Welcome to Famously Frugal!

Hello.

My name is Louise, and I'm a spend-a-holic.

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  Well, my problem was that my husband was good at making money and I was good at spending it.  This situation worked pretty well for the first seven years of our marriage.  He worked incredibly hard while I worked in a low-paying career that I loved.  We made pretty good money, and we spent that pretty good money.  We traveled, we lived in exotic, expensive places, we bought houses, we sold houses, we made lots of frivolous purchases.  We had a lot of fun, but dropped a lot of hard-earned money in the process.

In 2007, that all changed.  We had our first child.  I gave-up my low-paying, rewarding job, where the salary would have barely paid for daycare costs, and decided to be a stay-at-home mom.  Seemed like a GREAT idea at the time, although we didn't fully think out the financial aspects of it all.  While my piddly salary didn't seem like much, it actually was the extra dough that was keeping our spend, spend, spend lifestyle afloat.  It didn't take long for me to realize that some drastic changes would have to be made.   We totally revamped our lifestyle and found new ways to have fun, but save money. 

In 2009, shortly before we added a second child to our family, we watched all of the videos from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University.  While we were already on the right track, this program got us totally committed to never repeating the bad financial habits we had practiced before we had kids.

Now with two adults and two preschoolers being supported by one moderate income, we are using some pretty great tips and tricks to keep our family budget in the black every month.  Whether you're a die-hard bargain hunter or in credit card debt up to your ears, hopefully, this blog will have some useful tips for you!