Wow, 8 years later and I am stumbling here upon my old blog. So much has changed. I am no longer a stay at home mom for one although I wish I was. I have a at times stressful director roll at a large non-profit company and wishing I could find my way back to simpler living. I am divorced and living in a much smaller, but much more affordable home. If I could go back and give my younger self some advice it would have been to do the same and stop worrying about constantly renovating. It does nothing but cause debt, stress and hardly any turn around in a bad housing market. I think this blog is going to be a turn around from what it was and chronicle my way back to Domestic Savvy-ness. Over the years I went from the frugal coupon queen to dropping dollars like it's hot. With not much to show for it either. Who knows if I will ever be able to leave my current job, it's secure, flexible at times, I love all the people, I feel at home there and it provides for more money than I need (but at the same time not enough money for the stress). On the turn side, I am ALWAYS on call. I could receive texts or phone calls at any time and potentially have to drop anything no matter what I am doing to go in. I am doing things that I absolutely hate because it pulls on all my anxiety strings; meetings, events, crowds, sales, fundraising. Finding a new full time job is not as simple because the flexibility can't be beat for appointments and onsite childcare allows for much needed help. What I ultimately want is a part time job to get me out of the house and a way to stay home the rest of the time with maybe a hobby that earns money. Doing surveys and coupon-ing helped a lot when I was a stay at home mom, but I'm scared to make this leap without setting myself up better. Here are the steps I have done so far;
1. Looked at what I am spending my extra money on, I need to cut back and build up a savings nest before making any career moves period. So going to Dunkin Donuts or Aroma Joes for a $3 iced coffee every day is out. Fast food 3 times a week=out. A expensive outing with my daughter and friends weekly=out. Over night trips every other month=out. But the biggest culprit was the grocery store, no more throwing in whatever super organic easy interesting thing I find into the cart or over shopping and leaving extra food to spoil. Back to lists and menu planning, timing and coupon-ing.
2. Went through my credit card statement and found all subscription services. Bub bye Ipsy (which when you go to cancel apparently they offer you a free bag, so bub bye next month), later just fab (because with 2 credits sitting in my account I apparently can't remember to skip the month), good bye HBO and pandora plus. Amazon Prime is already paid for the year so no cancelling that, but with the amount of deals and prime video I'm not entirely sure it's a bad deal anyways. Especially because I don't have cable. For this reason I will keep netflix and hulu, the 3 combined is way less than a cable bill.
3. Daily checks on indeed.com because who knows and I want a part time weekend job for when my daughter is with her dad. This would allow me more time in the week for her if I left my current position.
That's it so far! Have any of you left your secure job to stay at home, and how'd you make it work? And are you happy you did?
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