Thrifty Mommy

An interview with Tawra from Living on a Dime

by kellys on August 10th, 2006

I mentioned earlier about a great website, Living on a Dime. There are a lot of great articles on saving money for getting your kids back to school. Recently, I was able to talk to Tawra and she was gracious enough to give me an interview. Hopefully, you will be able to take something form this and use it in your own life.

Q. What do you think pushed you into becoming a frugalista?

A. I grew up that way. My mom was a single mom who paid off $35,000 in debt in 5 years while earning $1,000 a month. She then raised two teenagers on $500 a month after she became disabled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

When I married my husband we paid off $20,000 in debt and medical bills in our first 5 years. After seeing my mom do it, I knew I could do it and didn’t want to have debt hanging over our heads. I also saw how much people just plain wasted money and it made me sad to think of all the stress they were under trying to “make ends meet” when it was just wasteful spending.

Q. What is your favorite way to save money and time?

A. Buying used as much as possible. Why should I pay $30 for a Land’s End shirt when I can get it for $1 at the thrift store? I figure I will let someone else pay the depreciation. Why should my husband work 2 - 2 1/2 hours (at $15 an hour plus taxes) to pay for shirt when he could work 5-6 minutes for the same shirt from a thrift store. We buy as much as we can used — cars, clothes, furniture, toys; we even get free paint from the recycling center. The only things we don’t buy new are major appliances like a fridge or freezer.

Q. If you had to pick one splurge, what would it be?

A. Gnomes. I love to garden and I love gnomes. (I’m sure they exist somewhere!) Garden knick knacks too. Cute pots, new flowers. As it is I get most of these things for gifts so I’m not deprived of my favorite things.

Q. What is the hardest and easiest thing to do to save money?

A. The hardest thing is changing your attitude. Until you change your attitude about spending, it is going to feel like you are depriving yourself.

The easiest is to just start. Cut out eating out once this week, then cut out an extra bag of chips. Do one thing at a time and it will start adding up. You have to practice at saving money. Over time you learn what works for your family and what doesn’t but you won’t get anywhere until you start.

Q. Do you have a funny story about saving money or time?

A. I love beef jerky. Well, when I was single and just learning to cook I decided to try to make turkey jerky with ground turkey because I didn’t have enough money to buy beef and I figured if you added enough spices it would taste the same. I was renting my grandparents trailer and decided to make it in their house in the dehydrator.

About 3 hours after I started making it, smoke started pouring out of their house. ( I was sure it wasn’t done because the smoke detector hadn’t gone off yet! LOL) The ground turkey had “melted” into the holes in the dehydrator and then started to burn on the element on the bottom. It was so nasty my dog wouldn’t even eat it! It was a big mess and my family still can’t believe that “Tawra” wrote a cookbook! When I went to marry my husband my grandfather told him the turkey jerky story about 5 times. Hubby says he thinks he was trying to warn him before we married what he was getting into! HA! To this day in my family I’m known for all the smoke.

Of all the things that Tawra could have picked to be funny, I have a similar story. My sister-in-law and her husband came over to my husband’s house when we were just starting to date. I was fixing spaghetti and had read the directions on a new kind of garlic bread. The directions said to cut off the ends of the bag and put it in the oven. Well, you can guess what happened next. We looked back and the oven was on fire! My sister-in-law has never let me forget it. Love you too, Bev.

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