This is a subject I've studied a lot over the years.  Sometimes people say, "well, if you can afford all those children, go ahead." This is a silly statement.  Don't people do what they believe in? If you want to own a boat, don't you adjust your budget to either pay off the boat or save up to buy one? It's the same here.  We did not sit down and say, let see, a child costs X a year, we earn X a year, so we can afford 10 children.   That's silly.  We have adjusted our spending to afford to buy what our children need.  And adjusted and adjusted.  We also homeschool.  So that is added in.

My husband just took a major pay cut with his new job.  Major.  But the payoff is wonderful.  He was killing himself at his other job, never home, and the money wasn't worth it at all.  So now he makes much less, but he's home for dinner every day. 

The downside is that I have to cut out so much stuff my head is spinning.  At least I had some warning that this was coming.  We lost our health insurance when our 9th child was born.  Out of the blue.  Well, we didn't have spare money to buy new insurance, so we went with a program that cost $600 a month.  I had to cut and cut things out to afford that.  But that was an option, we could have stopped paying that at any time.  Now it's mandatory.  But that okay. 

We refinanced over the summer at a rate of %4.87.  Our house payment is less than $500.  Yep! We started borrowing movies from the library instead of renting.  I laid out all of our food expenses and made menus that we follow so I cut down on our grocery bill.  If we are having mac and cheese, I only buy what we need for that and not a whole bunch of stuff thinking I will decide later what we will eat, then some spoiles in the fridge.

Now for the unexpected cut I am making. It actually started when we got the green channel for a month for free from Dish Network (we lost cable in our little town, and had to buy satellite.  Yes, I was for cutting out that expense, but my husband reminded me of football season.). Anyway, on there was a show call Living with Ed.  Ed Begley Jr.  He's crazy but pretty cool.  Anyway, I had recycled until we moved here.  It's too hard to save all the stuff up for a week at a time then bundle it up and drive it all the way somewhere.  But I got inspired by Ed to pick it up.  And Bill Nye the science guy.  I started looking for organic, though more expensive, because pounds and pounds of chemical weren't dumped on the earth to grow them.  Bill Nye showed how those chemicals affect the planet. Like how some kinds of sunscreen are destroying the coral reefs. So I started looking into making my house more green.  This led me to electricity. I bought this great gadget called Kil-o-watt. It measures how much electricity each thing in you house uses.  We are charged $1.00 per KWH we use.  This is a high price, but we live in the country.  So my TV, DVD etc, turned OFF all night cost and average of $1.00.  $1.00 a day to leave my TV plugged in.  This is sick! I unplugged it all. I expect my electric bill to go down $30.00 a month! It goes on from there.  I wasn't for checking my box fan, I know that we will use it no matter how much it costs. But my husband wanted to know. We spent $.79 last night running it all night. It didn't seem like we would be using so much, but we are, and we can cut down pretty easily.

In money matters it is true that where there is a will there is a way.  You just can't be spoiled about it. You only get to spend your money once. When it's spent it's gone, you don't get to spend it again. So if you want to buy a $400 piece of clothing you can't also expect to pay your rent. Go ahead and do what you want, just don't whine later, accept your consequences.