A dollar won't get you what it used to...

I had heard that phrase growing up a lot. My dad, who was born in 1922, would tell me for .15 cents he could get a drink and 2 hot dogs! Quite the deal! We have been insulated from the economy for the most part. We usually live in military housing and shop at the commissary. I have tried to be diligent enough to get the best deals when shopping out in town. We own one car (that works) and I only take that one day a week to get all errands and all shopping done. We have been in Kansas for 18 months and the money just isn't going as far as it used to. We pay $3.18 for gas currently (or at least we did when I was out on Monday), I buy 1/2 gallons of milk on base for about $1.20, bread? about $1.50 a loaf. We have started discussing getting back on track with our budget. I have spent some time today looking up meal planning, reusable water bottles and such. I think it will be the little things that help us. The mindless spending we do and most times it doesn't even register. Every Monday night before FBI we stop at a convenience store for drinks and maybe a few snacks. We spend about $5, $240 a year WOW! The quick trips to MickeyD's cause I didn't defrost something $20-25 a pop! Being a stay at home mom/wife I really have no excuse for not making dinner except that I get bored with what we eat and I get lazy. Needless to say the loss of a lot of our expendable income I feel falls on my shoulders.
When we were first married we didn't have much at all. Thanks to my dad I knew how to handle money, but we just never had that much to handle :-)! We have been reminiscing about that recently, what good times we had! We couldn't afford going out to eat so we made up different restaurant "nights" at our house so we felt like we were! No McDonald's so we had "house burger" night (really nice thick hamburgers) and fries. No Chinese food, so we had stir fry night. No KFC so we did fried chicken night. It was great. Now that I am looking at my children growing up and soon to have homes of their own to manage, I think we are going to step back in time and live "poor" again. My kids are old enough to not only cook and clean up, but also plans meals. They are a great sounding board and have definite opinions.
The girls and I talk about what I used to do for entertainment for us when they were very young. Once again, not so much with the money, I had to be creative. The library! It was great. The usually had everything from books, to puzzles, to coloring pages. We would go in the summer time and soak up the AC! Around Christmas some fast food places used to offer stocking stuffers. They were coupon books with 10 coupons for $1.00 for small fries. It was only good one per customer but I would put a coupon in each of my kids hands, buy a small drink that we could refill in the restaurant and we went to a place that had an indoor playground. We would spend hours there by ourselves. I would go during school hours, right after lunch. We homeschooled so that was easy and my two younger girls never did like taking naps so we had the whole place to ourselves. We did things at home of course, but this is if we wanted a change of scenery.
A missionary was talking at our missions conference and he said something so simple but really touched me. He said if you aren't paying the same for gas that you were 8 years ago, why do you think missionaries on the field are? WOW! This particular missionary said that compared to 8 years ago his missionary "salary" only buys 40% of what it used to!


Laura