Just a little reminder for those of you who haven’t peeked at the newsletter yet we are having our big Christmas sell this week. We often get asked when is it going on sale again and the time has now arrived.

We often want our children to be given lots of opportunities, to be exposed to and to try so many things. We spend hours and lots of money taking them to music lessons, karate lessons, football practice, dance lessons so they will be well rounded when they grow up.

Sometimes though we get so busy doing all these things we can forget or don’t have the time to teach them basic life skills. Two of those are cooking and being a wise steward of their money. Dining on a Dime helps with both of those so this Christmas instead of giving your collage age child another CD, DVD or electronic toy why not give them a copy of Dining on a Dime to help and encourage them in both areas.

It would be an unexpected gift for that young man moving out on his own and of course don’t forget your mom, sister or best friend. It would even be fun to give a young girl along with a set of tea towels to add to her hope chest.

If you know someone who has lost their job or are struggling financially right now toss in a copy of Dining along with a bag of groceries to help them learn how to stretch those groceries.

Don’t forget to stock up too for the coming year for birthdays, showers, wedding gifts etc. and as a gift for our older cooks. I’m so surprised at how many seasoned (70, 80 years old) cooks we get who say they have learned so much from Dining.

Hope we can help you get a nice chunk of your holiday shopping done this week and to save while doing it.

Jill

You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Translated in “Jillese” If you pay for something on credit today you will have still have to  pay for it tomorrow. You aren’t getting it for free. The same goes for all those buy now and you don’t have to pay until the year 2011 ads.  Be careful.

I’m not sure why but when we started using credit cards we lost all responsibility for our money. Holiday shopping is already starting so be very careful and think about things each time you pull all that credit card to pay. You will be responsible for it tomorrow (or next month).

That quote goes for other things besides money. You may decide you aren’t going to do the dinner dishes today but trust me they will be there in the morning for you (I hate to be the one to break it to you but there really aren’t any house fairies who come in the night and do them) :) And one day you will have to break down and clean out that closet.

I think you get my drift. It’s Monday so try to get up, make a plan and then work it. Set your home in order for the week.

Jill

Hi there, I’m Susanne Myers – better known as the Hillbilly Housewife.

This October I’m visiting various frugal living blogs to spread the word about frugal homecooking from scratch, meal planning, freezer cooking and also breast cancer awareness. My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and I try to do a little something each October to help spread the word and help out breast cancer research foundation financially. This year I decided to donate 20% of all profits from my e-books and HBHW Club sales to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.
Tawra and Jill were kind enough to invite me to share some of my favorite freezer cooking tips with you right here on the Living on a Dime Blog. Over the next couple of days we’ll talk about how freezer cooking can save you time and money, the different methods of freezer cooking, taking advantage of grocery sales and how freezer cooking can come in handy around the holidays.
Today I want to share with you how freezer cooking saves me not only a lot of cash, but also allows me to spend more quality time with my family, no matter how busy our week is.

Freezer Cooking Saves Money

Freezer cooking allows me to spend a lot less on groceries and it has allowed us to cut out takeout and convenience food almost entirely. Those are a special treat now instead of a necessity on busy days. Instead I make a few extra meals while I’m cooking dinner on nights when we’re not rushed and then stick them in the freezer.

On a busy day, I thaw them in the fridge and then put them in the oven or crockpot to cook while we do homework or just relax for a bit before dinner.
Freezer cooking also allows me to take full advantage of grocery sales. We’ll touch on some aspects of this in a little more detail in another post this week.

Freezer Cooking Saves Time

More importantly though than the financial savings, freezer cooking saves time. There are always ways to scrounge up a little more money if needed, but time is something we can’t get back and when you have young kids, it seems to fly particularly fast.
One of my favorite ways to prepare freezer meals is to cook several batches of the same thing. We have one for dinner and the rest go into the freezer. It doesn’t take hardly any longer to make 4 meatloaves or casseroles than it does to make one and dinner preparation is super-fast on the nights were we heat up the freezer meals, leaving me plenty of time to go read books or play hide-and-go-seak with my six-year-old.

Come back tomorrow and we will get started with some of my favorite tips.
Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.HillbillyHousewife.com
P.S. As a special thank you for reading this blog and Tawra and Jill’s newsletter, we put together a deal on my popular Freezer Cooking ebook and the recipe collections I’ve developed for it. Until midnight on October 19th 2009 you can get my entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)
You can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it just go here.

We had some people ask “if you don’t have a church right now, where does your tithe go?”

Well right now we are attending Calvary Chapel in Ft. Lauderdale, the Andover Ks or Goddard Ks branch. You may be thinking “what?”

We gather together with my brother and his family and mom and watch Pastor Bob on the Internet.  Some weeks we do it at our house and others at my brother’s house.  (This week it will be at his house since we forgot to buy propane and it’s 40 here there weekend. :-)  His preaching is excellent and very on target so we are really getting a lot out of it.  Even if you have a church I would recommend listening to him just for some fresh inspiration.

They have a live feed to their service so we get ready and are able to watch it live.

As far as tithe since Calvary is our church now we send some to them and then we send the rest to Joyce Meyer Ministries and Life Today Ministries. Both of these are are helping the widows and the orphans (as does Calvary) so we give to those. We do also support a local Children’s home.

Tawra

I love collecting quotes, jokes and cartoons. Here are a couple I just recently found.

The first is a cartoon which my grandkids think is a hoot. It shows a little boy walking out of the kitchen carrying a huge plate of cookies and the caption reads, “Grandma doesn’t know the meaning of the word “No”.

Boy if that isn’t the truth. Is there anything harder then saying no to the grandkids???? Except when they are being little stinkers which mine never are of course???? : ) : )

This quote is for those of you who know you need to get up this morning and get busy but can’t figure out why you haven’t yet.

Procrastination was last seen trying to find motivation….. now they’re both lost. This is a good one for us with CFS and FM. : ) : )

Hope you have a week end full of laughter.

Jill

I am posting some comments and questions from readers over the last year. Enjoy! Tawra

Hi Tawra,

I had to make a comment on you last e-mail
newsletter about the divorce situation. I think
the advice you gave was 100% correct! You did a
great job explaining what can happen in a divorce
situation. I am one of the unfortunate ones that
had to live it. I am thankful that my children
were old enough that they were almost adults when
it happened, but still, it was difficult.

I lost my house, my SUV, and my very comfortable
lifestyle. But, as you said in your newsletter, if
you are a Christian, everything will work out OK.
That is SOOOO true. I have had financial help,
spiritual help, and even help finding a new place
(a guy from my church owns the building my son and
I now live in). I live on less than half the
income I used to, but my son and I do just fine,
after scaling back alot.

I bought your book several years ago, before I
even knew I was getting divorced. Little did I
know that I would use some of the tips in there
for my own personal use and not for my family.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I think
you did a good job on the divorce advice. Take
care and God bless!

Jennifer S., faithful reader of your newsletter
and owner of Dining on a Dime

In answer to one of the posts, yes you tithe on the interest of your savings. It is income unlike the savings itself which you have already tithed off of.

Let me address a couple of things which people were wondering about. Tithing is not that complicated. As in other areas we tend to make things very complicated (like cleaning, paying our bills etc) because by doing so we give ourselves an excuse for not doing it and purposely confuse ourselves so we can’t do them.

To me tithing is like the “basics”. I gave my children basic clothing, food etc. but because I loved them I also gave them more then just the basics like toys, special dresses, candy or entertainment. It was more then I was required to give but because I loved them I gave without even thinking about it.

I do the same with God. I tithe because I love Him. I don’t debate each month whether or not I have enough to spare to give Him. I can’t wait to give it to Him because I so enjoy giving those I love gifts. If you are tithing grudgingly or from pride because you are such a wonderful Christian and not because you love the Lord and want to obey Him, then you may as well not tithe at all.

If my husband bought me a gift and grudgingly said “Here is the present I’m suppose to buy you for your birthday but I’ll have you know I had to give up a big screen TV in order for you to have it plus it will be tight for me to pay for the cable this month so I can watch my sports. I hope you appreciate it.”

Oh boy that will be a gift I will treasure for sure! Not! This may sound awful but we do it all of the time to God.

One other thing. There are many wonderful stories I and so many others could tell about the great things that have come their way because they have tithed but you need to tithe because you love God and want to obey Him and not because of what you will get from it. Can you say “If I never see any financial increase I will still tithe.”? When you get to that point, you know you are giving with a right heart. When you get to that point you won’t be asking that question or even giving tithing a second thought, it will just be automatic.

It isn’t a matter of hopefully some day when things are better I will or as soon as I get my debt paid or when this or that happens. You either tithe or you don’t. You step out in faith or you don’t. You trust God to keep His promises of never letting the righteous go hungry or you don’t. It isn’t complicated. I hear people so often say “well I guess I just don’t have enough faith”. But they are leaving out is one important word. What they are really saying is” I guess I don’t have faith - in God”. That’s the bottom line.

Jill

I have a lot of people email and say “I try to tithe but I just don’t have the money so I will tithe my time instead or give what I can.”.

The problem with that is by saying that you are telling God “I don’t trust you to take care of us so I’m going to do what I think should be done and not obey you”.

Tithing is an act of faith and trust in God that he is going to take care of you. When you don’t give your 10% first then you are flat out telling God you don’t trust him.

Also are sure you really don’t have the 10% to give God first? Do you have a cell phone? Cable? Kids in Activities? Go on vacation? Eat out? Drink sodas? Get Manicures? Get your hair colored? All these things and more are not needs so you really can’t say “we just don’t have the money” because that’s not true. You just choose to spend God’s money on something else.

Tawra

From: Michael
Recently I have found that my debt has risen to a high number. I
sought Christian financial advice and the gentleman told me that
i was tithing off of my savings which i shouldn’t.
At first it shocked me because i know God gave me that savings.
So i should tithe off of it. Then i realized that maybe he wanted
me to have it for a savings for emergency use. If i don’t tithe
off of it, that money can be used to go on my debt.
I still feel weary because i don’t want to say to God, “Hey, i’m
going to not tithe off of my savings to pay off some debt”. I am
not doing it to buy a bunch of toys, but to make up for the bad
decisions i made in the past for the debt i have now.

Are we supposed to tithe off of savings? or is that for us to keep
for emergency and paying off debt and a possible offering here
or there when the Lord leads us to?

Thank you for your time.

I completely agree with him. We believe that tithe should be the very first thing you do even before food and rent and God does call us to give offerings also but we are only to tithe off our earned income. If you already tithed on your paycheck and then put that into savings you don’t need to tithe again.

Take 10% off the top for the Lord, 10% for savings and live off the rest. If you have a good amount in savings, around $1,000, for car repairs, appliance break downs etc. then I would put everything else on your debt and not save the 10% for savings until your debt is paid off. It doesn’t make sense to save earning 5% or less interest and be paying 6%- 21% interest on your debt.

So yes, I agree with him. Put it all on your debt and get rid of it as fast as you can!!!

Tawra

I totally agree with Tawra. The Bible says we are to give 10% of our first fruits (Lev. 27:30 & 32 two of many verses). Something I haven’t talked about as much but need too is the fact one of the main reasons we should strive harder to get out of debt is the fact God blesses us with so many things - much for our own use and pleasure but equally as much in order that we have the resources to help others.

It is so wrong to mis-use what God has given us and waste what He has blessed us with. We holler about the government and authorities mis-using our taxes which we have given them and sometimes rightly so but we don’t realize how we are doing the exact same thing with the money God has given us.

I just recently heard of a school superintendent who was called on the carpet because he was charging things like $100 meals for him and his wife to go out to dinner on the school expense account. He had done thousands of dollars like this.

Now as shocked as we all are with this don’t we do similar things with God’s money He gives us. We spend it on things like going out to eat at expensive restaurants, new trucks and cars, houses we can’t really afford, fancy birthday parties, high tech toys etc. instead of giving to those in need which is one reason he gave it to us in the first place.

It’s okay to use our money for what we need but when we buy excessively, get into debt from just plain over spending etc. we are mismanaging our funds just as that superintendent did.

I know this was a little (okay alot) off of the subject of Michael’s tithing on savings but it just reminded me that there are many good reasons why we need to do our best to get out of debt as quickly as we can no matter how much work it is or how hard it is.

Jill

In case you aren’t on our newsletter and missed the special announcement we have a great new e-book that we are so excited to share!  Here is the email I send out in case you missed it. Tawra

Want to work from home? Looking for an alternative source of income in uncertain times? How about turning your craft hobby into a business?

Hi, Tawra here…

With the increase of job losses, the number one question we get here at Living On A Dime is, “Are there any legitimate work at home businesses resources you recommend?”

With the slow economy, many people have the desire to take the plunge, pursue their dreams and start their own businesses.

And you think that maybe RIGHT NOW is the time to start your own business…

But you don’t know where to start.

… when what you REALLY need is someone to show you step-by-step how to start your own business from the ground up.

We don’t normally send a lot of messages that aren’t part of our newsletter, but we’ve found such a great resource that will be helpful for so many of you, we just had to pass this along. After hearing her story, I asked Patrice to write this e-book just for our readers almost a year ago. I am SO EXCITED to finally present
it to you!

“The Home Craft Business: How to Make It Survive And Thrive” is packed with suggestions ranging from tax tips to sales techniques, from wholesaling to custom work.  Broken down into easy “lessons,” The Home Craft Business will guide you through the confusion of expanding a hobby into a business with the potential for some serious income.

* Curious how to sell effectively without sounding like a used car salesman?  See page 145.

* What do you do when nobody wants your product?  See page 50.

* What is the best way to have a craft business in a bad economy?  See page 156.

* Should you consign your craft products?  See page 126.

* When should you quit your day job?  See page 80.

Yes, you can be your own boss.  Yes, you can set your own hours and spend more time with your family.  Yes, you can make a profit with your own creativity.  This book tells you how.

Every day we receive several work at home sales pitches. I can only recommend two and this is one of them! This is THE BEST e-book I have read on how to make money selling your crafts.  Having done
this myself, I know first hand that Patrice is giving you solid, practical information that you can use to start your own business. I only wish that we had this when we got started! It would have saved me years of “hard knocks” learning!

To get more information, and to grab your copy, visit here.

-Tawra

P.S. We had a reader send in this tip.

This provides a great Preparedness idea!
In the hardest economic times there will be little extra for buying non useful crafts.  This depression will probably not be like the 1930’s depression. So it seems smart to begin now to find an essential useful item or items to sell from home.  A look at 3rd World cottage industries can provide a clue.

Pot holders, wash cloth/towels, dried soup mixes, bread, pancake mixes, soaps and cosmetics, cold weather clothing, food stuff, blankets, cheese, vinegars, underwear, infant-adult reusable underwear and bed protection (like the reusable hospital chucks), shoes, the list goes on.

Kathy O

I have been hearing how to save on school supplies every where and how expensive everything is. Sometimes we concentrate so hard on how to buy things for less or to save on them that we forget we maybe don’t have to buy things at all which would save us even more in so many ways.

We still haven’t hit that hard of economic times yet if we are discussing whether to buy a back pack with rollers or without. When times were really hard I couldn’t have bought a backpack period. I know it maybe hard to believe but you really can get an education without a backpack. I went through all my years of school and didn’t own a backpack.

Please don’t tell me times are different and kids have it harder or more to carry now. I had 8 classes at one point and had to carry most of my books, pencils, paper, notebooks etc. all day long and I did not die. I even had to carry them to the bus stop or walking all the way to school unlike most kids now whose moms drop them off at the school door.

Take those school lists they give you and find out what the kids really have to have and don’t get the rest. If the people in the school office automatically say they need everything then try to find out from the teacher or principal. I know this is a pain but if things are really that bad for you financially you may have to do some of these things that are a “pain”.

We are like a bunch of sheep being lead to the slaughter. We get our lists and blindly walk up and down the isles of the store buying what we can’t afford thinking there is nothing we can do about it.  I couldn’t just charge things and I had to choose between heat, food or school supplies so I had no choice but to find out what was the least I can get by with.

Now I know there are some things which kids really can’t do without, I’m not talking about these things but things like backpacks or even lunch boxes aren’t a absolute must. I also know that some teachers have things they say you must have but at least question these and see if they really need everything instead of blindly buying everything.

I have questioned for years why does everyone buy new school clothes for their kids and have found most do it because it is what everyone does or because that has always been the way to do it or best of all because “they” say you should do it.

The whole point is start looking at and questioning why do you buy these things and are they really necessary? I so many areas of our lives we are so use to doing things a certain way we don’t even stop to think “Do I need to buy this?”. Don’t be embarrassed to ask questions.

I learned this years ago. I went to the dentist and had to pay for it myself. He immediately started ordering about 4 different x rays and other things. I looked at him and said “I have no insurance and very little money, what is the very least I can get by with? Do you really need all these x rays for this one cavity that needs taken care of?” He ended up not taking any x rays at all.

I know all the ins and outs of why dentists take x rays and teachers request the supplies that they do so please don’t e mail me on that  but try to focus on the point I am trying to make which is I asked about something I usually thought I just had to do and because I got up the courage to question it I saved a lot of money.

Jill