OK, I’m about to tell you a secret. Up until this past year, we kept our water heater set at a very low temperature. That meant three things: I saved money on heating water, my water never got very hot….ever, and my showers had to be quick. And despite the fact that the water heater [...]

Despite all of the hardships that my family and I have endured over the past few years, we have always had food to eat. It’s hard for me to imagine the feelings of a parent who doesn’t have food to feed to their children, but I know that families like that are everywhere. They are [...]

One of my kids’ favorite holiday and birthday gifts is always cash, but it’s interesting to observe each of my five kids handling their cash gifts totally differently. Just this past week, each of my kids received a rather substantial amount of money from family members (and in the case of my oldest daughter, some [...]

There is one truth that you can be absolutely 100% sure of in a house of seven: There will always be laundry. Just when you think you’re getting caught up, there’s another basket-full ready to be washed. The laundry in a household with 5 children is literally never-ending. So I know laundry. I also know [...]

Do you give your children an allowance? Whether or not to give children an allowance – and then how much to give them – is a topic that I often hear discussed among parents both on and off line. Over the years, my husband and I have gone back and forth, and I hate to [...]

Of all the things I’ve taught my kids, especially those things I’ve taught them over the last few years of financial struggle in our family, one of the most valuable lessons has been that of frugal living. I was raised with plenty. I never considered my family rich, but we had everything we needed. Before [...]

I like cooking dinner. I just hate planning it. And I am not a big fan of throwing something together at the last minute (those kind of meals are rarely very healthy and often not too tasty). As a mom to a big family, cooking dinner is a big part of my job…and dinners need [...]

I read a compelling article this past week about the drastic changes that social media has seen in the past 10 years. I was shocked to realize that there was no Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube on September 11, 2001. How different would the experience of 9/11 have been had the people in the middle of [...]

With a family of seven, I do a lot of shopping. In fact, as much as I try to plan my trips and combine my lists so that I only have to make a trip to the store every once in a while, I will inevitably forget something and have to make another trip. Which, [...]

Whether your kids have started school again for the year, or you have another few weeks of summer left, those of us with school aged kids are ALL in the back to school mindset this month. I LOVE having my kids in school, but I also love the summer time. Some of the BEST things [...]