Cutting Costs

With the recent economic crisis looming over our heads, Amber and I discussed ways that we could cut some of our monthly costs. We thought of some ideas together, but then decided that we should involve the kids in this discussion. So, Amber decided to bring this up during our dinner time last night.

 

Amber explained the situation to the kids and told them of some of the things that we spend money liberally on an asked for their advice. The kids took great ownership in this discussion. They were excited to be part of the idea generation activity to help us manage our expenses better.

 

Some of the more humorous suggestions came, of course, from our younger children. Alayna suggested that when we go to the store to buy our food that we talk to the store clerk that takes our money and explained to them that we are trying to spend less money. She said that maybe they wouldn't take so much of our money when we buy our groceries. In great 7-year-old wisdom, Aliece helped to correct her younger sister by saying, "Alayna, the store person can do that for us because they give all that money to their boss." That ended Alayna's idea.

 

But Aliece was not only one to criticize, she came up with an idea of her own. She mentioned the time last year when she went outside with cups of ice to sell them. She was out there so long without a purchase that the ice cubes to melted and so she decided to sell cups of water. Of course no one purchased these refreshing drinks and so Amber snuck over to the neighbors house and gave them $.25 and asked him to go by some water from Aliece. Aliece does not know that Amber had done this, so her suggestion was that she go outside and sell water more often to help the family earn money.

 

Aylee and Johnathan were more practical in their suggestions. They talked about eating less cereal and making more of our breakfasts. We talked about all their granola bars of the kids like to snack on. They have jumped up in price lately, and so Aylee suggested that we make our own granola bars. That went into discussion about making her muffins another popular snacks and school lunch items.

 

Aylee finally took our discussion to action, after dinner she went to the Internet and printed out a recipe for making granola bars. By the time I came home from a meeting that evening, I found a pan of granola bars sitting on the counter. It tastes pretty good!

 

I'm grateful to Amber for her idea of involving the children in some of our financial discussions. While we are not in a financial predicament in our family, we still believe that it is wise to start cutting some of our expenses so that we can be in the mode of being more self-sufficient should that time arrives. It sounds like we have a good support group from our children. It is great to be part of an awesome family.