So how do you get the little bit extra?

So after the last post you may be saying; How do I get the little bit extra? Well, we are glad you asked! It is really pretty easy to get some extras when you know what you are spending your money on.

The first thing to do is anytime you spend any amount of money at all, get a receipt! It doesn't matter if you spent $1.12 on a cola at the gas station, get a receipt for it. At the end of the day, put the receipts in a large envelope. You then can periodically (ie, weekly) go through the receipts and try to categorize your spending. Categorize by food, gas, housing, etc. You will then see where your money goes.

Another important thing that you will see from this is where your money is wasted. You could discover that you are sending $35 a week on lunch when you are at work. You can then add that up to a yearly cost. For example, $35 per week, 50 work weeks per year (35x50) equals $1750. That is almost $2000 per year spending on just lunch.

Here is your chance to make a big change. We like to call these lifestyle changes. You can take your lunch to work and put that $1750 in your savings account or even the kid's college fund. (After all, if you are like us, we will need to save to send six kids to college.) That is just one example. You may have three or four spending items that you can cut out and save with. You can quickly build up a savings by reviewing your lifestyle choices and weigh them to what is more important.


It will take discipline to make that lifestyle change, but it will add up quickly and be worth it.

Saving--->Every Little Bit Helps!

It is true, every little bit you save helps. Many people get discouraged because they are not saving enough. Set a goal that you can reach. Once you reach that goal set it higher and watch your savings multiply. It takes time and discipline at a minimum. It is harder to save when you have a large family. The average large family has many needs. Sometimes in order to save more, we need to make some serious lifestyle decisions. We did it. Dawn and I sat down one day and decided to list the things that are important to us and stick with our decisions. One thing we commited to was to never have a car payment again. We have since stuck with it. We have not had a car payment in several years. This has freed up a huge amount of cash flow every month, which allows us to save much more money. We may not drive the latest cars that we can "afford", but we are able to save a substantial amount of money, but removing the car payments from our life. It has also helped us to feel more financially stable while raising a large family. We have made several other decisions since then, I'll share those in the posts to come.

Where to Start......

Having a large family can put a strain on your finances. One thing that we would like to do is to help to share the ways that we have overcome some of this strain. One of the ways that we have done this is by reading a book called Miserly Moms, by Jonni McCoy. We first picked this book up when Dawn was pregnant for our fist child more than ten years ago. Dawn and I knew that raising our children was more important than an extra income. Dawn really wanted to quit her job to stay home and raise the kids, we just needed to figure out a way that we could do it financially. We were young and starting out when a friend of mine from work recommended this to this book to me. We will do a short review of the book here. Please leave comments and let us know what has helped you.


For starters, this book is very helpful for large families because it discusses many ways to cut expenses. For example, it covers how we waste so much money without even realizing it. It also uncovers the "cost" of working. How going to that job every day costs you a lot more money then you may think. It also covers how to reduce grocery and clothing costs.

One of the best parts of the book is how to cut the grocery bill. I know in our house, the grocery bill one of the largest "black holes" of money. Ms. McCoy covers many ways to reduce the grocery bill, from making certain things homemade to not buying certain convenience items. She goes into great detail (with examples) on how much you can save. As an example, one of the little things we do is to make homemade maple syrup. It takes about as much time to make this as it does to boil water. A bottle of syrup cost $1.59, we can make the same amount for 11 cents. Now, you may be saying, not this not much of a savings. Well, if you are like my family ( 2 adults, soon to be six kids) we go through a few bottles of syrup a week. See below:

3 bottles of syrup per week 52 weeks per year.

3 x 52= 156

That's 156 bottles of syrup per year...

Store cost per year: 156 bottles x $1.59 = $248/year

Homemade cost per year: 156 bottles x $.11 = $17/year


That is a savings of about $231 per year. That could pay a winter heating bill! That is only one example, I will give more in the posts to come....

There is a tremendous amount of research that went into this book. Mrs. McCoy covers what are good deals at warehouse clubs and what are not. This book will pay for itself several times over, even if you just implement a few of the ideas in her book! If you are trying to go from two incomes to one, or just starting out and trying to save money, this book is an excellent resource.

You may be able to pick up this book at your local library, if not it is still available at Amazon . Just follow this link to go directly to Miserly Moms.

Large Family Financial Issues

This is the launch of the Large Family Financial Blog. This blog will cover financial issues that arise when raising a large family. There is so much joy and responsibility in having a bunch of little ones running around. This blog will help to sort out the details on how to make it financially while raising a large family. More details to come soon!