Family Dynamics

Today's family will typically require both parents to work in order to scrape together enough money to maintain a lower-middle class status. This was the case with my wife and I up until my back injury. Were it not for my Veterans benefits, our family of 4 would be living with my wife's parents in their 2 bedroom house. As it is, we were lucky enough to find a good landlord, who just wanted good people to take care of the house we are currently renting. My wife works from a home office that is crammed in our bedroom answering phones for the local phone company. Her wages are just above average for the area. I am home to take care of the kids on the off days and after school, and we are considering home-schooling next year. We will cover education in a later blog.

We have found that what we can live with, and without, is far different than what we used to think when we both were working full time. For example, a package of food that we would eat in one meal, now can be stretched into two. Whereas my wife would refuse to eat left-overs before, now we have a leftover night at least twice a week.We have cut our portions of food to the "serving size" as well, which has allowed us to cut our food bill in half. When we both were working, $800.00 a month on food was typical for a month. Looking back on it now, I can only imagine how much we wasted. We have also cut out non-essentials like soda and sweet snacks from our shopping lists. Fast food has also become something of a "once in a while" food as compared to an "every time we are out" food. My wife and I have found the change easier than my children, who do not understand why we are not letting them have free range of the kitchen anymore.

For those of you curious, my twin 10 yr old boys are "bean poles" and want to eat everything that looks good in sight. My wife and I however, after decades of eating and drinking whatever we want, are now over-weight. It is our desire to slow our kids down to prevent the same from happening to them as we both started out skinny as well.

Television, computer, and video-games were once being used simultaneously and without limits. I have had to fight my kids (kicking and screaming), to cut back to computer only when they need it for school, video games have been reduced to half an hour or less a day, and the television is only used certain nights of the week and no more than two hours as needed if watching a movie.

Instead of the above dominating our lives, we have started a small potted garden that we all help maintain. As we can afford it, we buy a new plant. We spend time together playing board games on the evenings we do not have a show/movie to watch.

We have also done away with our cell phones and purchased a go phone for when we are away from the house. My wife and I both had smartphones with ATT and my kids had an emergency phone for when we would let them go somewhere. All together, our cell phone bill was close to $300 a month, today we pay less than $30 a month.

While my boys are still trying to transition into this new life we are creating, my wife and I have begun to settle in just fine. We have found that it has brought us all closer together as a family and the boys are looking to us now for entertainment. Both of my sons have shown a great interest in cooking, and after a couple of weeks of training, they now help cook dinner every night with little supervision. We take turns on different stations making a meat, a side, and a vegetable. The most important thing we have learned (most of us, my wife is still a bit hard headed :) ) is that there is much more to life than money and we are finding we are happier with less (except as just stated).