40 Acre Family Blog RSS

  The kids are going back to school and as a frugal family we have started talking about how we can save money. Going back to school for a new school year should be exciting, not stressful. It's a fresh start, new lessons, new classmates, etc. Since Kevin and I both work during school hours, we all take coffee, lunch, drinks and snacks with us. We thought long and hard about a list of items we use and that save us money. Food can be one of the biggest costs for families (especially with older kids). With younger kids we...

Summer is here!!! As a frugal family we are always looking for low cost and free activies to do. The summer seems long, especially when you have to work while the kids are home. This is our first summer as a family with an elementary school kid. Brooklyn and I will both be attending and working summer school and we still have 3 nice weeks before and after for fun.  1. Free reading programs and summer school: Schools and libraries plan all year for summer. There are so many free programs with flexible hours, attendance and categories to choose from.   ...

Over draft fees of $35.00 may not seem like a lot of money but let's compare that to what we can buy with $35.00. For us that would be 7 lbs of ground beef, 3/4 tank of gas or a family date night. When Kevin and I first lost our jobs within a month of each other in March of 2020 we start incurring overdraft fees monthly because we had all of our bills automatically debited from our account, but were obviously making less money. That is when we started unsubscribing, cutting costs, and using cash. Since then we figured...

Many of you know that I love home decor! I can't remember a time that I did not decorate my space each new season. As a young girl I had a bag of Halloween and Christmas decor from the dollar store that I used year after year. A few items I bought, some from my mom's stash, and some from family and friends. Decorating my room was a must! I use to have all these images in my head of what my home would look like as an adult. One thing young Brighty did not consider was the amount of...

Eating at home helps our family in so many ways. We save money, our health is better than ever and we all get what we want. We have found fun recipes and snacks that we eat often but with the recent price of groceries we needed to cut back on the amount of groceries we were eating each week. We were spending about $1,000 a month in groceries alone. My old budget was $250.00 a week on groceries without household items. That $250.00 was easy to spend when we were eating almost all processed and pre-packaged foods. Here are some...