Youthful Homemaker

What to Do in a Financial Crisis (Besides Panic)

Christina — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:00:30 +0000

Recently, with my husband and I split up, I found myself in a serious financial crisis. My husband and I had just gotten back on our feet again when we split, and with only one income and a household that needed more than I made to be sustained, I was about ready to panic. But since I knew panicking would just lead to me being too worked up to do anything, and then me really ending up in a financial hole, I decided to make a plan of action instead to help me. Thanks to friends, prayer, consistency, and more prayer, things are getting back on track. I’m not exactly swimming in a swimming pool full of money yet, but all the bills are going to get paid and I get to eat for the next few months, so I’m perfectly content. Want to know howto keep your household afloat during a financial crisis? Read on!

Take the word can’t out of your vocabulary. Seriously. If you tell yourself you can’t do something then you will be totally right, but if you set your mind to something and your entire family gets on board, you can do whatever you set out to do if you have reasonable expectations.

Figure out what you’ve got, so you know what you have to work with. Exactly how much money do you have in checking, savings, couch cushions, spare change jars, and in the cup holders of your car? What do you have in your home you can sell? And don’t tell me that the TV and that gaming system is more important than paying the rent and keeping the lights on-because it really isn’t! Take your books, DVDs, CDs to a place like Half Priced Books. Cash in those Visa reward points for some gas gift cards! But take inventory of everything…you’re going to need it!

Find out your needs and wants, then write them down. Post the list somewhere you can see it, like the fridge or on the wall in your bedroom. Look at it. Here was my list the this month:

Christina’s Get Out of Crisis List

Need: Place to live with yard I can afford

Want: To stay in current place, either with roommate or lower rent

Need: Income to allow me to pay all the bills without depending on others

Want: to work exclusively from home or to be able to work only part time outside the home

Pray specifically for what you need and God will provide it. He doesn’t always give us what exactly we want or expected, but He won’t ever leave us out to dry. Even though it can seem at times like the world is crashing down, it isn’t. I promise. If He’s letting you go through something so difficult that you can hardly stand it, then you’re destined for something awesome, so just keep watching for it!

Be proactive and do at least one thing per day to help better your situation. It’s easy for me to freeze up and have an overwhelming list of things to do, so to procrastinate and do none of the things that I should have done to meet my own needs. You know what I mean, right? Doing things like organizing your closet instead of washing a uniform you need for the next day, or putting off going to the grocery because instead you just had to file that stack of bills and paperwork that has been piling up for weeks…So instead of doing crazy things like ~~I do~~ some people do, pick one thing you do each day that takes you one step closer to being out of crisis mode. Maybe it’s setting an appointment, calling an agency or ministry who can help you, or cutting coupons that you can use at the grocery store this week. Whatever it is, don’t worry about anything else. If you can get more done, great. If not, then you did what you had to do! If it helps, write it down somewhere like your journal when you did it. You can even leave a comment here to share your thing you did, if it helps keep you motivated! Maybe your idea will even help somebody else out.

Do not stay in “freaking out” mode. It’s okay to be emotional. Being emotional means you are human and have emotions, that’s normal. But letting financial things mess with your peace will only lead to unhealthy stress for you and the other people in your life. Take the time to have a quiet time, deep breathe, meditate, journal, or whatever it is you do to find some peace. Hold onto that peace and don’t let stress affect anything more than your temporary emotions! God has a plan and He is doing awesome things in Your life, even if it’s tough right now! You can do this!

See, that wasn’t so bad, now was it? Are you ready to get out of that financial crisis? Well, get on it! And while you’re at it, leave a comment and tell me what you would do to get out of your family’s financial crisis! I would love to make a follow up post with suggestions from readers!

Escaping Abuse

Christina — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:17:03 +0000

I want to apologize to my readers for not being more diligent about blogging faithfully in the past few months. A lot has been happening, and with the changes in my life, including my little princess Autumn being born late last year, I have been struggling to keep up with life and the blog.

Many of my readers also follow know me through my personal Facebook page, where I have been getting lots of questions about what is going on in my life and asking if I am alright. For the sake of simplicity, I just decided to share a little piece of my story here. Maybe it will empower some other struggling mom.

What happened…

My husband is an addict. This doesn’t mean he is a bad person, or that he is weak. It means he is sick with a horrible disease. And just like any other disease out there, you need love and support as you battle addiction- but no amount of love and support can cure it. I have struggled to learn this lesson little by little since discovering my husband’s private struggle with drugs and addiction came to my attention last year, but it took some pretty extreme circumstances that are far more recent to get me to realize that no matter how much I love my husband, no matter how much he loves me, he will still be sick.

Out of respect for him, I won’t go into all the details, but the long and short of it is we had an issue with domestic violence and emotional abuse in our home where I felt like Autumn and I were no longer safe, so I left for our safety. My husband then demanded a divorce, a demand I am more than willing to accommodate. We are currently going to court and will be filing for divorce soon.

Coping…

I really am okay. Not great yet, and still very emotional about everything, but even when I can’t stop crying because of all the unknowns in our life right now, I have this underlying since of peace that never goes away. I have had so many people reach out to me and assure me that whatever I needed, if they could help they would. I have been praying about every decision I make, and not rushing into anything. If I could give advice to anyone who is in a similar situation, I would say this: when everything is too overwhelming and you can’t think about what you’re going to do next, just focus on the step you’re on.

As soon as things got crazy with my husband, instead of wallowing in self pity, I went online and paid all of the bills from our joint checking. Living with an addict (even one in recovery) you learn that you better have that money spent when things get crazy, otherwise it’s likely to end up in a drug dealer’s pocket. So I have spent a lot of time ignoring the ‘what if’, ‘if only’ and ‘I wish’ trains of thought, because they really don’t help anything. What does help is taking baby steps from getting yourself away from the crazy you are living in and into a better life.

For those who want to help…

Since my husband and I split, I have been asked continually what I needed, and how people could help. This isn’t me asking for a handout, but if you’re interested in helping here are the things my family really needs right now.

Prayer is the biggest thing anyone can give our family.

Our living situation, as I cannot afford to pay our current rent on my own
Healing for myself emotionally so that I can be the best mom for Autumn
Grace and safety for my husband as he continues to battle his addiction
Autumn to continue to be the joyful and healthy baby she is, and that she will be able one day to have a healthy relationship with her father

After prayer, there are some things we need,but they change pretty frequently so I made an Amazon Wishlist so people who wanted to send us something we need can help.

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your love, encouragement, and support. This is a really tough thing for my family, and I have been flooded with emails, Facebook messages, and every sort of communication giving me the strength to keep moving forward. I could not do this without such an awesome support system!

3 Essential Oils that Enhance Your Dog’s Shampoo

Christina — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:00:50 +0000

I’m not big into keeping my dogs super clean, but I definitely like it when they smell good and want their coats to be healthy. I have been trying to incorporate essential oils more into my family’s personal care products, so I thought I would take a few minutes to tell you about the things that have made a huge difference in the health of my pets.

Tea Tree Essential Oil

If your dog has any kind of skin problem, from mild itchiness to mange or dandruff, tea tree oil is a great way to help heal your dog’s skin and promote better health in general for your pup.

Lavender Essential Oil

Lavender is great for dogs who tend to be anxious at all, like my sweet Beagle Katy. If bath time is stressful for your pet, this can help take the edge off. It also smells great, which is always a bonus!

Peppermint Essential Oil

Peppermint not only smells great, but it also helps repel bugs and promotes good circulation. Admittedly, I mostly use it for the smell.

All three of these essential oils will do great things for your dogs, and adding them in is as easy as adding a few drops, then mixing the shampoo back up. I highly advise adding no more than 3-4 drops of each oil, remember these are very concentrated and will be very strong. You should see an improvement in the health of your dog’s coat when you use this mixture consistently.

Saving Money on Groceries: Cut Your Drink Budget

Christina — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:30:13 +0000

Drinks can be a huge part of a family’s grocery budget. I know they they have been for ours in some months, especially around the holidays when we have lots of people over and we feel the need to buy soft drinks and/or alcohol, it added up very quickly. So when I made a commitment to cut our grocery budget, special drinks like soft drinks was one of the first things to get eliminated. Of course, it would be the most frugal thing to drink nothing but water all the time, but for those of us who get bored with just plain water, here are ways you can indulge a little without spending your rent money on drinks!

Mio Water is a great way to add flavor to water cheaply. A bottle of Mio usually lasts us a month or so, depending on how much we drink.
Tea is a great way to make water not-so boring, plus it can have a lot of health benefits! Ginger tea helps with stomach problems, chamomile is good
Kool-Aid might not be the healthiest option out there, but if you use Stevia instead of sugar, it isn’t so bad.
Soda Stream You can get your own Amazon. We actually have a SodaStream. Even with the purchase of the unit, it’s still cheaper than buying coke products from the grocery or the drive through if you have a habit of buying them a lot. We don’t normally drink sodas, but it’s so nice to have them for really cheap when we do want them.

Drinks are just one way to save on your grocery budget, but every little bit counts! How do you save money in the drinks department at your grocery store?

Coping with Job Loss: Financial Coping

Christina — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:13:47 +0000

When my husband lost his job the first time, it was a challenge. The second time it was really hard. The third time I nearly lost my mind. You see, the third time he lost his job we weren’t a little broke, we were already struggling and had been for months. Living paycheck to paycheck and only paying most of the bills every month was hard, but when my husband lost his job it seemed like the end of the world. Well, if you’re sitting there thinking, “Actually, Christina, it is the end of the world for me! You just don’t know!” Then you should read this blog post and come back. I’ve been in a really bad spot, and I promise you can get through to the other side and come out stronger, financially stable and with a marriage that is even better than before.

As I wrote about earlier this week, I found that the emotional effects of job loss were harder to cope with than the financial stuff, but the money problems weren’t cake either. I learned really quickly that if you are truly in a financial crisis, you better buck up, swallow your pride, and get ready to do whatever you have to do to survive. Here are the things we did to survive when things got really bad.

Assistance Programs

If I hadn’t been told by everyone close to me to go apply for assistance programs, I would not have. I thought that things weren’t that bad (although actually they really were, looking back) and that I was better than ‘those people who live off the government’ that everybody always talks about. Oh, did I need a reality check! The assistance programs that offer to help people are always going to be abused, but that doesn’t mean that families who are in need shouldn’t apply. Getting help doesn’t mean you are one of ‘those people’ it means you care enough about your family to do whatever it takes to take care of them.

Places to Find Financial Assistance

Churches
Ministries
Government Programs (Food Stamps, WIC, and a lot of other programs you can find here and all over the internet)
Local Food Pantries (Dare to Care is a big one)
Energy Assistance Programs
Medical Clinics with sliding scales
Friends and Family

I found that once you get started with getting assistance, it gets easier. The first kind of assistance I applied for was Food Stamps, which was a horrible experience. I was mortified, embarrassed, and found the whole experience to be very frustrating. But most of the other places that helped us were great. Some of the most helpful things I learned and resources I found weren’t from the government assistance programs, they were from the case workers and office people. If you are nice and courteous, it is really amazing how willing people are to help you.

The New Way to Budget & Pay Bills

Once you have applied for every kind of assistance you can get, it’s time to start looking at how to pay bills. Even if you don’t normally budget, now is a good time to start doing that. If normally you budget, right now is a really good time to consider using the Dave Ramsey method that he recommends for irregular income.

How to Budget When You Don’t Have a Regular Income

Make a list of all of your bills. Yep, all of them.

List those bills in order of priority. Having a place to live should come first, then electricity and water, phones, and so on.

When you get money of any kind, pay the bills in order of priority. Sometimes this means bills don’t get paid.It happens. But at least you paid the ones that are the most important, so you’ll have a place to live and you’ll be able to turn the lights on and take a hot shower.

Areas To Cut Back On

Groceries
Eating Out (if you can avoid this completely for a while, it isn’t going to kill you. But if you just can’t go without, check out Restaurant.com and always get gift cards from there. I wait and get my $25 gift certificates for $4 or $3 when they are having a big sale, it’s an awesome deal if you just have to have that steak out on the town.)
Using gas
Indulgences like date nights,entertainment,

Life doesn’t have to end when financial disaster happens in the form of a job loss. It can even be fun at times to challenge yourself in new ways if you have the right attitude. I hope these tips help you get back on track financially. It isn’t easy, but I promise it can be done.

Coping with Job Loss: Emotional Coping

Christina — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:18:23 +0000

It is scary when your family’s breadwinner loses their job. My husband has lost his job three times during our marriage, so I know all about it. The last time it happened, not only did he lose his job, but I was seven months pregnant with no job of my own. Our emergency savings were gone, my husband was in the hospital going through rehab, and there was no way someone was going to hire me and my big pregnant belly – even if I could have stopped puking long enough to do any real work of value. The hardest thing about dealing with yet another job loss wasn’t actually the money, it was the stress it put on our family. So if you or your husband has lost their job, I really do know exactly how hard it can be to pick yourself up and deal with the fear, insecurity, and all of those other things that keep you from being content and joyful. If you are looking for some ways to cope, here is tha best advice I can give based on my own experience.

Firstly, and I think this is the most important, take the word can’t out of your vocabulary. If you tell yourself you can’t do something, then you’re probably right. One thing I have learned through all of our job losses is that you don’t know what you can do until you sit down and get started actually doing it. All sorts of people told me that I should just leave my husband and

Once you stop telling yourself what you can’t do, it’s time to start telling yourself what you can do. Make a list of the things you absolutely must take care of, (only the absolute necessities) and make it your mission to do whatever it takes to accomplish them. Here is an example of what might be on your list:

Find money to pay rent/mortgage,keep lights on, and keep phones turned on.
Make a meal plan based on groceries in fridge and pantry, so we can spend as little on groceries as possible.
Find a way to keep yourself sane.

Ok, the last thing on the list above might seem like it’s a joke, but I’m actually completely serious. I found that once I had taken care of all that I could do to solve our financial problems, instead of spending time worrying and stressing, I channeled all that stress and anxiety into cleaning and organizing my house. I don’t think my house has ever stayed so clean! I got the nursery ready for Autumn Brooke’s arrival, organized the kitchen, garage, cleaned every surface in the house, hung curtains…I did it all. And you know what? It actually helped. So find what you can do for yourself into that makes things better for you and your family. Here are some other things that you can do besides cleaning

Finish all those crafts you started and never finished
Learn something new that doesn’t require any store bought supplies,like finger knitting or take a class online at iTunesU or Khan Academy
Start journaling regularly if you don’t already. It doesn’t have to be anything formal or long, but it’s good to have a safe place to share all of those things that are making you stressed. This is far better than lashing out at your family because you are stressed and have nowhere else to vent your feelings. Which brings me to my next tip…

Stop whining and be intentionally joyful. You are entitled to your emotions. Do not feel bad if you are mad, sad, scared, angry, hurt, or anything else; those feelings are natural. But don’t make things worse by complaining to anyone who will listen. After my husband’s last job ended suddenly, I tried to make it a point to say two or three positive things for every one negative thing I said about the whole situation. It got to the point where it just wasn’t worth the effort to complain, and by the time I reached that point, I felt a lot better than the times my husband had lost his job and I spent my time complaining and joining in with the Negative Nancy’s in my life. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t easy. It’s way easier to complain and whine about how unfair life is, but in the end I would rather have joy in my life than complaints, anger and bitterness, wouldn’t you?

Job loss can be a very scary thing, but the last thing that helped me was learning I wasn’t alone. And you aren’t alone either. There are so many moms who are struggling through the same thing you are! We are all here to support one another and lean on each other, so don’t be shy. If you need encouragement, leave a comment below! After all, that’s what friends are for!

Preparing for Baby on a Budget: Maternity Clothes

Christina — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 13:00:40 +0000

When I first got pregnant, I did not think maternity clothes would be that expensive. I mean, after all, they’re just clothes, right? Well, if you have ever been to maternity clothing section in just about any store, you’ll know that’s definitely not the case. I was so broke when I was pregnant with Autumn, and I remember being so frustrated and discouraged, and wishing there was a cheaper way to find maternity clothes, so now that I am out of that stage I thought I would help some other broke mom-to-be out and tell you how I and others have been able to keep our baby bumps well covered without spending baby’s inheritance.

The first thing you should do when looking for maternity clothes is pick out a style that will still fit, even if you gain more inches than you intend to. Let’s be real, here. Even with a careful diet and a healthy amount of pregnant-lady safe exercises, most of us are going to get bigger than we think. So do yourself a favor and spend your money wisely on clothes that will last through your whole pregnancy!

When you’re shopping for clothes, secondhand clothes are almost always cheaper, and maternity clothes are no different. The best shirts I found were actually from a children’s secondhand clothing store. They had a section of maternity and nursing tops that were very comfy and were all very reasonably priced. I actually got three nursing/maternity shirts for only $18. Which brings me to my next tip. If you’re going to spend money on maternity clothes, especially tops, try to look for tops that are good for pregnancy and nursing (if you are planning to breast feed your baby). That way you don’t have to go out and buy more clothes after your little one arrives. You’ll already have nursing tops taken care of, and you’l use those for as long as you are nursing.

My last tip was something I intended to do, but never had the opportunity. There are a ton of tutorials all over the internet for making your own maternity clothes. If you are a crafty person, then this would be a really great way to save some big bucks on your new wardrobe! A simple search on Pintrest showed some blog posts that looked promising, I would definitely check it out!

If you find any tutorials that are particularly helpful, please leave a link below in the comments, so others will be able to use it too!

St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

Christina — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:00:15 +0000

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day I thought I would share some of our favorite easy green recipes. Upon looking for green recipes, I realized that the only green recipe I had besides Christmas goodies was this Shamrock Milk Shake recipe…so here it is. I suppose I should go find some more green recipes for dinner tonight. Maybe I will make spaghetti and dye the pasta green with food coloring.

Shamrock Milk Shake

This recipe looks, and tastes, just like the Shamrock Shakes from McDonalds.

Yields 2 servings Prep time: 5 min. Total time: 10 min.

2 1/2 cups vanilla ice cream (any brand or type of your choice) 1 cup 2% low-fat milk or milk of choice 1/4 teaspoon mint extract (more if you want it really minty) 10 drops green food coloring

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend on high speed until smooth, stopping occasionally to stir with spoon if necessary.

Nursing Cover-up Giveaway! (Ends 3/24)

Christina — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:40:07 +0000

As a nursing mommy, I know all about how handy a nursing cover-up can be. It’s nice to have something nice looking to keep you modest instead of using jackets, baby blankets, or whatever you can find to keep everything covered.

Penny Raine is having a contest over at her blog to win a nursing cover up from Sew Krafty that ends this weekend. If you’re a nursing mom or know someone who is, you should enter! The contest ends this Sunday the 24th at midnight.

Of course, maybe you shouldn’t enter, that way I can win.

Good luck!

Restaurant.com Sale! $25 Gift Certificates for only $4 – ends 3/15

Christina — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:51:41 +0000

As always with a Restaurant.com sale, I am SUPER pumped! These $4 gift certificates are awesome for gifts, date nights, or even for work work lunches. Grab yours today! This sale ends tomorrow!