SI Money Savers

Hello Southern Illinois Money Savers!! I am excited to be a part of this guest post.  Amber has an awesome blog and I love her dedication to giving back!

My name is Andrea.  I am a Work at Home Mom to 4 beautiful girls, ranging in age from 3 to 14 years old!  I have a wonderful husband that supports all of my endeavors and who is becoming quite coupon savy himself.  I am the creator of The Q-Tipping Mom .I run this website to help others find the best deals to stretch their own budgets as my family as been able to stretch ours.  Hopefully in the process of saving money for our own families we will be able to give back to our communities.( Check out our weekly Saving to Serve post here http://qtips4you.blogspot.com/2010/08/saving-to-save.html)  How did I get to this point,  well here it goes….

About 6 years ago, my husband and I were both working full time.  We both had great jobs, we were living in our newly built home & we had 3 daughters.  We thought we had the perfect life!  I always used coupons but not out of necessity.  Around March of that year we got our wonderful, surprising news…we were having another baby!!! Life was great!  After a few problems came up with child care & my job, my husband and started talking about one of us quitting our job, tightening our belts & being a stay at home parent!  So it was!  I quit my job by that May and starting budgeting so we could manage our new life.  Little did we know we were about to be tested like we had never been before..

Then it hit…The Housing Crunch!!  And hard it hit!!  Within 2 months of me quitting my job, we got a letter from our mortgage company saying that our house payment was going to increase enormously!  Wow!  We had never expected this!!  There was NO way that we were going to be able to manage this increase and only one of us work.(It would have been tough, if we had both been working)  Here I am almost 6 months pregnant, there is no way I am going to be able to get a job! We tried our best to maintain a decent life for our kids & our self, but the longer we tried, the deeper in debt we went.  Our 4th little angel came along and with her came even more bills. (She was so worth it, LOL!)  We found ourselves looking for help to pay the utility bills & even our groceries!  We were at our lowest low and I vowed, if we dug ourselves out of this hole, we would do what we could to give back because people had been so giving to us.

Luckily, a family member had a nice house in a nice subdivision and offered for us to lease/buy this house.  We were able to sell our house, taking a huge loss and then the real work began!!  We desperately wanted for me to be able to stay at home with our girls.  How were we going to do this???  I prayed & prayed & he answered!!  Get up off your rear & make it work!!  Coupons, coupons, sales, coupons, sales & more coupons!!  Our budget was so tight, but we were able to maintain it & have as much, if not more than we did when I worked and we were so much happier!  That was almost 4 years ago!  My family has been so blessed by this experience & we wanted to help others, whatever their circumstances may be.  The Q-Tipping Mom really started to help me account for my spending, but it has now grown into a resource place for others to come and find deals to help manage their own spending.

Giving back is all part of this experience for us.  My family looks for opportunities to help out, whether it be a church pantry, the homeless shelter, even our local schools are in need.  I started “Saving to Serve” on my blog to show people how easy it is to take just $5 a week and purchase items to donate.  There are so many ways to give back.  Over the summer, I took my girls to the local food bank for a big donation.  They got to tour the food bank & learn about how/who they helped out.  It was an awesome learning experience for them.  I have been teaching coupon classes since March of this year & people in my classes have given me even more ideas of places to donate.  Just recently a lady told me about Hospice taking donations.  Hospice is a wonderful program for families with a spouse or loved one with a life-limiting illness. The program is completely free & is always happy to see donations. If you are looking for a way to give back, give your local Hospice a call.