Day Three Parent Bloggers Week – Cass from Diary of a Frugal Family
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Whenever people ask me why I blog, I tell them it’s my way of recording my children’s childhood. It’s really important to me to know that if ever anything happened to me, they can look at my blog and remember all the fun we had together when they were growing up (as well as be embarrassed by all the funny things they said and did).
Recording memories is a bit of an obsession really, it has been ever since my brother died a few years ago. He battled mouth cancer for two years and watching him spend as much time with his young son as he could, trying to squeeze a lifetime’s worth of memories into such a short space of time made me thankful that I had the opportunity to see my children grow up and after he died, I was determined to spend as much time as I could with them. After all when I’m old and grey, it won’t be memories of going to work that I’ll look back on and smile, it’ll be memories of the time we spend together and the fun.
Even though money was tight, I decided that I wanted to try and cut my hours down at work so that I could be the one to drop the kids off at school in the morning and be back home to pick them up again in the afternoon. To do this we had to completely change our spending habits and I found writing my blog really motivational with this as I’ve shared the ups and downs of our frugal journey. We’re still far from perfect but last year, we managed to get to the point where we’d reduced our outgoings enough that I achieved my goal of reducing my hours at work, which has had an amazing effect on our family.
I have loads of moneysaving ideas and I share as many as I can on my blog, I genuinely believe that a few small moneysaving changes here and there add up and you really do start to feel the difference and I hope that I’ve inspired people to try and change their spending habits. As well as moneysaving ideas, I share ideas on how to make the most of your time with your children on a budget – why spend a fortune visiting the local soft play when you can have more fun at home together having a teddy bears picnic or making a board game.
If you’ve never thought about blogging, you really should have a go, it doesn’t have to cost you as there are plenty of free blogging platforms out there and you may be surprised how much you enjoy it. There’s a whole blogging community to discover as well, I’ve made some lovely friends and had some fantastic opportunities that I would’ve never had without my blog. When it comes down to it though, my blog is about our family and our journey through life and I love that we have a record of it – warts and all.
By Cass
