Also, Ann, remember that even with expensive cloth diapers, Lucy should be potty-trained several months earlier, saving several boxes of disposables & pull-ups. Plus, your next kid(s) will be diapered for free (except the cost of laundry). That will be a HUGE savings over buying thousands of disposable diapers! :)

I keep intending to do the “dinner’s in the freezer” route more often! Must….get…organized…

I’m guessing our #1 way of saving money is that we never bought a TV. Definitely not the solution for everyone, and we did it for other reasons – but as a fringe benefit we don’t hear as quickly or as often about the things that we would otherwise have suddenly wanted or “needed”.

Related to that, we called/emailed all the companies and cancelled all our catalogs a few years ago. Oh, um, except for the gardening ones for me and the hot rod rebuild ones for Daniel. Ahem. I guess we still have a ways to go ;o) This goes a long way towards keeping the clutter down in our house as well.

Thinking… let’s see, nearly all our clothes are hand-me-down or thrift shop. Much easier to get away with that in the UP than in Chicago though, there’s no dress code here :o)

We sold some stock my grandpa gave us and used it to pay off our house mortgage. We could argue all day about which was the better investment in the long run, but it’s great not to have the house payment. We set the house payment aside to buy a new car, so that we wouldn’t have a car payment when the time came. For future investing we bought Austin Pryor’s book on investment (can’t remember the title… it’s loaned out) and followed his easy commonsense advice. It’s like the next financial step for “rich” Christians (such as 99% of Americans) after they take all of Larry Burkett’s advice.

I swore off soda and switched to sun-brewed ice tea, and after a year of “suffering” and missing the Coke, I don’t notice anymore and actually in fact prefer tea.

Sunday is our “soda day” and “movie day” (a borrowed DVD, shown on our computer) which puts a positive spin on the limits we set for the kids.

Bought a side-load washer which uses 1/3 the water and less electricity and detergent… and actually cleans and spin-dries the clothes more thoroughly than the top-loader we had before, which means less dryer time. Another case of “spending the money when it’s worth it.” No, we don’t do clotheslines outside yet. ;o)

I guess the only really unusual thing we do to save money is using dry soy meat for some of our spicier recipes (lasagna, tacos, chili) – from dixiediner.com. It doesn’t taste good, nor like real meat, but we’ve found that we don’t notice when it’s a smallish amount in spicy foods. Costs less after re-hydrating, no fridge/freezer costs involved, and it’s healthier too.

if I remember any other easy or interesting ones I’ll pop back on and share them but I think that’s most of it.

Aldi….yes when I lived in Chicago before kids I cringed at this…..I kind of felt like it was the poor mans store…..But I have found that it is really good for basics…..baking powder, nuts, tomato sauces,….Breakfast cereals…..milk eggs….The quality on things is pretty good…..some is great. They currently have a line called Fit and Active….which has some tasty things. If you go, dont go on a Suturday…the line are always very long…. One of the things that helped the image problem I had with Aldi was my trip to Ukraine. I saw people carrying Aldi bags all over…..My brother (who live in Germany at the time) told me of course Aldi is a German store and the Ukrainians love the handled bags. After that I always felt a bit “European “ by shooping at Aldi.;)

I love to cook and good spices are great for that. I have bought spices in bulk since we were married…..Devon Ave is good for that….there is also JD Mills in Evanston.

Lincolnwood produce on the corner of Devon and Touhy seems to have really great prices. If you are planning your meals you could plan to get some of your things there. I always looked at the produce and meat prices there

The public library is great for Movie rentals. IF you watch alot of movies…Net Flics or Blockbuster through the mail are great…..and there are no over due fines.

I am sure you know about all the free things you can do in Chicago…but sometimes being intentional about them is hard. Concerts in Grant Park, museum free days, the theaters where you can usher and then see the performance for free….The public libraries also have passes for all of the Museums…..you check them out with your library card….this takes a little planning and you may need to call around but worth it. If when Lucy is a little older and you decide to get a museum membership somewhere I would recommend one that has reciprocity at several places….it is well worth the money.

Also as Lucy gets older there are all kinds of wonderful parks with sprinklers and free public pools for summer fun…..Places with pools….Portage Park, River Park, Gompers Park….Indian Boundries has a sprinkler and a wonderful playground. Oz park is also very nice…that one is down in Lincoln Park.

Thanks for encouraging good stewardship! I look forward to reading other posts.

We use our credit card to pay for most everything because it earns us frequent flyer miles (we pay off the balance monthly to avoid finance charges). The benefit of the miles for us is that James’ family lives in Texas, so this makes for an affordable means of visiting them.

The only thing we don’t use the credit card for is for dining out. This seemed to be the one budget category where it was really easy for us to overspend, so we implemented the envelope system – once a month I take out in cash the amount we budgeted for dining out. When it’s gone it’s gone and we don’t overspend.

Some other things we have done to cut down on expenses:

- switched to a pre-paid cell plan. We like having cell phones for the ability to always get ahold of one another and in case of emergencies, however, even when we were on the most minimalistic monthly plan, we used no where near the allocated minutes. So, we switched to pre paid plans and paid $100 each for 1000 minutes which don’t expire for a year. We did that probably 9 months ago and still have plenty of minutes left. It works out to be about $16 a month vs. the $60 we were spending.

- switched to DSL. When we first moved into our home, DSL was not available so we went with a cable modem. When DSL became available and they offered a special of $14.99 a month we made the switch and saved a bunch.

- turned down the water heater. I’m not sure exactly how much this has saved us, but I’ve read that it can save you a bit because you aren’t paying to maintain a higher temperature water. Plus, it’s recommended to set the water heater at 120 degrees when you have children to avoid the risk of scalding.

- bargain shop for baby clothes. I buy most of Benjamin’s clothes at Sam’s club or on clearance because they are significantly cheaper. I can usually only find a couple outfits at a time, so I’m pretty much always shopping for the next size/season of clothes. That way, by the time he needs them, I have enough. Also a good idea – garage sales and hand-me-downs from friends who are done having kids.

- freezer cooking. I bought a cookbook called “Don’t Panic – Dinner’s in the Freezer”. My mom and I will periodically get together and spend an entire day cooking meals from this cookbook which are designed to be frozen. The way this saves money is that in preparing the meals, it’s easy to split them into the correct size portions for our family. So, a recipe that makes 6 servings gets split into 3 frozen portions. When I cook it at a later date, I’m only making enough for the 2 of us with no leftovers which don’t always get eaten. This also saves us money because we can take advantage of sales on things like chicken breasts by making a bunch of meals with chicken in them. There is also the huge benefit of easy meals later on down the road. I generally prepare 3 frozen meals a week and cook the rest from scratch. This makes my life much easier! The only thing with this plan is that you really do need to have an extra freezer or you would have to cook in smaller batches so as not to use up your entire freezer! If you don’t have time to spend a whole day cooking, you can modify the plan to prepare one of the meals for a regular dinner, only you make 3 times what you would normally prepare and then freeze the extra.