Frugal Five Meet Lynn from Oklahoma

Lynn is a frugal momma living in Oklahoma

What is your financial life?

I am married with 3  boys ages 12,10 and 7.  I work part time while the boys are at school at a local property and casualty insurance company    I have been able to recently scream “ I AM DEBT FREE” like many other many others that follow Dave Ramsey money plan.  We had a lot of debt due to hospital and  medical bills  with my youngest son who had some major respiratory issues 3 years ago  that we owed to the hospital and doctors   We also had some credit card debt.

What is your budget buster?

Have you seen what boys eat! They are growing and growing.  My food budget keeps on going up.   I try to coupon as much as possible.  While we were in debt, it was  the medical bills that piled up.  Even with medical insurance there are a lot of co-pays and other out of pocket payments that you need to make.   We ended up putting a lot of the co-pays on credit card debt as well as felt that we needed to reward ourselves with a big  $5k vacation after he was finally ok. 


What is your favorite money saving tip?

I  would like to thank Dave Ramsey for his training, and for imparting in me  a "gazelle-like intensity" toward attacking our  credit card and medical debt. I would also like to thank the  boys for hanging in there and homemade snacks and sandwiches   at soccer, and ball games while all the other kids had nachos or hot dogs  from the snack  stand, but we would like to inform you that we still will NOT be buying those nachos.  Nachos  equals them getting their own ipads, itouches, tablets.  

It took awhile for my husband to get onboard with paying off the debt.  I had to be the “nerd” in the family with the math and the excitement.   Showing him the math really helped get him onboard. If you have a reluctant spouse  start it off yourself. 

If you had an extra $1000 what would you do with it?
Right now we are building up Baby Step 3 emergency fund.   We need to put 20k in it for our 6 month fund.  I still have the gazelle like intensity to get this funded. 

What is your best resource for frugal living?

I love all things Dave Ramsey. I am so glad I heard him on the radio one day while driving.  I download his podcasts daily from itunes and go on my daily walk.