Cutting Down Spending

It's crazy to think a year ago I quit my job for a better one. We were so excited to get out of debt, getting a bigger house, and getting me a car that doesn't require being jumped every ten seconds. Life was looking great, it was seeming like pretty soon we would have everything we dreamed of and then more. Flash forward to now, we're an one income family and living in that larger house we wanted for so long. We realized if we wanted to keep this house, which we very much do, we had to make some major changes with our spending. I'm not going to lie, I LOVE shopping. Seriously I would go to the mall "just to look" and end up buying the kids new toys and clothes-every time without fail. Not only was our bank account dying with this habit, but our children began to expect something every time I left the house. That was very easily the first thing we stopped doing, after that we looked at our spending again. Our bill was made up of buying a lot of equipment for sporting events our children were involved in. Now, if your children play sports you know there's almost no way to avoid spending money on these things. However, there are ways to save money on them and for whatever reason we weren't doing those things. For example, Brooke's leotard for gymnastics was probably the most pricey thing in the world. So pricey that I don't even keep it in her closet with her regular clothing, it's pretty sad. What I didn't realize was, we could have bought it new or even asked one of the higher level girls for hand me downs-it was like a slap in the face when I realized how much money was wasted on this. This little method can also be applied for pretty much every sport, Tyson's baseball equipment was almost all second hand this year and it saved us so much. I think for us, the hardest thing to stop buying was extra things at the grocery store. It sounds stupid, but when you buy cookies that you really don't need every other week it really adds up. We pretty much stopped buying all sweets all together and as much as our kids(and my mom) may hate it, it has helped us save so much money and forces me to bake when we want something sweet. I think, in some way this has been a blessing in disguise. It has seriously forced us to spend time at home, spend time together. Instead of going out on my days off I find myself wanting to stay in and play board games and watch movies. Our money situation has brought us a lot closer and I love it, as much as I miss being able to pull out our card without any doubt of having money. I wouldn't trade the family time for all the money in the world.