Hello and Welcome!!

I'm starting this blog to try and keep track of everything and also to hopefully share the wonderful deals I come across. I'm a very new stay at home mom, as of yesterday actually! Our family has been trying to be thrifty for just a few short months now and each day, I feel like I learn something new! I've gotten a lot of great information from MANY different sources, and I will always try and credit those sources. I've also learned a lot on different ways to be thrifty, greener and simpler which is really what I'm trying to do.

The first thing our family of three did was cut our grocery budget from over $600 a month to $240 a month. I know, that sounds crazy, in fact when I first considered it I just about choked. How could we POSSIBLY live on $240 for groceries and still eat GOOD and HEALTHY food. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's POSSIBLE. I make a meal plan and base that around what I already have in the house, what's on sale and what I can get coupons for. I shop mainly at Aldi and Rainbow because they do double coupons on Wednesday and Saturday. I clip coupons every week and have a very organized system as to how I have them set up. I go into the store and I KNOW what I'm going to get. Another thing I do is I use CASH for my groceries. It's scary at first, no doubt, but once you get used to it, it's sooo much easier! I'm HOPING to be able to use cash for most everything...that's my goal and something I'm working towards. I stockpile but I ONLY stockpile items we would use. I don't just go out and buy stuff because it's cheap, I buy stuff because it's cheap and we'll use it.

Aside from that, we are on a specific budget. Not only did we need to figure out how to make it on essentially ONE income, but we also want to be COMPLETELY DEBT FREE as soon as possible. Before I was able to quit my job, we had the goal of paying off every single credit card and CUTTING THEM UP. And we DID it! We have one credit card right now and it's our Kohls card. It has a ZERO dollar balance on it and the only reason we still have it is because we get 30% off coupons. The two times I've used it, the card has been paid off immediately.

It's been a big lifestyle change, we're moving to a cheaper apartment to make it work, but so far, it's going great. We lived on a tight budget for a few months and tried to slowly ease ourselves into it so that it wasn't such a shock when we jumped into just one income. On this blog, I hope to share how we're doing it, the deals I find including FREE stuff (which I DO get and no, I didn't steal it :D) and whatever else that comes along the way. I know that I couldn't have gotten to this point without two main sources which are:

www.diaperswappers.com <~~~The Thrifty Families Forum..I LIVE on this forum. I am NOTHING compared to some of these women!!
and
http://minnesotacouponadventure.blogspot.com/ <~~~This woman is my HERO.

I highly recommend checking out both of those sites. They are amazing. :)

Thanks and I hope to actually KEEP this up!! :)