but we went back 1 month later and they were desperate for tenets and gave it to us for $560.00 a month! were in a nice safe neighborhood and they are luxury apartments so we couldn't be happier! we have 4 pools, a nice full gym, 2 parks and 2 lakes where the ducks often hang out and are eager for us to feed them. this allows us to have lots to do even when we cant think of much not to mention we save on gas and a gym membership!

not shopping on impulse is another way we save money. we do alot of online shopping when we can get free delivery. make up is something i prefer to buy online. i use elf.com to buy my makeup brushes. I've bought the $25 MAC brushes and i think elf.com is just as good and they are only $1-$3 each. they offer makeup as well which is comparable to most drug store makeup and everything is $1. i also go to buymebeauty.com and they sell Covergirl, Revlon etc for Clearance prices.

craigslist.com is our best friend!! we have bought all of our furniture everything but maybe a handful of items off craigslist and we usually trade our furniture for other furniture with someone else off of craigslist.com. its all clean and name brand. baby/kids items and the free section is probably our favorite. we buy new boxes of diapers off here to. just recently we bought 600 diapers for $72 off a lady who just didn't need them any more. that's a great deal. Costco sell a pack of 172 for $42ish. people also sell unopened baby food and formula as well for very cheap!

we are not afraid of the 99cent store! all the kids birthday supplies have pretty much come from the 99 cent store and we get pretty elaborate however we usually spent about $100 per child for their party and make most of the decorations, food, cake etc ourselves. we also buy all our holiday decorations from here aswell! we dont have a pet but they have a lot of name brand pet food, toys and treats here to!

we also make our own detergent and have learned how to save on fabric softener to. if you would like my recipes for this let me know and i would love to share them with you.

buying in bulk is something we do to and we eat very healthy. eating healthy doesn't have to be expensive. we also buy our tires from Costco as well.

were also apart of a food co-op. its $25 a basket packed full of fresh organic fruits and veggies. they also provide cheese, bread, grains, granola and much more. superstitionfarm.com is one place we go and boutifulbaskets.com.

we never stop for fast food. we cook at home and in bulk and ill usually freeze the other half of what we make.

when we shop at regular grocery stores we usually use Fry's food and drug. sometimes there items may be a couple cents higher but you usually end up saving more money if you use the Fry's gas stations (or ones that except their card) cause they will give 10cents a gallon off when you spend $100 at Fry's.

we also have always made our own baby food, and whole grain baby cerial which saved alot of money.

i cut all the boys hair myself and that alone saves us between $30- $40 a month depending where we go. if you don't know how to use clippers you can YouTube it and learn. its VERY easy!!

for my hair i go to a local beauty school to get mine done and costs me $10. i get one of the higher students and have never had a problem.

we save a ton of money shopping for shoes and clothes for us and the kids. Ross is a great place to save money. another thing we do is buy out of season. so when its winter we buy all the clearenced summer clothes and vice versa.

again we also buy clothes and shoes online. they usually have free shipping and you can usually find the clearances that are sold out at the stores. also if you google almost any website and put coupon behind it (ex clothes.com coupons) you can almost always find some sort of 10% off or even more. and we also use ebates which is a free online coupon for stores like target, barns and nobles etc. ebates.com

resale stores are great places to save money. they will buy your old name brand clothes or you can shop their selection of gently used name brand clothing. buffalo exchange and my sisters closet are just a few good places.

another thing we do is look up annual community consignment sales. they usually have a whole warehouse full of baby, kids and teen items for a fraction of the price you would find in the stores.you can google one in your area. alot of times we will set aside a weekend for yard sales. they usually post an add on craigslist so we can get an idea of who has what and how many families are involved.

children consignment stores are great to. we really like once upon a child. they are clean and have great deals not to mention their pretty organized, and wont bye any expired, recalled or blemished item.

not having cable saves us alot of money to. channel 8 shows appropriate cartoons from 630am till 4pm and i stay busy with the kids that i don't really have anything that i HAVE to watch. if i do want to watch something i can usually find it online. i know for a fact that apple (the comp/phone place) has Internet for $20 a month. you can pick up the wifi from your phone and use it for your computer. so if you get an apple phone with Internet you can cancel cox or whatever you have and get rid of your land line. it saves you money. look into it to see what the service is like in your area. if your not willing to do that you can slow your Internet service down. we did and saved $15 a month and i haven't seen a difference at all! also buying your cell phone off of amazon.com will save you money and you wont have to hassle with those mail in rebates either.

buying refurbished is also a good way to save money (google it) you can buy refurbished TVs, ipods, mac computers etc.

something else we have done is changed out our bulbs for energy saving ones....every penny counts!

we don't have credit cards and never have!!

a huge thing we do is do whatever we can to pay our car off in 1 year MAX! it makes a huge difference in the long run.

buy used and save the difference....when we paid off our 1st car we still made payments every month but instead to our bank account!

a locked saving or mutual funds is a life saver for us.... we put the "difference" in there and then we cant take it back out so really we just forget about it!

we have a rule before submitting an insurance claim. we wont submit a claim on a loss that is less then twice my deductible. so for a $250 deductible on a auto loss, ill pay out of pocket any loss up to $500. why?? the $250 id receive from my insurance company is not worth the increased premiums I'm likely to pay, but check with your insurance to see how your claim might impact your premiums before filing the claim.

so these are just a few things we do and i know their are MUCH more. like i said please feel free to share yours!!

Just When I Think I might Go Crazy!!

all three of my kids find humor in terrorizing each other! it drives me nuts at times cause one minute they will be playing then the next one will be on the other fighting then a minute later they will all three be snuggled in one bed reading a book. i really don't understand it cause i pretty much grew up as the only child till i was 13 and then i think we were past that stage. Nathan swears to me that its normal and not to be to worried. but when they are at their worst and i think i might want to just scream...they make up for it!

heres the twins using team work to get some dessert after their dinner. i walked in and this is how i found them so i grabbed my camera and snapped a few pictures to document how i stay so sane with three kids!!

(btw dont mind the dishes in the sink lol we just got done with dinner)

Happy Halloween

Nathan and i do not take the kids trick or treating. some family members think were ridiculous and that the kids are being deprived of a long time tradition but I'm sorry, times have changed and in our opinion its just not safe any more. its not just Halloween either, many things have changes. its unsafe for young kids to walk themselves to school or roam the neighborhood riding bikes and playing with friends. we cant even send our kid alone in a public bathroom cause they might get molested. so no trick or treating. we don't feel safe doing it and a big reason is because of the candy. i googled "drugs that look like candy" and the results i got were shocking! there are pictures and news clips of people handing out Halloween "candy" that are really drugs! its a hard truth and we hate it but we have decided to change with the times and instead of trick or treating we went the schneph farms and then let the kids hand out candy which they were more then happy to do so and they didn't seem to feel deprived at all. next year we will go trick or treating but instead of collecting candy were going to collect canned food and then donate it.

below are pictures of candy drugs, some i would know better and some i wouldn't have had a clue. all parents should google it and watch the clips!

here are the kids handing out candy they had so much fun!!!

i think this was ridges favorite part of Halloween! and he was so good at it. he greeted every one with "happy Halloween".and of course waved good bye to everyone

he had a hard time with this one though. he was ready to give the boy candy it was already in his hand but the little boy helped himself lol ridge was pretty upset

we hope everyone else had a good Halloween!

Trick-or-Treat

so this Saturday, the day before Halloween we dressed the kids up in their costumes and took them to schneph farms. schneph farms is a really cool family owed farm that is always putting on family oriented festivities. they have rides, food, mazes, animals, games, train rides and all sorts of fun things for kids to do.

here's the kids climbing their way to the top of the hay stack! ridge was able too do it all by himself this time and i was even able to join in on the fun this year too. last year remember i was in the wheel chair with Olivia when we came here. i was excited to see what i had missed out on from the year prior.

here's ridge being his usual tough guy self and trying to pick up this pumpkin. believe it or not he was able to do it.....
with some help from daddy of course

here's jazzy being silly!

ridge tried hard but couldn't quite reach

so rick saved the day and gave him a boost. thanks rick!!!

here's jayvin riding the wooden train set at the kids play area

they have a really cool tricycle maze that the kids can race in. so here's javin peddling away.

eventually daddy caught up!

they have a HUGE slide that the kids could go on and i was really surprised that my babies actually volunteered themselves for this. i mean the thing is really big!

here's jayvin making his way out at the bottom. i wish i would have timed it right cause he had actually came out face first on his belly.

here's a smaller version of the slide and daddy is waiting for ridge at the bottom

we also went on some flying bumble bees, went through the huge corn maze, and went on the train but i was unable to take pics of those cause i was riding along with them =) we had a blast and were really glad we were able to go with some friends it made it even more fun!

Ridge's Birthday Bash

we finally celebrated ridges birthday party on the 23rd, well after his birthday. we were going to have a party for him but after the the lack of rsvp's and no shows at the twins party i decided to just do a dinner with the family. maybe next year when hes in school it will be worth doing a party, since we usually go all out, and invite all of his classmates! we took everyone to Bucca Di Beppos, one of mine and Nathans favorite restaurants. well here are a few pictures that i took of the dinner!

here's ridge being his usual cheese ball self!

miss Olivia eating her dinner. she was more interested in the balloon.
here's pretty much everyone. it was me, Nathan, the kids, my sister Gina and her two boys, my dad and step mom, my mom and her girlfriend Karin, Rick, Anna and Olivia, Nathans sister and Johnny, Joyce and Marvin. we were bummed that Mark, Shell and the girls were unable to make it but they sent their birthday wishes to Ridge.

here's me and Nathan =) aren't we so cute!!! totally love this guy right here lol!

here's my other cheese ball jazzy!
here's MiMi (my mom) and Jazzy taking a minute from their dinner to say cheese.
ridge received plenty of presents that's for sure!! usually i limit the amount and type of presents that the kids get but since family was only invited i knew that it wasnt going to be to overwhelming with useless toys. Auntie Jen got ridge a huge bag full of sesame street stuffed animals, some abc books and some number blocks. Nathans dad Marvin gave ridge some spending money and Joyce got him this really cool bubble blower lawn mower and he loves it!! rick and Anna bought him his Halloween costume. the pic below is the cause of his favorite present. his first bike!!! i love his face in this pic, its epic!

hers ridge opening the rest of his presents.

of course we ended the night with a birthday cake. this is how we do it in the Brauer-Woodworth family! why use one spoon........
when you can use TWO!! =)there is nothing better then sharing moments like this with family! thank you every one for coming and ridge thanks you for all his gifts!!