Introduction

I decided that before I blog very much, I should introduce myself and fill you in on why I am qualified to be blogging about the topic of provident living.  I grew up as the second of nine children.  My parents were great examples of stretching a dollar, making do with what they had, and putting away some food storage in case of an emergency.  Because I grew up with these examples, I didn't realize that many people thought doing these things were very difficult.

I got married about 12 years ago.  My anniversary comes up in February.  After getting married and making friends with more families, I came to realize that my parents had given me a wonderful gift - the gift of a desire to be self-reliant.  That desire continued to work in me as my husband and I set up our household and began our family.  By our first anniversary, we had collected a year-supply of the basic food items we would need to survive and we also were well on our way to having a significant amount set aside in savings to help us weather whatever storms may come.  It helped that we were both done with college by the time we met and got married.  The other big blessing we had going for us is that neither one of us had any student loan debt.  This allowed us to begin saving at a much faster rate than many people.

We now have five children.  It was very challenging for us to get them here.  I fought pre-term labor with all of them and ended up on bed rest with each of the pregnancies for a certain period of time.  My most challenging pregnancy was with my third child.  I ended up down on complete bed rest by 19 weeks along and had to live for five weeks at the hospital trying to hold our little guy off.  All the children came early and they each stayed a certain time in the NICU before being big enough to come home.  We feel very blessed to have them all with us.

During these difficult times, my desire to be self-reliant as a family kept my mind busy trying to figure out how we could organize our finances and our food storage to pull us through.  Over the course of the five pregnancies, I have spent more than a year of my life in bed!  We had many offers from others to help and with their help we made it through.  We also figured out some ways that made it easier for us to take care of our own needs.  I hope that what we have been able to learn and figure out will be helpful to all of you.