Not only do you have to work and carry on your normal routine, but you have to be extra jolly or you are a Scrooge.  You have to be extra giving or you are a Scrooge, damn the budget!  You have to be extra helpful and happy, damn the work and family sickness or you’ll be labeled a Scrooge!  No one wants to be a Scrooge, right?  He wasn’t the richest person in town for nothing you know!  He worked!  He made people pay their bills!  And man oh man, do I hate to pay my bills!

I’ve come up with my own Top Ten version of surviving the holidays.  I hope this is helpful and inspiring!

10.  The month before Christmas spend all the extra money you have on eliminating wire-eating squirrel habitats.  This will help your stress load when it comes to spending money on gifts.

9.  After Thanksgiving, have your child get very sick.  There’s always the extra money for the medicine and the retired mother-in-law will be perfectly willing to come to town to stay with him.  This will build good relations with family and give your child time with his grandmother when he is feeling his worst.

8.  After the retired mother-in-law contracts an unknown illness from your child and is miserable,  rely on her for future help.  This will also build good family relations.

7.  After your child is well and back in daycare, have your husband come down with a horrible illness that the doctor says is highly infectious.  The doctor won’t know what it is, just that it’s horribly infectious.  This will help you after your long days at work with the nightly childcare duties as you have to keep father and son apart.  This will help you sleep at night too.

6.  While your husband is home in bed horribly ill, have your child have a recurrence of his previous sickness, only worse.  Since your mother-in-law is now ill and work is not happy that you’ve been taking time off to take care of your husband, you sick son will have to stay with your sick husband who can barely stand.  Have your sick husband take your sick child to the pediatrician as well.  This will leave you guiltily at work and your sick husband will take on all the responsiblity.  It’ll build his holiday character.

5.  Have your pediatrician forbid your child to go to daycare.  You will now have no option to stay home because your office is tired of you taking off, your husband will have to go back to work because it is a new job and he has a ton of work waiting from being out sick.  Your retired mother-in-law has still not recovered from the bug she caught the last time she was here so that will leave you to think of the only person left, your mother.  Perfect!

4.  Have your mother beg favors from her co-workers and take time off from her work so that the guilt mounting is much greater than normal for using/abusing her free babysitting.  This will build that good morale fiber so necessary to becoming something other than Scrooge!

3.  Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the family getting sick be sure to do all your holiday shopping.  Take lots of time in the two hours you have free each weekend to think what gift would be especially relevant and wonderful for the person you are getting it for.  This will make everyone around you realize that you aren’t Scrooge but a wonderful, creative and talented gift-giver that everyone looks forward to seeing at the holidays.

2.  Exactly one week before Christmas realize that you have had this weird sinus infection for over a month and it isn’t going away.  Contemplate getting sick on your holiday vacation as your body will wind down and everyone else will feel better and want to play. 

1.  One week before Christmas realize that you haven’t properly prepared for the Christmas meal yet.  That will mean more shopping and of course money that wasn’t exactly budgeted for.

*Extra tip:  In the month of December, be sure to read and watch all the daily news as it will inspire and help you to have that wonderful Christmas spirit.  The Scrooge in you will surely be put to rest then.

~Life as Mom

I’d love to hear your holiday Scrooge-fighting tips as well! 

Last month we were having problems with squirrels eating their way throught both our vehicles.  YES – Squirrels!  The nests of horded acorns in the engines were proof positive the wires that were eaten clean through were indeed- squirrels.

After getting my SUV fixed, then getting my husband’s truck fixed – TWICE – we went on the warpath!  We spend a ton of money at LOWES buying every kind of rodent deterent on the market.  The bait poisen was the squirrel’s favorite.  The squirrels added that to their nests in our engines.  Apparently it’s a treat to them and they were going to save for the winter.

Conclusion?!  The tree in the middle of our driveway had to come down.  This is not a picturesque circle drive with a tree in the middle.  This is a tree right in front of the carport in which we have to carefully circumvent even to park our car under the carport.  I’m not sure why the previous owners did their driveway that was as our neighbor said they couldn’t even figure out how to park their own cars. 

The tree is most inconvenient at best and at worst?  SPIDERS!  Millions of them descend from the tree all the time and made webs from the tree to the carport, to the house, to the cars.  I HATE SPIDERS!  Oh yea, and not to mention wire-eating squirrels that use our carport and engines as toilets. 

We called a tree guy.  He could do it right away.  Kevin asked him some questions about the million other trees in our yard.  Guest what?!  We have the great-grandmother of all poisen-ivy tree-vines in our yard. As well as other little poisen ivy babies growing up everywhere!  And, not to mention, a couple of dead trees.

Kevin is extremely allergic to poisen ivy.  It’s gotten so bad that he gets it every time he mows now.  It’s not something your immune system gets accustomed to apparently.  Now we know why he was getting it everytime he walked outside!

We got the poisen ivy removed, the tree in the driveway is gone and HOPEFULLY the squirrels will leave our cars alone.  Oh I forgot, we have flying squirrels too,  according to the tree guys.  They all flew out of the tree that was chopped down and moved to the other side of the yard.

These were major expenses that were unexpected and not welcome.  Between fixing the cars and removing the offending tree and great-grandmother poisen ivy we will have to cut back on Christmas.  Such is life right?

Yesterday morning, Kevin sat straight up in bed.  I asked “What’s wrong?’  He said “I think we have a mouse in here!”

Next Week:  Part II: Nature Attacks: The House with the Mouse.

~Life as Mom

1) Try to be proactive

It is sometimes difficult to “catch wind of something” or be at the water-fountain rumor mill at the right time. So this first one can be hard to do. The key here is as soon as you hear that a reduction in your household income is going down or is threatened then start the cutting expenses immediately.

2) Cut Cable / Satellite / IPTV

Whichever entertainment drug lord medium supplies your boob tube with crack, consider cutting it off or reducing your channels. We currently have cable feeding our house and we have opted to use less channels and have the 800-number handy to phone the cable company for a complete disconnect of service. In the end you do not need cable. Besides, with all this conversion from Analog to Digital TV signals, the local channels have more than doubled their offerings of stations anyway. If you are like me, you will need to get a “tacky looking” antenna to get the new digital signals and in this instance I have to spend money to save money. Finally, for those of you that live in communities with deed restrictions on antennas. It is time to start a coup against the board to allow antennas. This touches on my dislike for community associations, sure they keep the neighbor from having  a car on blocks in the front yard but it costs you money either monthly, quarterly or yearly. Even if you have your house paid off you still have to pay the community in which you live to be there. Associations are not for me and I was lucky enough to find an older neighborhood with a newer house that did not have a home owners association. But, I digress…

3) Reduce phone bill

Cable companies and phone companies are businesses with the intention to make profit. Now that we have that obvious reminder, let’s move on to my point. The phone packages deemed all-in-one bundled services are crafted to extract as much money out of you while still sounding like a good deal as they can. I keep my phone line at the basic line, no caller id or call interrupt options. I keep long distance to a pay-per-use item to avoid the monthly reoccurring charge. Besides, why have a cell phone with long distance and a house phone with long distance. It is like you are paying for long distance twice. The only thing I currently splurge on is internet and that is with two reasons in mind. I am getting more entertainment out of my Home Theatre PC (www.hulu.com) now that my cable is reduced. Also, I am in the IT field and my connection back to work needs to be fast in times of server problems. In the end if times get hard enough my internet connection can and will be reduced to a lower speed.

4) Reduce carbon footprint

The term carbon footprint is yet another overused buzz word fad so to keep up with the times I will continue the fad. The term as it applies to your home expenses is simple. Look for ways to reduce your electricity and water expense. This topic can probably be the area where someone spends the most  money to save money. You could approach this as, let’s replace the water heater, the frig, the oven, the washing machine, the washer, the dryer and lets get solar panels on the roof, yikes! All of those ideas of replacement items can be considered and will save money in the long run. But, in my case we want to simply change our behavior in regards to how much we use our current electrical consuming and water excreting devices. So go to www.lowes.com and get a new shower-head that saves water and check all your faucets for leaks. I personally can not wait until new techniques for developing solar panels hits the market so the average house can finally afford the damn things.

5) Stop paying for garbage

I realize this option is very specific and more an option for folks in rural areas. We are lucky enough to live outside the city limits by about 3 miles so that we are not forced to pay for refuse pickup in our taxes every year. We pay quarterly to have a garbage can that is picked up weekly. We have the option to stop this practice and begin to take our garbage to the county dump not too far away.

6) Child recycling stores and garage sells (www.craigslist.com)

If you can bare the thought to not have the latest and greatest fashion on your child at all times then I recommend looking into companies that recycle baby and child clothing. They offer great prices on not too terribly used outfits that other babies wore for two seconds as they raced towards toddler-hood. If you do not have a company like we do (www.weecycle.com) then the weekend garage sells are your best bet for used, cheap child items.

7) Do not eat out

So the fine art of making a meal at home has been lost forever with our baby booming parents. Their parents taught them about how to ration in times of war. Those days are over! I would love to see Americans try and go back to the days of sacrificing for the greater good of the country. We are a country that loves fast meals and fast food. It is much easier to just eat out. But wait, the boss just called and your pay is reduced by 20% and you can only work 4 eight-hour days. It is time to consider the 6lb bag of chicken breasts from SAM’s Club with rice and beans as a daily meal. While we are at it let’s take out those eggs and grits and do a dinner breakfast. Now we are talking and we are saving money!

Pizza, Mexican and Chinese food is your friend

OK, so in the previous recommendation I said stop eating out but let’s say the boss is only reducing your pay by 2%. Now eating out is still on the table and let’s consider the places we frequented as college students. Authentic Mexican joints are some of the cheapest food I know. It is usually great tasting and who does not like queso dip! Chinese food is also in the category of cheap food, mmm… beef and broccoli. Yes I will take a number 25 with an egg roll. Finally, pizza is another great cheap food. Try to stick to the one topping options and not the supreme line.

9) Snowball your debt payments

This is probably a well passed around recommendation but after talking to some friends, they recommended the idea of snowballing your debt payments. In other words, work on your small debts with as much extra income as possible until it is paid off then move to the next debt payment and tack on the previous bill’s payment to that as well. After some great patience you will get your debt paid down.

10) Cut retirement but be very specific about it

I am sure someone reading this will consider this the worst advice I could possibly give and there is a reason why this is the last recommendation in my list. But keep an open mind about it. The money that we have been putting towards retirement is taking a diversion at this point. We did the paperwork to stop retirement contributions to 401k’s and the Roth IRA when we heard the potential of salary cuts. In the mean-time we have been putting the same amount that would have gone to retirement into our savings account instead. As soon as we see the outcome of all our companies budget reductions then we will decide to either put all the retirement money in savings back into our retirement funds or utilize the retirement assets to bridge the 10% cut in household income. This situation will also force us to completely cut cable, cut back on internet speed service and cell phones.

Conclusions

I know everything that I mentioned here is not going to work for everyone. This has been my family’s view on what we need to do to take care of ourselves and raise a happy healthy baby. I hope some of you can get something from my thoughts presented here. My final thought is that when our country gets out of this slump it would be a good idea to not go and bring back all your past monthly expenses right away.  I mean who does not like High Definition stations! Instead, use the savings to pay off debt. The only way I think I am going to stick with the debt payoff plan is to keep telling myself, once all the debt is gone I can buy as many gadgets as I want to. In irony all my tactics here are very non-consumerism but I am just as gadget nut at heart.

~Life as Dad