One Frugal Girl

Does a Six Figure Salary Make My Decision to Stay Home Harder?

One Frugal Girl — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:00:20 +0000

My mom always knew she wanted a family. It was her one hope and dream growing up as a child. When my brother was born she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would stay home to raise him. When I came along she continued the trend and stayed home for a total of twelve years. She returned to work when I turned nine.

My mom was never particularly good in school and had quite low self-esteem, which made it difficult to find a high paying job after graduating from high school. Throughout her working career she never made much money.

When I asked her about the decision to stay home with my brother and I she said it was a no-brainer. In essence, she and my father knew her salary would barely cover the cost of day care.

They carried health insurance and other benefits through my dad’s job and my mom didn’t particularly enjoy her work, so there was really no benefit in her dropping us off at daycare.

When I told her that I was considering staying at home she asked if my six figure salary made it a tougher decision. Interestingly enough I never considered the weight of my salary on my decision until she asked me.

The decision to stay-at-home is almost entirely emotional for me. An extremely low salary may make the decision easy, but above a certain threshold I’m not certain what difference a higher paying salary really makes.

If I made $50,000 would it be easier to stay home than if I made $100,000? I’m going to have to think about this for awhile, but off the top of my head I’m going to say no. It’s more a question of desire and affordability.

If we can’t pay the bills with my husband’s income then I’m not sure if it makes a difference if I earn $50,000 or $100,000. At the end of the day I would need to go to work to pay the bills. Similarly if I loved my job it might not matter how much I made either. The fulfillment of work might be all that I wanted regardless of salary.

Still I thought it was an interesting question and one I wouldn’t have thought about if my mom hadn’t asked me about it.

I’d Have to Pay More Money for My Car Insurance?

One Frugal Girl — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:05:12 +0000

At my father’s insistence I emailed my insurance agent tonight to find out if staying-at-home with my son would result in a cheaper car insurance rate.

Apparently, when my father retired he called his car insurance company and told them that he was no longer driving to and from work each day. He explained that as a retiree he would be driving much less frequently and that more often than not he would be driving during off-peak hours.

According to my father the agent immediately lowered his insurance rates. The agent explained that insurance rates are often based on how far you have to drive to and from work and where your office is located. If you park your car outside on a city street you have a much greater chance of damage then if it’s parked safely in a garage. Of course, if it remains tucked inside your garage at home and you live in a safe neighborhood it has an even smaller chance of getting damaged.

It certainly seems reasonable to think that a commuter should pay a higher rate than a stay-at-home mom who is able to avoid peak driving times and rush hour. For six years I drove from Maryland to Virginia and I can tell you that I passed accidents at least once per week. In fact, the fear of cars shifting in and out of lanes every evening was one of the main reasons I switched to a job closer to home.

Well, surprisingly enough my insurance provider told me just the opposite of what I was expecting. I was told that my premium would actually increase by $50 a year if I remove the commuting rating from my policy. Apparently my driving would fit under the category of pleasure use only, which for some reason or another costs more. I’m not sure I understand how that makes any sense, but given that fact I’ve decided to leave my policy as it stands for now.

I Won! I Won!

One Frugal Girl — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:20:52 +0000

Happy Valentine’s Day to me! I won the Spoil Your Sweetie Contest hosted by the Ultimate Coupons blog! You can check out my entry here. I’m super excited to win $500 in gift cards and want to thank the Ultimate Coupons blog for sponsoring this contest. I also want to send a special shout out to Newlyweds on a Budget. If Erika hadn’t posted about this I wouldn’t have been inspired to write an entry of my own.

Would $10,000 Change Your Life?

One Frugal Girl — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:50:29 +0000

I am a huge fan of the cooking show Chopped. I don’t watch much TV these days, (I’d rather spend the time with my son), but Chopped is one show I make an effort to watch each week. I’m truly amazed at the meals the chefs prepare from a bunch of random ingredients. I dream of being able to make 5 star meals from the leftover ingredients in my pantry and I often use the search capabilities of all sorts of websites just to help me make common, edible meals

One of my favorite aspects of the show is listening to the chefs describe how they will spend the $10,000 prize. Their desires run the gamut from opening restaurants to buying engagement rings, paying for weddings and extinguishing debts. Some of them plan to use the money to move to new locations while others hope to take their families on luxurious vacations.

What surprises me most though is how many chefs say that $10,000 will change their lives. I don’t know anyone in the food industry so I looked around the Internet and found that salaries range from the low $20,000s for assistant chefs to $90,000 and upwards for executive chefs. Though the average appears to range from $40,000 to $60,000. (If any of my readers have a better idea of salary ranges feel free to leave a comment.) Clearly the less you make the more $10,000 feels like a major windfall, so this may be a large reason for this repeating sentiment.

I am in a phase of my life where $10,000 would be very nice to have, but I wouldn’t consider it life changing. I have no debt other than my mortgages and $10,000 would barely make a dent in those. I already own a car and could get to and from work if I decided to get a job rather than staying home with my son. While it would be nice to buy a larger vehicle to get my son in and out of that certainly wouldn’t be life changing and $10,000 would only partially pay for that.

I’m sure I feel this way in part because I previously earned a six figure salary. If you make a six figure salary $10,000 might be a month or two worth of earnings. If you make only $20,000 a year $10,000 is the equivalent of half a year’s worth of pay!

Don’t get me wrong I think that $10,000 is a lot of money and I clip coupons, search for sales and live frugally to save dollars and cents every day!

I recognize that $10,000 would certainly help pay for a car that could get you to and from work. It would help fund all sorts of training and education programs if you need specific skills to acquire a higher paying job. Depending on where you live it might even help fund a significant portion of a down payment for your home. But in my case I already own a car and a home and completed an undergraduate and graduate degree. In fact, at this point in my life I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to recognize that $10,000 would not be life changing for me.

So what do you think? Would $10,000 change your life?

We Didn’t Save Any Money After All

One Frugal Girl — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:31 +0000

Last year my husband and I had new windows and doors installed in our home. In fact, we had every exterior door and window replaced. We did this for two reasons. First, our old windows were absolutely abysmal. Many of the windows couldn’t be opened, a few of the panes were cracked and the screens in just about every one had holes that allowed bugs of all types to fly in. On nice warm days I was unable to open most of the windows and I couldn’t stand the fact that we couldn’t let in the fresh air.

In addition to comfort we renovated the windows in the hopes of saving a significant amount of money on our gas and electric bills. Our house was built in the 1950s and the windows were constructed of single pane glass that you could feel the cold air pushing through. In the wintertime our house was downright frigid. I thought for sure that our bills would shrink after the installation was complete.

Tonight I reviewed the past three years worth of utility bills and I’m afraid to say I see little improvement in the amount of money we shell out each month to heat and cool our home. I find it rather difficult to compare data from various years because I don’t know what the weather was like for each individual month.

It’s obvious that a very cold winter cannot be compared to a moderate one, because we probably cranked the thermostat up much higher. It’s also difficult to compare the data because we are keeping the house much warmer for our son than we ever did when it was just the two of us. Despite these differences I expected to see a fair amount of difference in usage, but unfortunately I don’t see much difference at all.

I’m curious if anyone else has ever installed windows and doors to provide greater energy efficiency. If so, did you have any success? I wonder if we have other areas of our home that our draining the heat and/or cold out of our home or if there are other culprits of our energy usage.

Reflecting On My Urge to Splurge

One Frugal Girl — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:32:26 +0000

A few weeks after my son, (Baby A), was born a good friend dropped off the most adorable box of baby socks I’d ever seen. It was a colorful set that looked like little sneakers. They even have a little string at the top to mimic real shoe laces. Baby A has worn a pair of those socks almost every day for the first three months of his life.

Baby A’s sock drawer is right below his changing table, so every morning after placing him in an adorable outfit I’d open that drawer and find the perfect little sock to match. Since they came in so many different colors I never had a problem coordinating his socks with his clothes and everywhere we went people complimented his tiny little “shoes”.

After a long sleepless night there was something very satisfying about dressing Baby A and slipping his little feet into those tiny socks. It was a sign that we had survived waking up every hour and a half throughout the night and were moving forward with a brand new day. As soon as he gets his socks on in the morning we go downstairs to play.

Of all of the gifts I received from friends and family both before and after Baby A was born this gift is oddly enough one of my favorites. We received gifts that cost much more money and were certainly much more necessary, like the baby swing, crib and co-sleeper, but these little socks still rank at the top of my list.

I love them because they are so unique and adorable and the colors really pop in the photos I take of Baby A each day. If my friend hadn’t bought them I would’ve dressed my son in boring old white socks which wouldn’t look nearly as adorable in the photos I’m taking. As he becomes more active his little feet always seem to be kicking up into the air and the bright colors really help capture his movements on camera.

Well Baby A is growing by leaps and bounds. He is nearly off the height and weight chart and has outgrown these socks after just three months, so I went off to the Internet in search of replacements. When I found them on Amazon I couldn’t believe how much they cost, nearly $25 for six little pairs.

I know I can buy at least four or five times as many socks for that price or buy him two or three outfits from Marshalls or Ross. If I head to the thrift store I can find even more.

So knowing all that why am I so interested in splurging on a new box of highly priced socks? (I started poking around on Amazon and found other adorable pairs.)

I don’t think my desire is based solely on their cuteness factor. I think they remind me to pay attention to the small things in life like dressing my son and putting socks on his tiny feet every morning. I guess I just want to capture and hold on to these moments because I know they will pass so quickly.

I can’t believe he’s almost four months old already and I’m not ready to let this chapter, (the chapter of brightly colored socks), end so fast.

Passing Values About Money From One Generation to the Next

One Frugal Girl — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:11:03 +0000

My dad is always joking about winning the lottery. For as long as I can remember he’s said, “when I win the lotto I’ll pay off your house and your brother’s.”

In all the years I’ve never stepped back to reflect on the sentiment of his statement, but tonight my mom pointed out the selflessness of it. If my dad had all the money in the world he would pay off all of our mortgages, which is the only debt my brother and I have.

Most people dream of winning the lottery so they can take extravagant trips around the world, buy expensive cars and eat from the finest establishments. Not my dad. My dad wants to make certain that we free ourselves from the burden of a mortgage.

For about as long as I can remember my father has told my brother and I how he paid off his house in only seven years. At the time my mom stayed home with my brother and I so we lived only on my father’s income as a state employee.

My dad vowed to pay off the house as soon as he could so our family would never worry about being homeless. As long as we had enough money to pay the property taxes our home would always provide shelter for us.

In order to pay off their house my mom lived with outdated bathrooms and run down kitchen appliances. In fact, I think their first home upgrade occurred well after I left for college. She never asked for much and what money they did have was typically spent on me and my brother.

It’s amazing how children learn values. Without my father ever specifically telling us how to manage our finances both my brother and I now follow in his footsteps. We both have the goal of paying off our homes as soon as possible. My husband and I hold a 15 year mortgage while my brother opted for 20. For us comfort comes from knowing that we will mortgage free by the time we reach our 40s and 50s.

For us life is not about champagne tastes and caviar dreams. It’s about being financially stable and comfortable with what we have. I’m sure it seems boring to most people, but it feels like the ultimate dream to me.

How Would You Spend $500 on Valentine’s Day?

One Frugal Girl — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:06:31 +0000

This is an easy question for me. If I had an extra $500 to spend on my husband I’d buy him a new Nikon camera lens. I know a lot of folks might think that doesn’t sound very romantic.

I know everyone is expecting me to blog about taking an extravagant trip where we’ll ride horseback across a beach and spend our evening eating chocolate covered strawberries and toasting with champagne. While all of that does sound unbelievably lovely, and I certainly wouldn’t turn it down if anyone offered it to me, I don’t think anything would make my husband happier than a new lens for his camera.

Over the years my husband has worked as a semi-professional photographer taking pictures of local sports teams in and around Washington, DC. He loves capturing the ball in mid-air, the personal foul that went unnoticed and the game winning shot of an underdog team against one that was nationally ranked.

But more than anything else he loves capturing the simple every day moments of our family spending time together. While some folks only pull out the camera for major holidays and birthdays my husband has managed to create a visual journal of our lives over the last fifteen years. He’s snapped photos of us doing all sorts of things like barbecuing in the backyard, picking veggies from our box garden, cooking dinner in our tiny kitchen, boogie boarding in the ocean and playing in the snow.

Last fall he was able to capture the most amazing moment in our lives. The birth of our son. It’s absolutely true what they say, if I loved my husband before my son was born, somehow my heart opened even wider because now I love him more than ever.

Our lives have taken on a whole new meaning now that our son has arrived and we want to capture every special moment of his life. Some of my favorite photos are the ones my husband took leaving the hospital. I cried when we left because I couldn’t believe how fortunate we were to take home a beautiful, healthy baby boy. My husband caught that moment on camera and we now have an incredible photo of me holding our newborn son as a small tear runs down my cheek.

As soon as we arrived home we began taking pictures of all of those pivotal moments that make up our young son’s life. My husband takes photos of him sleeping in his crib, taking his baths, opening his fingers and of course cooing and smiling. Every moment feels so special and unique.

I’ve never seen my husband as excited as he was the first time we took our son to the beach. This December we bundled him and ourselves in blankets and coats and laid out a towel on the sand. It was a pretty cold day, but we felt the warmth of the sun and placed sand on our two month old’s hand for the very first time.

It’s amazing how a moment in time can feel so magical. My husband has always loved the ocean. He surfed and windsurfed for years and I could see in that moment his desire to share his love of that deep blue water with his son.

As always he brought his camera along and captured that moment forever. My son, being only two months old, will certainly not remember that day, but with photos in hand we can not only reminisce about that moment but also share it with him when he gets older.

A new camera lens will ensure that we continue to capture moments like these indefinitely.

This is my entry for the Spoil My Sweetie Contest hosted by Ultimate Coupons. Enter to win up to $500 in gift cards.

Bamboobies Giveaway

One Frugal Girl — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:00:30 +0000

One of these days I plan to create the essential baby list for new moms. When I created my baby registry I read the reviews on Amazon and asked a lot of friends and family members for advice, but now that my son is three months old I have a much better idea of what I really needed and what products I could not live without.

One of the items I bought before my son arrived was a HUGE box of disposable nursing pads. I wasn’t particularly happy with this purchase, because it wasn’t the best choice for the environment, but I really wasn’t sure which alternatives would work as well.

It took my son a little while to master the art of latching on. Actually, he took to one side without any problem, but had the darnedest time getting used to the other. One side was always a lot more sore and a lot more leaky than the other.

So I pulled out that big old box of disposable nursing pads and nearly cried the first day I tried to use them. The glue wasn’t sticky enough to keep them in place, they didn’t seem to absorb much liquid and they were unbelievably scratchy and painful to wear.

I tried to use those awful pads for a full week before giving up on them completely. Without knowing where to turn I resorted to stuffing my bra with burp cloths which were much softer and more absorbent, but made my chest look all lumpy and thick under my clothes.

Finally I turned to the power of the Internet and came across Bamboobies®. Bamboobies® nursing pads are unbelievably soft and absorbent. I bought the regular and overnight pads, but the overnight ones were definitely my favorite in the first weeks and months of nursing. They are extra thick and large, which helps them stay in place and cover all of the necessary areas without slipping off while you’re sleeping. Also, because they are made of bamboo they don’t get the ‘cold and clammy’ feeling of wet cotton.

I can’t say enough good things about these products. I love them so much that I just bought a few packs of them for two up and coming baby showers. I think they are a must have for any breast feeding mother.

One lucky One Frugal Girl reader will win a $16.99 credit to Bamboobies® to purchase their own set of nursing pads. If you don’t need nursing pads the credit can be applied to any one of the other product on their site, which includes swaddle blankets, baby carriers, nursing covers and more.

To enter check out Bamboobies® online and leave a comment letting me know which product you’d purchase with the $16.99 credit. You must complete this entry to be entered.

You can earn additional entries by performing any of the following:

Liking Bamboobies® on Facebook
Following Bamboobies® on Twitter
Subscribing to One Frugal Girl
Following One Frugal Girl on Twitter

Simply leave a separate comment for each action you complete. One winner will be selected by random number on February 20th. If you don’t win you can purchase Bamboobies® and other Bamboobies® related merchandise online. Use coupon code FRUGAL20 for an additional 20% off at checkout!

Free Tiny Prints Valentine’s Day Card

One Frugal Girl — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:05:07 +0000

I am a huge fan of Tiny Prints. I think they have the most adorable cards and I love that I can customize them with the names and photos of friends and family members. Today they are offering a free Valentine’s Day Card if you like them on Facebook. I couldn’t resist a free card for the one I love. To find out more click here.