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America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money: Your Guide to Living Better, Spending Less, and Cashing in on Your Dreams - Softcover

 
9780307339454: America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money: Your Guide to Living Better, Spending Less, and Cashing in on Your Dreams
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Do you have too much month at the end of your money? Is your credit card screaming for relief? Are you tired of robbing Peter to pay Paul . . . whoever they are?

Meet Steve and Annette Economides. They’ve been called cheapskates, thriftaholics, and tightwads, but in these tough economic times, Steve and Annette have managed to feed their family of seven on just $350 per month, pay off their first house in nine years and purchase a second, larger home, buy cars with cash, take wonderful vacations, and put money in savings. Without degrees in finance or six-figure salaries, Steve and Annette have created a comfortable, debt-free life for themselves and their children. In America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money, they show you how they did it- and how you can do it too.

Steve and Annette share many down-to-earth principles and the simple spending plan that they have used since 1982. They have taught this economizing lifestyle to thousands of people worldwide through seminars and their newsletter, and they include lots of real-life stories to make you feel as if you’re having your own private coaching session. Not only will you find solutions to your financial dilemmas, you’ll also discover a whole new way of life.

You don’t need to be a CPA or a math wizard to learn their revolutionary system, which will teach you:

- hundreds of ways to save money on everyday household expenses, including groceries, clothing, and health care
- how to save in advance for major purchases such as homes, cars, and vacations
- how to stop living paycheck to paycheck
- how to eliminate debt . . . forever!

America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money puts meeting your financial goals- and living well at the same time- in reach for every family.

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About the Author:
Steve and Annette Economides launched their popular bimonthly newsletter, The HomeEconomiser, in 2003. They are frequently quoted money-saving experts and have appeared in Good Housekeeping as well as on National Public Radio and Good Morning America. They live in Scottsdale, Arizona, with their children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
one

America’s Cheapest Family

We’ve been called “America’s Cheapest Family,” “the First Family of Frugal,” “cheapskates,” “thrift-a-holics,” “tightwads,” or one of many other less flattering terms. Even calling us by our real last name, Economides, relates to saving cash. Yes, that’s our real name—it’s pronounced “econo-mee-dis.” It’s Greek and means “son of the steward.”

As the nicknames make clear, we don’t like to spend a lot of money. But we don’t economize just for the sake of skimping. We have big dreams—goals that together we are working toward. We are living proof that even in tough economic times, it’s possible to:

·Raise responsible kids

·Purchase a home and pay it off in nine years

·Buy cars for cash

·Enjoy fabulous debt-free vacations

·Feed a growing family on a grocery budget of just $350 each month

·Put savings in the bank

What’s more, all this was done during the first twelve years of our marriage on an average income of less than $35,000.

A Wish Fulfilled

This is a book we wish had existed when we were starting out on our financial journey. We’re not going to bog you down with pages of hard-to-follow economic theory and calculations. Instead, we focus on practical advice that even the most financially challenged can easily implement. America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money will show you how to buy groceries smarter and less expensively, create a household budget that really works, buy affordable cars and homes, find alternative sources for dressing fabulously, deal with medical care and expenses, discover fun recreational activities that are free, plan and take great vacations that don’t break the bank, teach kids to earn and manage money, build a great savings plan for the future, get out of debt and emerge from the vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck, and so much more.

Neither of us has a finance or accounting background. Neither of our parents taught us to manage money—they were frugal, but by no means financial wizards. We are just an average couple who have discovered the secrets to living well on way less than most people can imagine.

Many people believe that thrifty living can be more easily accomplished in a rural setting. We are here to tell you that it just isn’t so! Living in the suburbs all of our lives, we can strongly say that there are great bargains to be had at every turn. With a dense population comes greater opportunities to scoop up steep discounts and free items.

Writing from the perspective of a family, we hope to bring our message to every age group. The younger generation needs to hear that there is an alternative to today’s credit-charged lifestyle—frugal living can be fun and very rewarding, something our children know well. Those in the throes of the middle years, whether raising kids, building careers, or both, need to hear that work doesn’t need to own them. We can vouch for the fact that they can live on less and still reach incredible goals. And as we edge our way toward retirement, we can offer guidance to seniors, many of whom live on Social Security or are learning to stretch their savings. As economizers, we proclaim that no matter what your financial state, and regardless of what the economy is doing, you can not only survive but thrive.

Three Principles for Getting you Right on the Money

There will be three themes that you’ll see recur throughout this book: avoid debt like the plague, live below your means, and embrace the thrifty lifestyle.

Avoid Debt Like the Plague

Why avoid debt, especially when many financial experts advocate credit card usage to establish a good credit score? Because the overuse of credit actually lowers your standard of living. After spending freely, eventually you’ll have to pay back what you’ve borrowed. This will have to be done with money that could better be spent on today’s needs rather than yesterday’s desires. The restriction of your cash flow after experiencing credit-enabled “freedom” is always a bitter pill to swallow. The average American family has a credit card balance of over $7,000, and we have seen the dark side of credit abuse in which relationships and families crumble under the heavy weight of unpaid debts. The good news is that most people can be debt-free (with the exception of their home) in about eighteen months if they develop a plan and stick with it. We’ll show you exactly how it can be done!

While some call us naive to live without the “benefits” of credit (that’s right, we don’t have any credit cards), we’re here to say that it can be done—and life can be good! We have more things than we need, experience more good living than we deserve, and thoroughly enjoy all that we can afford. Can life be any better than this?

Live Below Your Means

This important principle is best accomplished by using a written budget. This is really much easier than you think—and in Chapter 3: Budgeting we’ll show you how you can use a budget to set aside money in advance of all your expenses. In today’s fast-paced lifestyle, spending can easily get out of control. A budget is a great tool to manage spending and makes living below your means achievable. How do you know when you are living below your means? Is it when all the bills are paid and you’ve still got money left over? We think it’s much more than that. Budgeting is the cornerstone of family finances. In every chapter we’ll build upon that foundation with loads of ideas to free up money that you didn’t even know you had.

Embrace the Thrifty Lifestyle

Being thrifty means that we should always strive to be efficient and resourceful with what we have. (Uggh! That sounds about as exciting as oatmeal.) But in reality, we look at this lifestyle as a game and the savings in time and money as the prize. Every chapter will contain tips, secrets, and new skills you can learn to help you win every time.

Many people say that avoiding credit, living below your means, and being thrifty are a waste of time. Ha! We say that as you experience success in reaching your financial dreams (and you will), you’ll be so convinced these practical principles work that you’ll never go back to the way you were living before. And you’ll leave the scoffers behind you, eating your financial dust!

How “America’s Cheapest Family” Got Started

When we dreamed up the idea for the HomeEconomiser newsletter in March 2003, we had no idea that our thrifty advice would be so warmly embraced. There was tremendous interest from the media, and within one month several newspaper stories appeared, as did TV spots and radio interviews. In the next eighteen months the story spread from Phoenix across the United States and even to London, Hong Kong, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand.

We were first hailed as “America’s Cheapest Family” when we appeared on Good Morning America in 2004. Initially we flinched at the use of the word cheap. Ugh! We have never thought of ourselves as cheapskates. We think of ourselves as deal makers and bargain hunters. But in a language that has no positive adjectives to describe people who live within their means, are careful to evaluate every purchase, and always have money in the bank, we can understand the dilemma. To a world that loves to spend, those of us who love to save just aren’t looked upon in a positive light. What options are available to reporters try- ing to describe a family they believe to be the ultimate in our line of work? Are we the Frugalest? The Most Miserly? The Tightwaddiest, the Thriftiest, the Most Parsimonious? The Economical Economideses? Or the Super Skimpers? If they called us Smart Shoppers, then what would that make everyone who didn’t shop as we do? After a long evaluation and numerous discussions, we decided that if being “America’s Cheapest Family” provided us with a platform to help many thousands of families break away from financial enslavement, then we would be willing. (Besides, it’s much easier for most people to pronounce than Economides.)

Necessity Is the Mother of Economizing

Annette was raised in a large Italian family on Long Island, New York, and Steve grew up in a large Greek family on the South Side of Chicago. We met in 1979, married in 1982, and began our frugal journey together. As a newly married couple, we received lots of advice. Some family members recommended that Steve should work two jobs and Annette ought to work as well—all this so that we could save our money and purchase a house in three years’ time. But Annette wanted to learn to make our home and we wanted to be able to spend time together as a newly married couple, so we chose to do things differently. Steve worked just one job, while Annette stayed home and stretched our money until it begged for mercy.

By our first wedding anniversary, our family had grown to three. Steve was earning a whopping $7 an hour as a graphic designer. Annette worked diligently following our spending plan—pinching pennies really paid off as our savings grew. In his best-seller Life’s Little Instruction Book, H. Jackson Brown Jr. wrote the following to his son: “When starting out, don’t worry about not having enough money. Limited funds are a blessing, not a curse. Nothing encourages creative thinking in quite the same way.” This quote describes our early years to a T, and we certainly did feel blessed.

Almost exactly three years later, with baby number two on the way, we purchased our first home—a four-bedroom repo-fixer-upper. We put 15 percent down and then began aggressively paying down the principal and fine-tuning our spending plan. Nine years later, we made the last payment on that house. Our average annual income at that time was less than $35,000. Making the last payment was a monumental occasion for many reasons, not the least of which was that we were now totally convinced that thrifty living really did pay off. Our kids were happy, and we had many of the things that you would associate with a suburban family—except that we had absolutely no debt.

We’d been married twelve years by 1995, and our family had grown to include five children. Our wonderful 1,450-square-foot home, however, seemed to have shrunk. We were literally tripping over each other. After months of searching, we bought and moved into a much larger house, our dream home. It was comparatively huge—3,500 square feet with five bedrooms. The house was set on three-quarters of an acre with a citrus orchard—and lots of room for the kids to learn, grow, and do plenty of chores. Applying the same principles we used in our first home, we’ve continued to pay down our mortgage, establish an emergency fund, build some retirement savings, and buy a couple of new (used) cars with cash. Our income has increased in the intervening ten years, but we kept our expenses low and concentrated on making our money stretch as far as we could.

While financial goals are important, our greatest success has been raising five well-adjusted, happy children: John, twenty-three, Becky, twenty-one, Roy, seventeen, Joseph, fourteen, and Abbey, twelve. Economizing as a family has taught our kids important lessons about managing money, grounded them in nonmaterialistic values, and, most significantly, brought us together as a family. We’ve chosen to involve our children in managing our household finances and in turn, they have helped us economize better. Our daughter Becky discovered the thrill of consignment store shopping when she needed a dress for the prom—she uncovered a stunning lavender gown for less than $20. Our youngest son, Joseph, absolutely glowed when he encountered a virtually new baseball bat that retailed for $150 on sale at a thrift store for $10. Our youngest daughter, Abbey, was thrilled to find a long-desired Barbie horse at a silent auction fund-raiser. Not only did she use her own money for a wonderful toy, but the money went to a great cause. We know that our tightwad ways can teach the next generation skills that will last a lifetime.

We’ve been asked many times if financial success would alter our lifestyle. It hasn’t and won’t. While our economizing started out of necessity, it has now become a creative and enjoyable lifestyle that we would never abandon. We have discovered an equilibrium in our lives and a contentment in what we possess. Our greatest desire is to help others discover the same peace and contentment.

Reaching Out

In October 1983, Steve stood up in front of a group of 150 men from our church. As a young man just starting out on his financial journey, he asked if there were any older men who would be willing to help us and other young families learn to manage their finances and make sound plans for the future. Not one of them offered to help. Steve was flabbergasted. As we refined our saving and money management skills over the years, people started asking us for advice. Since then we have coached scores of individuals and families, helping them straighten out some pretty sticky financial situations. In dealing with creditors, past-due bills, and bloated budgets, we’ve helped these families cut a path through the money jungle to the pastures of financial stability. In many cases, we’ve had to disentangle them from a credit-induced paralysis and help them see the value of using a little bit of planning and a lot of creativity instead of their credit cards. The results have been heartwarming.

For five years we managed a volunteer financial coaching ministry at our church. At that time our kids were relatively young (ages one through twelve)—a full-time job in itself. Add to that Steve’s ever- increasing work responsibilities, and we came to realize that this growing ministry was just too overwhelming a task for us to maintain. When we turned over the reins of the ministry, it consisted of seventeen volunteer counselors whom we had trained, with over seventy people then being helped by the ministry.

In 2003, after twenty-one years in the workforce, first as a graphic designer and later as an advertising account executive, Steve quit his job. We felt led to help more people, but at a less frenetic pace, so we decided to pursue teaching about economizing full time.

We took our personal lifestyle and our many coaching experiences and put them in written form—and the HomeEconomiser newsletter was born. The response from readers has been amazing: families are taking control of their finances and seeing fantastic results. In three years’ time we expanded from local distribution to having subscribers in numerous countries around the world. Many readers have said that through reading our newsletter they have come to feel like our family is part of their family. We hope you’ll feel the same way too. Writing this book is an extension of the HomeEconomiser newsletter, years of “economizer” living, and thousands of hours spent helping others reach their financial goals.

We also know that there are some of you out there who could run circles around us with your thrifty knowledge and habits. We applaud you and urge you to keep setting the standard for careful living. We realize that we’re still a work in progress, always looking for new ways to improve. We hope that those of you who are black-belt economizers will catch the vision and join with us in helping so many others who are looking for ways to make their money go further.

How To Maximize Your Use of This Book

The concept for this book has been developed from our own family budgeting habits, years of personal budget coaching, and family budgeting seminars that we have presented since 1989. The process of going through every area of a family’s budget as we do in this book and sharing how we manage expenses is similar to what we did in the pas...

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  • PublisherCurrency
  • Publication date2007
  • ISBN 10 0307339459
  • ISBN 13 9780307339454
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages288
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Do you have too much month at the end of your money? Is your credit card screaming for relief? Are you tired of robbing Peter to pay Paul . . . whoever they are?Meet Steve and Annette Economides. Theyve been called cheapskates, thriftaholics, and tightwads, but in these tough economic times, Steve and Annette have managed to feed their family of seven on just $350 per month, pay off their first house in nine years and purchase a second, larger home, buy cars with cash, take wonderful vacations, and put money in savings. Without degrees in finance or six-figure salaries, Steve and Annette have created a comfortable, debt-free life for themselves and their children. In Americas Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money, they show you how they did it- and how you can do it too.Steve and Annette share many down-to-earth principles and the simple spending plan that they have used since 1982. They have taught this economizing lifestyle to thousands of people worldwide through seminars and their newsletter, and they include lots of real-life stories to make you feel as if youre having your own private coaching session. Not only will you find solutions to your financial dilemmas, youll also discover a whole new way of life. You dont need to be a CPA or a math wizard to learn their revolutionary system, which will teach you:- hundreds of ways to save money on everyday household expenses, including groceries, clothing, and health care- how to save in advance for major purchases such as homes, cars, and vacations- how to stop living paycheck to paycheck- how to eliminate debt . . . forever! Americas Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money puts meeting your financial goals- and living well at the same time- in reach for every family. Dubbed "Americas Cheapest Family" by ABCs "Good Morning America," the Economides transformed their household finances by living below their means. Here, they offer savvy advice on avoiding debt and easing into frugality. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780307339454

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