Let's Get Started

I don't have to tell you: We've been living through some seriously scary economic times, and we all could use some reassurance that we and our families will make it through OK. Even better, we want to know that we can do something to help ourselves make it through, that we can take steps to help reduce the impact of the down economy on ourselves and our family. So fight back with Point, Click, and Save! I will give you the strategies you need to both save and make money from home. I will share thoughts and stories from moms just like you who have made this work, and I will pass along ways to use online resources to mash up the right balance for your family, helping you survive tough economic times — and maybe even have some fun doing it.

As with anything else, the road to saving and making money from home starts by just taking the first step. Any little bit you save, and any little bit you earn, puts you that much closer to your goal. Think of it as being a lot like dieting (but easier). Just as when we try to lose weight, we tend to get overwhelmed when we focus on the big picture. Any of you who have tried to diet know what I mean: It's so very easy to get discouraged before you even start. We think: "I have so much weight to lose" or "It's impossible" or "I'll never be able to do it" or "It will take forever." So we have one more piece of cake, one more bowl of ice cream, one more bag of chips, figuring that it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things anyway.

This is just like our thinking about money. We think, "We're living this much beyond our means each month" or "We have a pile of credit card debt to pay off" or "We'll never be able to afford a house" or "We might as well buy whatever we want because we're already in so deep that it doesn't matter anyway." When we get bogged down in this type of thinking, we never begin to take the steps that will eventually let us get ahead. As with dieting, learning how to save takes time and starts with the simple decision to move forward from this point.

Because this book focuses on using online resources to help us change our patterns and our thinking, let me tell you right now about one of my favorites: Get Rich Slowly (www.getrichslowly.org/blog). Let's focus on one word in that title: slowly. We can look at saving and making money from home in the same way we look at losing weight: Slow and steady wins the race. We would all love to have that get-rich-quick (or get-thin-quick) magic, but real life doesn't work that way. It took time to get where we are, so it takes time to get ourselves out of it. It took time to build our bad shopping habits, so it will take time to re-pattern ourselves into using good ones. If you use the advice in the following chapters, though, you will begin to see savings almost immediately — and these savings will build faster as you gain confidence and learn the ropes.

MY STORY

So what's my story?

I had always been pretty good at living within my means — but this was probably because I was never seriously challenged until we had kids. Before my first son was born, 7 years ago, I worked full-time, my husband worked full-time, and we were a pretty typical dual-income couple. We bought what we wanted without really worrying about it, I never clipped coupons, and we ate out a lot. I always figured that I would go back to work full-time after we had kids and continue working my way up the ladder.

Then everything changed. On my way up that ladder, I found out we were expecting child No. 1, and all of a sudden, the thought of going back to work full-time didn't sit quite as well as it always had before. So we sat down and thought about our budget (and about the cost of full-time day care), and we decided we could make it if I worked part-time after our son was born. That worked out very well for a few years. Because I worked weekends and from home, we didn't have to pay for child care (although this arrangement made for some short weekends). While working parttime, though, I started doing some freelance work on the side: writing, speaking, and editing. I found that my freelance work was both a lot more fun than my "day job" and required less time away from my family. So in the spring of 2005, I decided to throw caution to the wind and strike out entirely on my own. This decision made us start to think a little harder about how we spent our money, but we still didn't make any drastic changes.

The next year, though, we started the adoption process for our second son. This made it very clear that we needed to change our ways further. Although I was bringing in income on the side and my husband still had a full-time job, we really had to take a good hard look at what we were spending and what we were saving. Not only was the adoption process expensive but we were adding another member to the family, and we would have to start buying diapers and formula (both insanely expensive) again. So I started looking for the best ways to save. I stumbled across a few deal sites online and was amazed by the amount of information available. Right on the internet, people were explaining, step-by-step, how to save money, how to make money, and how to change long-held patterns.

I took notes, collected coupons, and made my first, nervous trip to my local Target with my envelope of coupons and scribbled ideas. I walked out of the store with 60 percent savings — and haven't looked back since! In our current economy, I'm happier than ever that I made that leap, and now I want to tell you how you can do it, too. The internet lets people share information like never before, and wonderful people from all over the country take advantage of this opportunity to share their knowledge, their strategies, and the places to find the coupons that make all of this possible. In this book, I share some of these strategies with you and tell you where to look online (and in the real world) to find the best ways of saving and making money for you.

Be Frugal — But Don't Be Cheap!

Strategy No. 1: Think about what being frugal means to you. I know what you're thinking when you see the word frugal — I really do! — but don't let it scare you off. My two rules here are:

• Frugal does not mean cheap.

• We all need to find the right balance of strategies for ourselves.

Being frugal, as opposed to cheap, means being realistic about what works for you and for your family. It means finding ways to save that don't cause anyone too much stress. What does this mean in practice? Here are some examples.

Books and blogs on frugality often suggest practices that seem extreme to...