What would you do if all the money was gone?

Some of you may have been there before.

Some of you may be there now.

Some of you hope to never be there.

It’s the place when hard financial times hit. They may come from an un-expected catastrophe or maybe from job loss. These situations can empty your savings before you know it and leave you questioning the future… questioning everything.

So how do you respond?

How do you prepare for these times?

My grandmother grew up in the depression, she knew hard times. Many of us would roll our eyes or give her a hard time with good humor as she continued to live the rest of her life as if she was still in the depression.

She will use and re-use… and often re-use everything!

If she uses a paper towel to wipe up some water, she’d lay it out to dry because she can re-use it. Aluminum foil last her a looooong time! And one tea bag will get through a whole day!

She would save anything and everything… because you never know when you may need it.

And she would never pay for anything that she could do for herself. And if she couldn’t do it, she’d just just do without it most of the time.

She could take a bone and a few scraps of veggies and make the best tasting soup.

How she lives and how we live is such a contrast. We are such a foolish and wasteful generation and I fear that we will come full circle due to our complacency and pride.

None of us can be totally financially secure. You can have lots of safety-nets, but none of them are foolproof. All of them can be pulled out from underneath you in a short amount of time.

I’m NOT saying we should live in fear, but I am saying is:

Our trust is in the Lord, not in our bank accounts and degrees. EVERY thing that happens to us is for our good, even when it does not feel good.
We have a responsibility to be skilled. We need to know how to do things. We need to be able to work with our hands.
We need to know how to truly be resourceful. Stewardship is a huge part of a person’s character.
We need to be content with a more simple life. Consider how much time and money is wasted on things that are not really needed.

How to be More Skilled

Tackle 2 or 3 Skills a Year

Learn how to cut hair.
Cook from scratch. (Video tips here.) Get serious about grocery budgeting! Make all your own cakes rather than buy them.
Learn to grow a garden. This takes years to learn, just start out with one or two things a year. Research what grows well in your area.
Basic sewing skills. Start now and you can make a quilted throw for every family member from scraps for next Christmas.
Learn to preserve food when you grow it or buy it at a great price.
Plant fruit trees or berry bushes and learn to take good acre of them. This is free food for the future.
Winterize your home.
Learn to hunt and dress your game.
Raise chickens or rabbits.
Learn to buy things such as lumber at a reduced prices to used for repairs or to build things to sell.
Change your own oil in your car.
Learn to barter.

There are so many things we could learn to reduce our spending and dependence on the monetary economy.

1 Benefit of Being Married to a Handyman!

One of the many things my husband does is restoring homes that have been abandoned. Many times the houses are full of junk and sometimes he brings home some really cool stuff!

Sometimes they are things that he re-sells or I can use in the house.

A few years ago he brought this cabinet home. It’s a quality piece of furniture but it is very 80′s. I’ve had this in my kitchen wondering what to do with it. I stored platters in the bottom but dust was an issue.

Last year he brought this piece home and it has been waiting in his storage shed for me to decided what to do with it. It had some water damage to the back and was pretty neglected.

I decided to paint them, first using a bonding paint. I busted out the lattice and gave it a few coats of paint.

I had this eyesore of a space next to our table. We have a very small house so I am always trying to make the most of any storage space I can. I chose to shuffle my mother’s china cabinet into a bedroom out of sight (she lives with us during the winter months) and put the other cabinet into the girl’s room. I had to thin out some of my dishes and glassware (which most of it is rarely used), but it is so freeing to have less stuff. Stuff can bog you down fast, and the more people you have in a small house the harder you have to work at keeping it under control. I’d rather spend my time doing ‘people stuff’ than always cleaning and organizing THINGS!

This little kitchen spruce up cost me nothing! I used leftover paint from painting our cabinets last year and the fabric I had in my stash, and even better MY handyman husband was paid to haul this furniture off. Girls…marry a guy with real SKILLS!

Keep Your Husband Happy without Breaking a Sweat!

Even those of us that love to cook do not enjoy the heat of the kitchen during the summer! Most of us ladies are content with a salad, but not many hard working husbands are. Even after you are married the way to his heart is still through his stomach, so lets keep that spark alive yet not heat up the kitchen too much as we seek to make him happy.

PLAN AHEAD!

Plan meals that can be heated quickly, preferably without the oven or boiling water.

Cook your meats for the week in one day and then bag in ziplocks. These can be warmed up quickly in a pan with a little water.

Chicken or Steak:

Quesidillas- these cook quickly on a griddle
Strips for salads with cheese and olives
Fajitas
Gyros

Ground Beef:

Sloppy Jos
Tacos
Hamburgers

Grill It and SUPER SIZE IT!

When I grill I grill a bunch at once! Hamburgers, chicken legs, chicken breast, ribs, steaks, hot dogs, etc… Once it is grilled and cooled I package it in freezer bags and freeze, leaving out a few day’s worth meat.

On the main cooking day you can go ahead and slice onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc… that you will need for the week.

Do hearty sandwiches one or two nights a week, but be sure to have some tasty sides to make sure he doesn’t feel cheated!

Plan your sides that can be made in bulk and eat those all week with your meat already cooked!

Pasta Salad
Potato Salad
Corn on the Cob
BBQ Beans

The best way to keep the kitchen cool is to cook outside. Something as simple as putting a crockpot outside makes a huge difference!

All of this will leave you cool and refreshed for your hubby!

Wedding on a Budget: Favors - Seed Packets

Seeds are 20 cents a packet at Wal-Mart (ign

ore the 99 cent price listed there).

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Cut some strips of brown paper from some paper lunch bags.

(I LOVE my paper cutter we picked up at a yard sale!)

Add a little twine and a note, and there you have it,

a very simple gift for your guest.

These are perfect for a spring wedding!

Jeff made this wonderful box to hold the seed packets for the wedding.

He made it from pallets and an iron handle I picked up

at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago for half price!

Again, the rustic look is so easy to work with!

Free Enterprise

I love my little entrepreneur. I hear him from the other room trying to strike a deal with his 89 year old great-grandmother, he offered to tie her shoes for $1. Then his 9 year old sister scolded him for taking advantage of the elderly family member… and then says she will do it for 50 cents! Free enterprise is alive and well at the Brodock house!

Don’t constantly shower your children with all the material things they want or always pay for them to be involved in every club, activity and team. Let your children pay for some things, I promise you, they will get real creative and industrious! Great economies are built by families that know how to work!

1 Way Grown Stay-at-Home Daughters Make Money

Olivia has decided to make coupon/deal shopping for our family her part time job. The thing about a job is that you have to be committed, you have to do it even if you don’t ‘feel’ like it. I have shopped the deals from time to time, and there really is no excuse for why I don’t do it now, other than TIME. But if I were on Facebook less and surf the deals more I could make it work (there is today’s confession).

Anyway, Olivia is committed to adding to our family’s economy by shopping the deals. She spent about 4 hours making list, clipping and printing coupons, devising her shopping trip. You can’t save or make money without a good plan!

For us it is about a 45 minute drive to the good stores (which is another reason why I quit the deals). So Olivia and Emma decided to make a day of it. The two of them set out for a day of adventure, deal shopping and memory making!

You can read more about their adventure and memory making at Olivia’s blog.

She bought $191.00 worth of stuff for $41.00!!!

They make money by saving us money! This is the real stuff of life, this is what they will use when they marry!

People are always asking our daughters (21 and 18) what they do now that they are “graduated”. I want to say, “How much time do you have?” They do things just like this. Things like this free me up to spend more time with the younger children and not be so frazzled when my husband comes in from his work. Working together as a family is not easy, but it sure is good when everyone is on the same page.

I’ve written about how Family Life Makes Good Cents and this is one way to prove that!

Building a Family Economy- More Than Making Maple Syrup DVD Giveaway!

I just viewed the Moore Family’s latest DVD, More than Making Maple Syrup and I love it! Whether you really do want to learn how to make maple syrup yourself to save money or make it to sell to help build your family economy; or if you just want to see how it is done as part of your homeschool curriculum this is the video for you.

What I love most about this video is that it is made by a down-to-earth family that really does work together. What a blessing it is to see that.

Again the more skills you have, the more marketable/profitable you and your family can be.

Every Christmas my mom and grandma gives us a jug of maple syrup that comes from the tapping of the trees on my grandmother’s farm. It’s like liquid gold.

This is a great film that shows everything from the tapping, to the cooking down, to the canning of the sap/syrup.

Save $3.00 if you buy this before Feb. 29, 2012.

More Than Making Maple Syrup

The Moore family is offering a giveaway for our readers.

The giveaway winner will be announced February 24, 2012.

To enter, all you have to do is leave me a comment telling me you’d like to be entered.

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