Lifestyle Logic

I did it! I started a new blog. It will be devoted to sharing my best tips and tricks for saving money, making money, or making the most of what you've got. I'm looking forward to having an outlet for all the stuff I talk about incessently! Come check it out!

http://lifestylelogic.blogspot.com/

Orderliness

This week we added our unit studies to the basics of our homeschool day. Throughout the year, we have Bible time, reading/language, and math daily. In the summer we spend more time outside visiting the zoo and the parks, being with friends and family. Now that the public schools are back in session, it was time to do some planning and put the kids to work!

Last week I looked through my Konos Curriculum book and decided upon a unit for this fall. It should take us right into December. At that point we will spend a couple of weeks on Christmas projects. The baby will come sometime right before Christmas, too. Later this fall, I'll need to sit down and do the planning for the first half of the spring semester because I'll be too tired to do it in January!

Our main unit for this fall is "Orderliness." The children will learn about a variety of topics from sequencing, to classifying, to organizing, to calendars. I'm looking forward to many of the projects that we will be working on. Our first sub-unit is creation. God made the world in a certain order. Each day this week, we are reading through Genesis 1 and focusing on one day. We're making a creation booklet with a page for each day. This has been a hit so far! We'll do it this weekend, too, and take Monday off.

What's great about this unit, and really the curriculum that we've chosen, is how inexpensive this year of school is going to be. Last year I purchased the book, which has about 2.5 years worth of unit studies. My expected expenses for this fall are negligible- art supplies that we have on hand, general school supplies I purchased cheaply in the past month, and of course, an infinite number of library books! I think the cost of my planned field trips is free as well.

Meals on a Real Budget

Last night at dinner I looked at our fully laden table and did a quick calculation. The cost of our meal (for our family of six) was $2. Granted, some of the items we had recieved for free, but if we had paid for them, the cost of the meal may have reached $4. It always frustrates me when I look at cookbooks or search recipes online because their meals on a budget and my meals on the budget are not the same!

Our groceries budget for two adults and four children is $175/month. I hear about folks struggling to make it on triple that amount for a similar sized family! Again, some of our food we recieve for free- about $50/month worth. Adding that together brings our monthly total to $225.

How do we do it? I'm not really sure. I don't coupon all that much, my kids don't complain of being hungry all the time, and we even eat meat every night. I've come to the conclusion that it may be time to start sharing some of our life in this area with the world at large. Maybe some of you have some cheap meal ideas that we would appreciate trying out. Let me know what they are! For now, here's the menu from our meal last night, including approximate retail prices:

Scrambled Eggs (1 doz eggs @ .75)

Turkey Sausage, browned (1 lb, on sale @ 1.00)

Shredded Cheese (.25 lb, @ .75)

Cherry Tomatoes (garden= free!)

English muffins (from discount store 1/2 pkg @ .50)

Juice (1 can @ 1.00)

Corn Bread (1/2 pan leftovers about .50)

Apple Sauce (canned from last year= free)

the final week

We’re wrapping up the support raising part of our mission trip. We have less than a thousand dollars left to raise, but less than a week to do it in! If you were planning to make a donation, please mail it to us right away, and drop us an e-mail letting us know it’s coming. Please be praying for the money to come in. We’ve already had one cool story. We didn’t make the last deadline and had to write a personal check. It was a decent sized amount, too! We waited as long as we could, but had to send it in the mail. Less than a week later, we were handed a check for the exact amount we had sent ourselves! Our check hadn’t been processed, yet, so they sent it back. God is so amazing. We’re excited to see how this final week of raising financial support plays out.

This week we’re taking care of some other business, as well. We will be visiting the health clinic and getting all of our immunizations up to date. We also are sending in visa applications. Please be praying that all the forms were filled out correctly and there are no delays for any members of our team.

In the coming weeks we will be making sure we have all of our supplies, and figuring out how to pack everything. We’ll be going through our notebooks and reviewing the lessons that we will be teaching. Most importantly, we will be covering this trip in prayer. Will you pray with us?

We’re praying that the Lord will work in our lives and bring us closer to Him and closer to each other. Praying that our team will be unified and healthy for the whole trip. Praying that the people we meet will see Christ through us and the team. Praying that they will take step to a greater understanding of our Savior and that many will put their faith in Him. We’ll be praying that through this trip the Lord will continue to reveal Himself and His plans for our lives.

While we’re overseas, we will have limited internet access. If we are able, we will send out a note or two. You’ll definitely be hearing from us when we get back. We’re fairly sure that we’ll have many stories of our amazing God and the work that He is doing in Asia.

Unauthorized

So, apparently our week hasn't been stressful enough. On Tuesday night I logged into our online banking account to balance the checkbook and pay some bills. What's this? A $2000 overdraft! It turns out that someone hacked into our paypal account, added a new address to my profile, bought some computer equipment, and tried to stick us with the bill!
We're currently working through a dispute with paypal. Our bank is being very kind and is waiving the overdraft fee. Apparently even with a a dispute on file, paypal still tries the account a couple of times, so our kind teller is keeping an eye on our account for us, ready and waiting to waive more fees.
A few years ago Greg decided to open a second checking account. We use it soley to for paypal and other online purchases. We only transfer money to it as we use the account. It's sort of a Dave Ramsey version of a credit card. :) I'm so thankful that we had it set up like this and it's not our main bank account that's being afected. If you make online purchases, I really reccommend getting a separate account just for those! It's a time like this when it really comes handy!