My best friend and my stepmom and I were sitting around talking the other day, and knowing that I am a frugal person and have this website the conversation naturally drifted towards “thrifty” topics, and some mom topics. I decided to write a post about these ideas. They are very good tips and I hope you all like them. The first one was brought up by my step mom. She is a “hair dresser”, i apologize that i do not know what the current professional term for this is, and has been since before I was born. She gets an hourly wage, but mostly survives on tips, like a waitress does.  For years, she has “put away” $5.00 a day out of her tips into envelopes. She has an envelope for each month. She uses this money to pay for her camping expenses (she owns a very nice camper in a camp ground, where it stays permanently year round). She saves the money in her envelopes all year. She also uses this money as an emergency fund, and pays the envelopes back by increasing the dollar amount per day, say $10.00 a day instead of $5.00. This system has worked for her for years. Just in case you are all wondering, she does not trust banks and likes to keep her money close by. This is a very useful tip that all of us can use. I have an old tootsie roll container that i put all my spare change in. When the Tootsie Roll is full, I cash in or deposit the money into my bank account, depending on what I need at that time.

The second tip was provided by my best friend, Tonya Ramsey. She has a four year old son, and when her son was small, her and her husband wanted to combat the “scary monster under the bed/in the closet” problem all of us parents face. They took a unique, and frugal, approach. They filled a spray bottle with water and told him it was monster repellent. Every night at bedtime, they sprayed the “monster repellent” around his room. They also gave him an empty 24 ounce soda bottle, and told him to keep that by his bed, and if he got scared or needed to ” beat up the monster”, to use the bottle. These two things worked like a charm, they have NEVER had to deal with him waking up in the middle of the night crying because of “monsters in his room” I think this idea is brilliant! Hats off to you, Tonya!

I hope these two tips prove useful to many of you. Please comment or email me with your tips and hints, just follow the links on the website! I look forward to hearing from you!

“It is not quantity that should define our lives, but the quality with which we live it.”

The Domestic Goddess