A Change in the Tide...

As I've been writing this blog, I have been writing from the perspective of a stay-at-home Navy officer's wife where my husband pulls in a paycheck of an O-3 plus bonuses for being in the submarine community. My husband and I decided recently to resign his commission and he's going back to school to get his Ph.D. As a result, we will be taking a pay cut where will be making maybe half of what he makes now in a given month. So, we are having to adjust how we live to minimize our costs when we move to another state and he begins his program.

I've decided that I'm going to chronicle our challenges and money saving ideas and lifestyle changes here on this blog. I will continue to post other money saving ideas I come upon as I have been doing.

I think I should outline our new situation first to give perspective. We are a family of 4 with a golden retriever. Our two boys are 4 months and 2 years old. We will be moving from Virginia to the state of Michigan for my husband to complete his program. We will be living off of a Graduate Research Student stipend and the housing allowance that my husband receives from the GI BIll. This works out to about half of what we make per month currently. I will write about the challenges we encounter and our solutions as we embark on our new journey here. Hopefully, these posts prove to be useful to others who may be in a similar financial situation as ourselves.

What Do You Do With Your Empty Packages?

I save any packing envelopes, boxes, etc. that I can when I get packages and mail. If they are in decent enough shape, I can reuse them to send out packages. I just carefully open the bubble mailer, USPS envelope, or box and then when I'm ready to mail something, I cover the old mailing stickers with the new mailing address and mail the package. I save money on packaging and I'm saving the environment by recycling :)