living the frugal life
The Mr. and I are about to embark on an expensive endeavor - raising a child. So, being the budgeter that I am, I’ve started to incorporate the word “frugal” into my mental mantra.
The Mr. is generally ok with this, he’s not the kind of guy who likes a lot of stuff around anyway. He didn’t own a television, car, or cell phone before we started cohabitating, and now owns a television and car only because I did. He would much rather bike to the store than drive, and watches television only if I put a movie in the DVD player. We don’t have cable, this was a no-brainer for both of us.
I did finally get a cell phone for the Mr., though! His family and friends are all shocked and amazed. With an impending emergency phone call to him coming shortly (as in, “Honey … I’m in labor, come quick” he agreed that I could search for a family cell phone plan. He pretends to be a curmudgeon (”I’ll only get a cell phone if you’re the only one who calls me”), but I think he secretly likes having it. His daughter is a big texter, and with her half way across the country they can text more often now and keep in touch.
Back to being frugal, though - we are both generally agreed on trying to have as little extra stuff for the baby as possible. I mean seriously, we live in a two-bedroom condo as it is, half of our stuff is in storage, why waste money on a bunch of stuff we will only use for a short time before we’d have to re-sell it? This is not even money that we spend, we both don’t look forward to having a bunch of extra (new) stuff in the house from gifts from people. Luckily we already have a bunch of hand-me-downs from friends, plus useful items from the family shower, we probably won’t have to buy much when the baby comes.
To prepare for this, I’ve added a number of frugal blogs to my google reader. I won’t list them here (I don’t really want this blog to get on any frugal blog list anywhere), but they range from frugal people with babies to just eco-frugal blogs to investing to general tight-fisted-ness. The more I read about frugality, the more I can incorporate it into my life. Of course, some of it is a little over the top, like making your own cloth diapers from old terrycloth towels. I’m not gonna do that. Besides, the woman who made them said a few months later that the baby grew out of them already and she has to make more. (Note: we haven’t really decided what we’re going to do about diapers yet, cloth, disposable, etc. More on that soon, I’m sure).
The one thing we did decide, though, was that the Mr. is going to be a stay-at-home dad for a while. We evaluated the cost of daycare, his weird schedule, etc, our respective salaries, etc. This is the best choice for us right now - it clearly won’t be forever, but at least while the baby is little. Which is why, preparing to live on one salary, we are also preparing to live a frugal life for a little while.
Posted by on July 12th, 2008 under UncategorizedOne Response to “living the frugal life”
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- updated photos on flickr
- ceiling fan, and baby exercises
- baby competition
- z’s first concert
- yay obama
- my lame halloween costume
- Our little social … human
- I guess time really is money
- starting and stopping work
- talking about breasts
- fresh out of the oven
- my life as a stay-at-home mom
- updated pictures on flickr
- but I do believe in miracles
- our little o negative baby
- blamers and the nuclear family
- his feet look like mine
- pictures on flickr
- new baby in the house
- We just joined the “buy more sh&t” club
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August 21st, 2008 at
My mantra for a long time has been “I just walk the earth”. Wanda (my bride) has always countered: “You don’t walk the earth”.