32 What’s Actually Saving Us Money Right Now: Simple Ways We’re Spending Less & Living More Intentionally

What’s actually helping us save money right now — in real everyday life?

In this episode of Handmade Happiness, Jessica and Thomas share the simple changes and practical habits that are genuinely helping their family spend less while building a slower, more intentional lifestyle at home.

From cooking from scratch and growing more of their own food to canceling subscriptions, hanging laundry outside, and finding free summer activities for the kids, this conversation is full of realistic ideas for lowering expenses without feeling deprived.

In this episode, we talk about:

This episode is not about extreme frugality or perfection; it’s about small changes that add up and help create a more sustainable way of life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Handmade Happiness, a podcast about simple living, handmade skills, and building a life rooted in what matters most. We talk about everything from homesteading and cooking from scratch to quilting, gardening, and raising capable kids. This is a place to slow down, learn new skills, and be reminded that a meaningful life is often built in the small everyday moments. If you enjoy today's conversation, you can follow or subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. That way, new episodes will just be there when you're ready for them. Now for today's episode. Hi there and welcome to Handmade Happiness. I'm Jessica.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

I'm Thomas.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

And we are gonna embark on an episode today talking about something that's on everybody's minds lately. So gas prices keep going up.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Everything's expensive.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Everything is expensive. Um, and so when you're talking about raising a family, we've got four kids, um, lots of different stuff going on. It's important to find ways to save money, to make your dollars stretch as far as possible. Um, and so we're gonna just take some time today to share with you some of the things that we have been doing for years, not new things necessarily. Um, some things that we have talked about maybe starting, and then also we're not talking about being cheap. We're not talking about your quality of life.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Scrubble is good, cheap is bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Your quality of life, like the things that we're talking about are not things that make your quality of life suffer. Yeah, our kids don't feel like we're poor because of all the cuts that we're making in the things we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

We're not neglecting things, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Um, it's just really being intentional with where you spend your money, how you spend your money to make it go as far as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Sure. Uh I think it was Romate Sethy, and I may be butchering his name, but he wrote a book called I'll Teach You to Be Rich. And in that book, he makes this, and I'm gonna butcher the phrase also, but basically what he says is that you can spend where you want to spend, what about on the things that you care about if you're willing to cut mercilessly on the things that are not important to you. Um and I think that's been a really good guiding principle for us is just like, does this thing really matter that much to me? If not, just say no.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

That way you can say yes where where you do care.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah. Um, so I guess let's talk about the biggest way that we have started saving money over the years.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

The number one.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Um, when we looked at all of our money stuff, we were shocked to see how much money we were spending eating out.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Because we were dinks, right? We had no kids. It was me and you, and we were like, oh yeah. And then we felt we were like, man, we should have more money than this.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah, where is all of our money going?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

We looked and was like, oh, it's all going to Whataburger.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah. So one of the biggest ways that we save money is that we make everything, pretty much almost every meal at home.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

From scratch.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

From scratch. Even your like food that you eat at work, most of that is leftovers that you're packing and taking.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Um, and it's not just that we're preparing food at home, it's that we're preparing things from whole ingredients at home. So I'm not buying pre-packaged stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Um, which is it's not prepared. You're not paying someone else's labor.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Right. We're taking just ingredients and creating the meals ourselves, and so it's saves a ton of money uh doing that.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah, it's been really good. I think um one of the things that we do sometimes in the American Uber capitalist society that we live in is we think somehow we're trading up when we spend our time to make money to pay someone else for their time.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Right? And so we buy things that are labor-added products, right? We're buying prepared things, pre-made things, pre-done things, and we think, oh, this is so convenient. But you pay for that convenience, and then literally you're spending your time to make money so that you can spend that money on convenience to get time back. It's dumb, right? It's a bad cycle. Yeah, because the other thing is you will always lose out on that transaction. It's not a one-for-one. The companies that are selling you those products specifically price their products so that you lose in that trade, right? Even if you're making a lot of money per hour, you go to work for half an hour to make 15 bucks, but then you turn around and pay $14 for a combo at the drive-thru, you could have spent 10 minutes packing a lunch at home. You see where I'm going, right? Like that's just it's it's not a good math equation. You lose every time.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

So that the food was, and most people, if you are honest and you look at your budget and you look at how much money you're spending on food, it's probably not like a hundred dollars or a couple of hundred dollars. For a lot of people, it's like seven or eight hundred dollars or more, depending on your income. Because some people obviously just can't go out more because they don't have the money, right? But most people, when they realize just how much money they're spending on pre-made food, it's usually in the area of between four and eight hundred dollars a month. That's a solid car note or two. Yeah, and yeah, that's where your money's going. Yeah, hands down, that's always the number one leak, unless you have like a gambling addiction or something along those lines.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah. So we save a ton of money by making our own food. And then recently we've even increased those grocery savings um by doing a couple of things. So we chose to spend some money on a grain mill. Um, but that money that we spent now has enabled us to purchase various grains in bulk to grind for fresh milk flour. And we didn't do that with this idea of saving money. That wasn't why we did it. We did it because we wanted the nutrition and the flavor and all the benefits of having fresh milk flour.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

But that is a collateral benefit.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

But it has been a lot less expensive. Um, it's my I we can buy those 25-pound bags of grains I buy, depending on which grain I'm buying, those range between, you know, 20 to 30 dollars. So I mean most of the things are around a dollar a pound. Um, and I'm getting tremendous value. Those those bags of grain go a long ways.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Yeah, and even the flour that you're buying at the store, even if you're buying high-end flour, uh, it's still treated, it's still generally bleached, or you know, there it's it's a somewhat processed food. It's not whole wheat. Even if you're buying whole wheat, it's just not you're not getting all the nutrients, they're taking stuff out, and you're paying. Uh I think we did the math on it, and it comes out we pay roughly half of what it would cost us to buy flour as opposed to buying grain and grinding it ourselves. But we're getting massively more nutrients, better quality ingredient, um, and saving that money.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

It's a win-win-win. And you and it's virtually impossible to find spelt flour and some of those others that we're able to do for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

A lot of the ones that we have, um, you can really price if you buy them. Crazy pricey if you buy them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Because of the lack of mass market. And that's the other thing is we're able to do things that are not off the shelf, you know, as for as many options as Walmart has, um, a lot of times it's just different flavors. It's just different, different than the same thing, right? You have six brands of flour, but it's all white flour, so you know, yeah. Uh, and we're able to do some other things. Corn that cornmeal that you made. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

She made cornbread, ground her own corn, made cornbread. It was absolutely it actually tastes like corn. Yeah, yeah. So good.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Um, so that's been huge. Um, another thing that we spent money on, but that has saved us a lot of money and will continue saving us money. So with our garden now, we're starting to bring in some of the fruit, the vegetables, the rewards of those things that we have been working towards. But um rather than so, first of all, we're not just buying those produce items. Um, and especially if we were gonna go buy that organic produce, it would have been very expensive.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Because ours is organic.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, zero sprays, zero. Um, so if we were gonna buy those things in the store, it would be very expensive. If we were gonna buy those plants to plant in our garden, it'd be pricey, it would have been cheaper than buying the organic produce from the grocery store, but it still would have been expensive.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So we spent money to put a shelf in the basement with a bunch of grill lights. We started with a few grow lights, we added grill lights so that we could expand what we started. We started lots of seeds.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Um, we have gosh, a garden full of stuff that's going to return us so much. Oh, yeah, in groceries. And then I've been able to take the excess of what we started and sell it at the farmer's market to even recoup some of that money that we spent on those things.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

That's a good point because not only did you not buy seedlings, because again, it's it's easy, right? We do that because it's easy. Those are already healthy little plants, and I'm just popping in the green.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

And so people at the markets, they're paying me three dollars for a tomato plant or for a pepper plant or for an herb. They're paying me like three dollars for the tiny little three-inch pot. Um a lot of those seeds I didn't even pay three dollars for the entire package of seeds.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

You didn't pay three dollars for the dirt and the seeds and the containers, most likely.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

No, I'm not saying like I I planted, say I have a hundred tomato seeds in a package, and so I get a hundred tomato plants, and I'm taking this one and selling it for three dollars, and that covers all of my tomatoes that I put out in my garden.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah. Um, and the grow lights and the shelf and stuff like that, that's reusable, right? So that's not a per year investment. That's not sunk cost, that's that's an investment in infrastructure that we're gonna use for years and years and years. And probably we could be even more efficient with it if we like added some reflective, you know, barrier and stuff to keep increase that lighting so we can have more plants in there in that space.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

As we continue to develop our own compost and stuff, where I can use some of our own.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah, because we've had to buy dirt because we didn't have compost yet, but now that we're working there. Um, and so again, some of those things also get even cheaper as you go. Um, and like you said, with the plants, you can sell a few plants and pay for all the plants that we grew. Um, in fact, we've paid for our garden just selling plants, really. And um, not to mention, when you go pick however many metric tons of tomatoes we're gonna have this year, those we can sell tomatoes. We can put back all the tomatoes. We're gonna eat all the tomatoes.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

But I'm not gonna have to buy them out of the grocery store when we make soups and chilies and pasta sauces and pizzas and a three-dollar pack of seeds.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a big win.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah. Um, so we could talk about this topic of food for a long time. But let's go ahead and shift to something else. So summer is upon us.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Um, so out of school. Kids are out of school, everybody's like, moms are already cringing, thinking about the I'm bored, there's nothing to do. Can we go do something? Like it's great. Kids want to go do something. And those things can be expensive. Can be very expensive. We have found a lot of things that we can do for free or for practically free, um, that the kids enjoy a ton, they have a lot of fun. Um, so we are still getting out, doing fun things. They feel like they're having all of these experiences, but it's not costing us a crazy amount of money.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

I think, and we're gonna get into this topic, but I think one of the things that happens, again, because we live in America, a lot of people have inadvertently accustomed their kids to high-end entertainment. Right? So they say, Oh, are we gonna do something this week? What they mean is, are we going to Dave and Buster's or are we going to the movies? Or like, right, going out and paying for entertainment. There's nothing wrong with doing that. We're going to the movies this weekend.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

But if that's your go-to, what happens is what should be a special, unique experience, you know, once in a blue moon type of thing, that kind of becomes the norm, and your kids become jaded. So when you say something like, We can go to the library and get books, they look at you like you're crazy, right? But that's the problem, is that we've artificially we've priced out things like that, right? Yeah. We've created a scenario where they they have zero desire to do an outing to the park or the zoo or you know, whatever, because oh, but but we could go do this amazing cool thing. Well, you could, but that costs a ton of money. And if you're constantly s just shilling out that cash because you think you have to buy happiness, at some point you start having to, right? Because now they're like, oh, we don't want to do any of those things.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

And you set yourself up for failure.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

And they're not getting, they're not learning to find the joy in things like reading a good book, taking a walk in a beautiful place. All those things. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah. So you've already mentioned some of them, but some of the things that we do with the kids, um, every summer, pretty much every library across America has some sort of summer reading program for kids.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

With prizes.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

With prizes to motivate your kids to want to go, and they will bring in special guests and do special activities and all kinds of things. So um, the library is always a big part of our summer. We usually during the summertime we go to the library at least once a week.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, if not a couple of times.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

The kids can spend time actually doing things there at the library, and then we also bring things home with us.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

They often do like something every day of the week. They have some sort of program going on.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

And some of it, to you know, just being frank, some of it won't appeal to all of your kids, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

It's generally geared towards younger ones, great schoolers, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

But that being said, they still have like our our library is fantastic, and they have, you know, chessboards and computers, and there's all there's a lot of different stuff besides just going and finding a book.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

That has been something that we have done with our kids from the very beginning. Oh, yeah. Since our first was born. Like, as soon as we were able to toddle around, we were going to the library and experiencing books and we had there. So um, the library is a great thing. There's also, we have gotten to take advantage of a lot of things that would have cost our family a lot of money. Um, many of the museums and things offer free days. So when when we're in Houston, free is awesome. The Museum of Natural Science, the Kids' Museum, the Art Museum, all of those places, it would be pricey for us to take our family of six.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

But every one of those places has hours each week that are free admission to the public.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

A lot of times it's like on a Tuesday or a day, you know, a kind of a lower attendance day, and so they offer free admission for homeschoolers or free admission for people under the age of 12 between the hours of noon and four or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Um, so again, if you plan ahead a little bit, yeah. And that makes a great outing. Because those are really, I mean, like when we were in Houston, we used to go, Museum of Natural Science is phenomenal. That's a world-renowned museum. You get in it for free, and to be honest, you don't want to be there more than four hours. Well, I mean, I would, but like your six-year-old doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Right? So go do it and they check it out, see the dinosaurs, and then even here are museums.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

We've gotten to take advantage of some of them for free.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

With passes that we're able to get from the library.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Oh, yeah, you can check out.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

And so just if you're willing to look a little bit, dig a little bit, you can often find um discounts that make these things very inexpensive or free to be able to do with your family.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Well, and on the topic of being inexpensive, we mentioned that we're going to the movies this weekend, right? Because there's a movie that we want to see and it's important to everybody.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

But if you go to Costco, you can get or Sam's Club or like Big Discount discount.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Costco's not a sponsor, but you know, call us. Um you can get discount cards for movie theaters and things so that you can buy it for it. Basically, it's like 25% discount. Um, so for the six of us to go to a movie and buy popcorn and drinks, we're well over a hundred dollar bill. Or, you know, around a hundred dollar bill, because 15 bucks a ticket plus popcorn and it's egregious. But anyway, if you go to Costco, you buy the combo pack, you get two tickets, and you get a $20 gift card, and you end up saving about $10 per pair of tickets. Um, and so we end up saving $30 or $40 for our outing.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

And it's it ends up being a super good value. Still not something we're gonna do on a weekly basis, but if you're gonna do it, why not say $30?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah. And then we've also purchased like season passes to our local zoo and some other things from those places. So you can often find discounts, groupons, things like that, that you can still do those things, have that fun experience, um, but not pay full price. If you're just willing to kind of plan ahead and look for those savings. I want to jump in right here, really quickly, to let you know that registration is now open for our foundations and quilting course at the Lark Life. This is a semester-long online course designed especially for beginners and homeschool families who want to learn quilting and sewing skills step by step in a simple and approachable way. Not only will you learn a variety of quilting techniques and create your own quilt, but you'll also learn to make other fun projects like a quilted tote bag, slippers, and a notebook cover. One of the things that I'm most excited about is the community aspect of this course. You won't just be watching videos alone. You'll be able to ask questions, share your projects, get feedback, and learn alongside the other families who are building these skills too. And right now, if you register early and use promo code launch20, you'll receive 20% off tuition plus get instant access to sewing 101, sewing machine basics, and the beginner quilt lab. Take advantage of the founding member pricing before tuition increases. If you've been wanting to learn to quilt, this course was truly created for you. You can find all of the details and register at thelarklife.com, and I'll also put a link in the show notes. Now back to our episode.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

I think one of the other things that we've done that has saved us a lot of money over the years, especially over time, um, we have very few streaming services. I know I know people that have HBO and Paramount and Peacock and ESPN and all the on and on and on. And when you start adding $10, $15, $20 a month per service, plus they've got Netflix and they've got, you know, um, we do have Amazon Prime, which more than pays for itself just in the shipping that we don't pay. Um and we have Disney Plus because the content is it's not just cartoons, right? There's a ton of the movies that we would watch anyway, are on there. Our kids enjoy it. Um for us, there's a lot of value there.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And because we're not going out to the movies, right? A lot of times we wait till the movie night on Friday hits Disney Plus, and then we have movie night at home and we watch it. So it does still save us about money without, again, without totally saying, no, we're not gonna watch movies.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Right, and then we watch, we have Tubi and whatever else that are like those are free streaming services, and you gotta watch a commercial or something. But the point is that you know, find the ones that are valuable to you. If you're a movie fan and you're a single person or something, you watch you like the shows on HBO, okay, get HBO, but don't have Disney Plus, also, right? Like pick and choose what's of value to you and get rid of the rest. Because you don't you shouldn't be watching that much TV anyway, to be honest. Right? Yeah, don't waste your time.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Another thing that we don't do that helps us save money is we don't just go randomly like when we're bored, we don't go out just go look at the stores because if you go out and you're gonna find something. Um you're burning gas to get to those places, and then you're looking around, somebody's gonna want to buy something. You're gonna end up being out and everybody's gonna be hungry and time to eat, so then you're gonna end up finding when there's plenty of stuff for us to do around here, um, in addition to just, you know, keeping up with the house and the garden and the animals and all the things, we have games that we play, right? The mini bikes and things. Right, yeah, there's lots of things that we can do here, and so simply by choosing not to even leave, um, we save a lot of money that way.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Yeah. We there are also some things that we have are in the process of starting.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Um, one of the big things is now that our daughter is working and driving, my work schedule's changing, her schedule's getting more and more dense with classes and things, you know, just even planning things that need to be done out in the future, product that needs to be made and stuff. So um we have started working on a community calendar to where, and we just use Google Calendar, there's a lot of easy solutions, DAC board and some others that have free options. But just so we have a central way in our house where anybody at home can go pick up the day and go, Oh, mom has a class tonight, or oh, dad's working late, or Bella goes to work at

SPEAKER_00 22:00

This time. We have an appointment today at this time. Right. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

We have dentist appointments today, correct? Yeah. Right. So that everybody's on the same page and it helps us keep from getting wires crossed and being frustrated, uh, which ultimately saves us time and money.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Um, because we just we don't waste effort, or it it helps us plan like meals and things like that to where we're not going, oh, we don't get caught and we're like, oh, I guess we'll just swing through and get Wendy's. Because if you've ever got swing through and get wendy's for a family of six, yeah, it's like 50 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

When when most of them eat like adults, oh my god, yeah, because they're not getting like I want the Nuggy Kids meal.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

It's like, no, I want the number two biggie size with big frosty. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

But if they get whatever they want, it's way more than that.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Yeah, and so so again, it just helps us not get caught off guard, which ends up being expensive.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Um, the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

And I want to say about that calendar, so kind of what sparked the idea for us starting this, not just our need for it, but for the last few years, we've seen there's more and more companies that are providing like a tablet display that has the software built into it. Yeah, and it pulls pulls your calendars automatically. They're beautiful, and we're like, oh, that would be so nice, but you have to pay a subscription service. And we were like, okay, is there a way that we can still achieve this and get the things we want without having to be tied to that monthly subscription service? And lo and behold, yes, there was a lot of ways. Um lots of ways to do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

And I won't get into that because that's not this episode, but that's yeah. I mean, we we found a couple of ways that we could do it. We found the way we think it's gonna work for us, and so we're putting it together.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

I think that's kind of been one of those underlying things for us, and I see it even in our kids. When we see something that we are interested in, that we like, that we want.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Can we hack it and do it for free too?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah, it's like, can we hack it? Can we make it? And I think a lot of that even I I think back to like my papa, yeah, and he was always hacking because he could hack it for free. Making whatever he likes, he he would tell me all the time, oh, that's you can buy it, but that's expensive, and the pieces are junk and it falls apart. But like, you can take this cheap thing and put it together with this cheap thing, and it works way better, and it's never gonna die.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

And it's I I watched him fix a machine one time, it needed a bushing or something.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

And he was like, I ain't gonna buy no dang bushing for they wanted $12 down there at Home Depot. So he went and found something he had in the garage that had some brass on it, went, ran it through the machine, cut himself a new bushing. He was like, That's about the right size, stuck it in there, and that sucker ran for another 10 years. Oh, yeah, and he didn't cost him a red cent because he probably salvaged that thing from a you know, and so probably some of that like just has carried over.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

And so I I watch even our kids will be out in public somewhere and they'll see something and they're like, Oh, I think I can make it. Yeah, we can make that, and I'm like, Yeah, so that that also saves us a lot of money. Just thinking, like, is there a way that we can do this for ourselves a little less expensively?

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Can we can we hack it? Uh clothesline, that's another big one that we're about to put up. I don't know why we haven't done it, just because I haven't gotten to it, but yeah, um, that's a super easy fix. Most people have a tree. If you got, I mean, you don't even need a tree. If you have two posts, two T-posts, you know, or a couple of things.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Put a pole in the ground and run the yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Uh, you know, it's it's really not a difficult project. And you string a rope between the top and go with it. If you want to do it right, concrete some posts, some T-posts, and the actual T-shaped posts. But again, it's it's a super cheap solution, and you can hang your laundry and it'll smell better.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And the sun helps with the stains and all of the stuff.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

And you don't spend the electricity running your dryer, especially if you live somewhere where electricity is at a premium. I know some people talk about their seven and eight hundred dollar electric bills, and I just can't like that makes me gag in my mouth a little bit. But um, especially if you live in those kind of areas, like people in California, all you have is sunshine. Like, why would you not hang your laundry, right? So um, and then also I think it's okay. We don't want to sound like we're like we never spend any money. Again, we're going to the movies this weekend, right? It's okay for you to spend money on things that you care about. The trick is not spending it when you don't care.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Right? Don't just go, like you said, don't go find something to buy.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Don't retail therapy. No.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

I'm not gonna Uber Eats deliver cookies to my house when I can just make some cookies.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

People complaining about being broke and they Uber they door dash the crumble cookies to their house. Yeah, like no.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Well, like we just bought our son a drum set for his birthday. Um it's something that he's been wanting for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

That was pretty awesome of us.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

It it was makes us pretty awesome parents. We didn't just go out and buy a brand new one, we didn't go to the music shop or order one online. Um, I found somebody who had a good one, like almost like the nice set, yeah. Um, but for a fraction of the price because it was being sold to use online. And so we were able to give him this thing that really we wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. Yeah. Um, and so he still gets to do do that thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Well, and that's one of those things where letting someone else's retail therapy mistakes become your bargain fines.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

That's look, a fool and his money, right? If somebody went and they spent five or six hundred dollars on a drum kit and then they realized they didn't play drums and didn't have time, and then we buy it for you know a third of that, uh, yay us, right? I mean that Oh yeah. I don't know what to tell you, right? But but you can either be the person that paid for the drums and didn't play them, or you can be the person who bought their kit of drums that looks like really awesome parents and paid a third of what you would have paid. Uh, make your choice, right? So, and I think sometimes people have an aversion to like used things because, oh, but I just I want to get because we Americans love the new shiny on everything, and it's like, you know what I love is $400 that I didn't shill out for brand new drums that are literally in the same condition.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

And I didn't have to figure out how I was gonna get all of that packaging in the trash can. Yeah, trash tank things.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Exactly. So um, what's uh what's some other things? Ice cream.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

We love ice cream, we love ice cream a lot.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

We we unapologetically eat ice cream almost as much as we do butter. Um but so I can buy a bucket of ice cream for six or seven bucks, Bluebell, not blue bunny. Blue bunny is an abomination.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

We don't buy the cheapest ice cream, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:29

We buy the good stuff, yeah. But all six of us can eat ice cream two or three times out of a six or seven dollar bucket of ice cream.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

And that bucket of ice cream is about the same price as if we took them to an ice cream shop.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

For one ice cream.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

One ice cream at the ice cream shop.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah, if you go to normal slab and get the double scoop.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Every now and then we will take them to the ice cream shop. Yeah, but most of the time we're just gonna buy a bucket and we'll get cones or toppings or whatever to make it special and fancy and they love it.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

And we pay a fraction of the cost. Because again, I think right now at Andy's, if we you and I go to ice cream, it's like six something for one ice cream. That's a whole bucket of ice cream. We can all eat ice cream with cones for the price of that. So again, we spend money in the places that it's important to us, where it really brings value to our life, right? Like really makes us happy. And then we just say no.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

And that's hard for a lot of people to say no, but you gotta, it's a skill, you gotta practice it. No, I don't need that thing right now.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

It's I'll be all right. Really just about if you kind of take the time to be intentional with what you're doing with your money. Yeah. Kind of pay attention to where it's going. Are you happy with where it's going? And then again, things are very expensive now. So rather than complaining about how expensive everything is, do what works. Figure out ways that you can stretch those dollars to kind of make up for that inflation and the the high prices of some of some of the things that are out there.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

And look, there's things that like I think we've we've talked about this before. For some people, eating lunch out every day might be the economical option. And I'm I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario where that would be the case. But like if you're always on the run and you know, or if you're always entertaining clients and you're eating on your work dime, then guess what? That's the economical option. Use your some company credit card and eat that free lunch. But everybody's scenario is different, right? So for us, we buy ice cream and we have Disney Plus. For some people, they don't like ice cream, but they're always gonna have fresh press you know, grape juice or something in their fridge because that's their jam. Okay, that makes you happy, then great, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

One like we love tea and coffee, but we're not going out to the shops to buy it, we're making it ourselves at home because it's and so I buy beans and I make nice ground from whole bean pour over coffee.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Makes me happy. It's a fraction of the cost of buying it at the coffee shop.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Again, so your quality of life is not suffering. It's no, not at all. I just remembered one more thing that we talked about as we were kind of planning this episode. So now that we're homeschooling the kids, homeschool curriculum can be very expensive. If you look at these homeschool curriculum companies, they'll put together these whole grade level kits.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Here's this package. You need all of this.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Over a thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Without any videos or technology, it's just like the books. Um, and when you have four kids, that's a lot of money. Yep. Um, and so some things that I have done, I just kind of pick and choose the pieces that I want. You don't I've discovered you don't have to have that whole kit.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

No, you don't need all the workbooks and the teacher workbooks.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

A lot of times homeschool families will list and resell their used curriculum that they've already bought. Oh, yeah. And so rather than paying full price, and these companies are not updating these things every year.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

No.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

So you can get the same exact edition that you were gonna buy for a quarter of the price or less um if you're willing to just kind of look around. And so we've done a lot of that, and then again, realizing I don't have to have the reading textbook because I have a library full of library full of books. Um, that honestly has quality literature that I would much rather my children read that than what they're doing. Oh, the like package excerpts from in a reading textbook at school. For sure. Um, and so there's lots of ways there, even that we have been able to say that.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

For every student that has, say, a seventh grade math, somewhere there's a kid who was in sixth grade last year and has a sixth grade math book that they don't need anymore. And if you're doing, say, sacks, well, most of them now, right? You're not necessarily writing in a in the book. You can just write on notebook paper. It's not it's literally not even easier. And um again, you buy that book for less than half.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

And a lot of times I find even or just swap even somebody's gonna do it. Maybe somebody who'll trade bought the curriculum thinking they were gonna use it and then they didn't end up using it. So you can even buy the workbooks, the those kind of uh expendable, disposable workbooks and again for a fraction of the brand new price.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

And and this is you know kind of depends on your situation if you can find it, but there are places, churches, some churches have a library, some I know when I was growing up, um, because we were super nerds, uh, our church had a like a curriculum library where if I had a Saxon math book that I didn't need anymore, we could donate that to that library, and then I could also check out the next year that I needed. Um, and that's free. So again, you can uh there are so many resources and co-ops and and what have you. You might even find some of it at the library, yeah. Um, just depending on your library.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

So yeah. Anyway, so lot lots of ways to stretch dollars these days.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Yeah. So the biggest one is don't eat out. Like by far. Don't eat out. Just cook you something good at the house.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Plan that time.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

If you don't have the time, ask yourself why.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Over dinner.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Over dinner, for sure. Yeah. So I think that's about it for for this week.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Yeah, I think that's all we got. Go on a date. We're going on a date this weekend.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

That's a great place to actually spend money. Don't spend money on steak for your kids. Pearls before swine. Take your wife out to a steak dinner. You'll get much better return on your investment. You'll spend a whole lot less money. It'll be great.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

It's gonna be awesome. So hope you guys are thriving this week and enjoy the podcast. Speaking of curriculum.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Yeah. Um our quilting curriculum, yes, which launches in August, is officially available for sale. So um we officially launched everything at a homeschool convention last weekend. To teach them well, um, which was awesome. The feedback was phenomenal. Like families are so excited.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

A lot of good feedback.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

This resource available for their kids.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

And so people already signing up.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

People are already signing up. I've got, you know, kids of all ages gonna be a part of it, um, moms gonna be doing it either by themselves or with their kids.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Uh, just real quick, uh, it's not just for kids. So it's not a curriculum that's geared for just like a your eight-year-old. It's a it's a comprehensive course of study to make a quilt from start to finish, and if you're 65 or 15, or I mean, realistically 10, 18, my company target recommended like between 10 to 18, so that they can work independently. But it's not it's not dumped down in any way, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

That's it's totally if you're an adult who wants to learn, you can I'm starting like from the very beginning as a social, know nothing. Um, so that people who are starting there can be a part of it and yeah, so yeah. So I will put a link in the show notes for that. You can go to thelarklife.com, it's foundations and quilting. There's a big tab at the top. It's like the first thing plastered on the homepage of the website.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

And if you feel like videos are not going to be quite enough, you're gonna need to talk to somebody and show them, be like, I made this, is it right? Like, um, there's a tier for that as well, right? So if you want to have a conversation with her about what you're making and how best to approach it, we we have that as well. So yeah, anyways, I'm excited about it. It's really good.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

I'm so excited. Like, I I was excited before, but then after being at the conference and talking with so many families and seeing they like they were they were even more excited than I am about it. And so I'm like, this is gonna be so fun. So yeah, so check it out.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah, anything else you got?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Uh I we'll probably leave it there for this week.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Sounds good. Stay cool, kids.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Thank you for choosing to spend some of your time with us. If you've been enjoying the podcast, one of the simplest ways to support us is by telling a friend and leaving a review wherever you're listening. It helps more people find these conversations, and it truly means a lot for us to hear how our stories are impacting you. You can also go to thelarklife.com slash podcast. There you'll find an option to give a small one-time or ongoing gift. And it helps support the time, tools, and energy that go into creating these episodes. Until next time.